Tax, CIS and Making Tax Digital for self-employed flooring fitters

When Making Tax Digital starts for flooring fitters

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 flooring fitters

HMRC has treated carpet fitting as outside CIS since 1981, and carpet tiles go with it. Other floors, including vinyl, linoleum, laminate and stripwood, are inside when they are in the specification for a building being built, altered or repaired, and outside when no building work is going on. A single contract for laminate and carpet brings the carpet in too, and splitting the invoice does not change that. Synthetic sports and play surfaces do not count as carpet.

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 flooring fitters 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 flooring fitters carry cutters, a knee kicker and a stretcher in a van big enough for rolls of carpet and packs of boards, and hire a sander or edger when a timber floor needs one. Bought kit is business equipment; hire is a running cost. Because carpet sits outside CIS and other floors often do not, keep each job’s order or contract showing what was fitted, so you can check whether CIS should have come off. Trips from home to a run of customers’ homes and sites are usually business travel to temporary workplaces.

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.