Tax, CIS and Making Tax Digital for self-employed dryliners

When Making Tax Digital starts for dryliners

It depends on your qualifying income, not your trade. Qualifying income is the total of self-employment and property income before expenses (turnover), not profit.

Once you’re in, you send HMRC a quarterly update by 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May, then a tax return after the year ends. MTD for Income Tax does not change how tax is paid or the payment due dates.

Check your own start date and what to sort first. It’s free and takes a minute.

CIS for dryliners

Fixing boards, metal stud partitions and ceilings is part of building or altering a building, so it is inside CIS when a builder or fit-out contractor pays you. HMRC’s guide names putting in partitions so a building can be used in a different way as an alteration. Insulation and soundproofing count when they are part of a wider building project, but not where no building work is going on and the fabric is untouched. If you pay other fixers or tapers on your gang, you are their contractor and must run CIS on them too.

When CIS applies, a contractor deducts 20% if you’re registered for CIS, 30% if you’re not, and nothing if you have gross payment status. To work out a CIS deduction, the contractor starts with the gross invoice and takes away what the subcontractor paid for VAT, consumable stores, fuel (except for travelling), plant hire, manufacturing or prefabricating materials, and materials; the CIS rate is then deducted from the amount left.

Before you join Making Tax Digital, over-deducted CIS is claimed back through your Self Assessment tax return. Once you are in Making Tax Digital, HMRC adds your CIS deductions to your tax return, and any refund is requested separately through HMRC online services. Either way, the sooner after 5 April the return is filed, the sooner HMRC can repay you.

Estimate your CIS refund

Free, and it runs in your browser: add your van or mileage, tools and phone, for 2025-26 and 2026-27.

Costs dryliners usually claim

The test for every cost is whether it was for your business. If something is partly personal, only the business part counts.

Your van, tools and kit

Most dryliners carry screw guns, a laser level and taping tools in a van, and hire scissor lifts, towers or board lifters when a ceiling needs them. Kit you buy is business equipment; hire is a running cost, and plant hired from someone else for a CIS job can be shown with materials so it is left out of the deduction. A big commercial fit-out can keep you at one site for months, which starts to look like commuting, so keep a log of where you worked and for how long. If a job means staying away, the room and reasonable meals can be claimed.

From 2024-25 the cash basis is the default for sole traders and partnerships without corporate partners, with no turnover limit; traditional (accruals) accounting is an opt-out. Under the cash basis, the cost of equipment bought to keep and use in the business, such as machinery, computers and vans, is claimed as a normal allowable expense rather than a capital allowance. Cars are different: they go through capital allowances.

Simplified expenses for cars and goods vehicles (vans) from 6 April 2026: 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles, then 25p; motorcycles 24p. Once used for a vehicle you must keep using it for that vehicle, and it cannot be used for a vehicle already claimed through capital allowances.