CIS, the VAT reverse charge, gross payment status, Making Tax Digital and payroll for Manchester trade businesses. We only act for trades, and we work with you remotely.
The short version. Manchester is in England, so the Building Safety Levy applies here from 1 October 2026, though developments of fewer than 10 units are exempt, and the dutyholder and competence duties in SI 2023/911 apply to all building work. Everything on the tax side is UK-wide: CIS at 20% and 30% with the return due by the 19th and payment by the 22nd, the VAT domestic reverse charge, VAT registration at £90,000, Making Tax Digital, employer NIC at 15% above £5,000, and the £1,000,000 annual investment allowance. Building control for your work here sits with Manchester City Council.
The VAT domestic reverse charge has applied to construction services since 1 March 2021 and it is still producing wrong invoices, in Manchester as everywhere else. The reason is a single misunderstanding about where the burden sits: absent a written notification from your customer, the reverse charge applies. The default is the reverse charge, not normal VAT.
Six conditions must all hold. The supply is of construction services and any materials supplied with them, falling within the CIS definition of construction operations. It is standard-rated or reduced-rated. Both supplier and customer are VAT registered. The customer is registered for CIS. The payment is reported within CIS. And the customer is not an end user and not an intermediary supplier.
An end user is a VAT- and CIS-registered business that does not make onward supplies of the construction services it receives — a developer building to sell or let, or a retailer having its own premises refitted. You do not decide it and you should not guess it. The exclusion depends on the customer notifying you in writing, and HMRC publishes suggested wording confirming end user status for the purposes of section 55A VAT Act 1994. Once you hold that notification you can issue a normal VAT invoice and need not seek further evidence. An intermediary supplier — a business that resupplies construction services without material alteration to a connected or linked end user, the link being a relevant interest in the same land or membership of the same corporate group under Companies Act 2006 section 1161 — works the same way.
Two consequences worth acting on. First: get the notification from every customer, in writing, before you invoice, and keep it on file — one email each, once. The customers you are confident about are where the assumptions hide. Second: a subcontractor with gross payment status is still inside the reverse charge, because it applies where a payment is reportable under the CIS regulations rather than by reference to whether deductions are actually made.
The same work whichever trade you are in, because the problems are the scheme's rather than the trade's. We run the monthly CIS return and verification cycle, apply for and protect gross payment status, get the reverse charge right on your invoices and get end user notifications on file, put your records on software that satisfies Making Tax Digital, run payroll with the CIS offset claimed monthly through the employer payment summary, and prepare the accounts and tax return.
Two things we do that a general accountant usually does not. We reconcile your CIS suffered to the payment and deduction statements every month rather than once a year, which is where under-claimed materials and missing statements turn up — see the records guide. And we treat your VAT compliance as part of your CIS position, because since 6 April 2024 it literally is: VAT joined CIS, PAYE, income tax and corporation tax in the gross payment status compliance test.
We write for each trade separately, because the scope questions differ. An electrician is inside CIS on power, lighting and fire protection and outside it on burglar alarms and CCTV. A steel fabricator is outside the scheme on manufacture and delivery to site and inside it on erection. A scaffolder is inside CIS, and separately hired scaffolding is standard rated for VAT even on a zero-rated new build. There are pages for plumbers, roofers, groundworkers, joiners, bricklayers, plasterers and every other trade we act for.
Three free calculators, no email required: the CIS deduction calculator shows what materials do to a deduction, the gross payment status checker tests you against all three statutory tests, and the reverse charge checker works through the six conditions on a specific job.
Not unless the contractor has told you in writing that it is an end user or an intermediary supplier, or the work is zero-rated. Where all six conditions hold — a construction operation within the CIS definition, standard or reduced-rated, both parties VAT registered, the customer CIS registered, the payment reported within CIS, and the customer neither an end user nor an intermediary supplier — you invoice with no VAT and state that the customer must account for it. The important part is the default: without that written notification the reverse charge applies, so adding 20% creates an error on both sides of the invoice.
HMRC publishes suggested wording, and using it is the simplest route: a statement that the customer is an end user for the purposes of section 55A VAT Act 1994 reverse charge for building and construction services, and asking to be issued with a normal VAT invoice with VAT charged at the appropriate rate. Once you hold that you need not seek further evidence of the customer's status. Keep it on file per customer rather than per job, and get one from every VAT- and CIS-registered customer rather than only the ones you are unsure about — because the reverse charge is what applies in the absence of the notification, not in the presence of doubt.
Less than most trades expect, and not the things they expect. Manchester is in England, and the Construction Industry Scheme is UK-wide: 20% standard rate, 30% higher rate, the monthly return due by the 19th and the money by the 22nd. The VAT domestic reverse charge, the £90,000 registration threshold, Making Tax Digital, National Insurance, corporation tax and the £1,000,000 annual investment allowance are identical too. What changes is building safety — the Building Safety Levy applies here from 1 October 2026, though developments of fewer than 10 units are exempt, and the dutyholder and competence duties in SI 2023/911 apply to all building work — and the income tax on your profit, which is the UK rates — 20%, 40% and 45%, with the higher rate starting at £50,270 on a full personal allowance.
No. We act for trade businesses in Manchester and across the UK remotely — phone, WhatsApp, video and email, with records and approvals handled online. That is deliberate rather than a limitation, because what decides a trade's tax position is not local knowledge but knowing the scheme: whether the work is a construction operation within CIS, whether the payment is CIS-reportable, whether your customer has notified end user status in writing, whether the materials figure on your invoice will stand up, and whether you should have gross payment status. None of that is answered by being twenty minutes down the road. What being in England does change is building safety and, on income tax, uk bands: 20% / 40% / 45% — and we take that into account without needing an office here. The calculators on this site are free and need no conversation at all.
A free call about your CIS position, your VAT treatment and what is actually locked up. If we cannot save you anything, we will say so.
One short email: what has changed in CIS and construction VAT, the dates coming up, and one number worth checking on your own invoices. No spam, unsubscribe any time.