The Construction Industry Scheme exists to prevent tax evasion in the UK construction sector. HMRC designed it specifically for contractors and subcontractors, and it puts the compliance burden squarely on the contractor. Verify the wrong subcontractor status, deduct the wrong rate, or miss a monthly return, and the penalties stack up fast. Most contractors do not get into trouble because they ignore CIS. They get into trouble because they manage it across spreadsheets, payroll tools, and HMRC’s own portal without a single system connecting all three. That gap is where errors happen. CIS software closes that gap. This post explains…
Author: James Whitfield
James Whitfield
UK tax and compliance writer with a background in VAT advisory and HMRC digital reporting. He focuses on Making Tax Digital, VAT obligations, and regulatory software requirements for mid-market businesses.
When the UK left the EU VAT system on 1 January 2021, every business importing goods into the UK faced an immediate operational change. EU goods, which had previously moved under intra-EU VAT rules with no import VAT triggered at the border, were suddenly subject to the same import VAT treatment as goods arriving from any other part of the world. For UK mid-market businesses importing regularly from EU suppliers, that change created a cash flow problem that had not existed before. Under the traditional import VAT payment method, a business pays VAT at the point goods enter the UK…