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

When Making Tax Digital starts for plasterers

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 plasterers

Plastering is part of building, altering and repairing buildings, so it is inside CIS when a builder or other contractor pays you, on new and old property alike. Patching plaster and making good after other work count as repairs to the building, so they are covered too. If you supply the plaster, board and beads, the contractor takes their cost off before working out the deduction, as long as you show it and can back it up with receipts. A homeowner paying you for work on their own home is not a contractor and pays in full.

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 plasterers 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 plasterers carry their own hand tools, mixing drills and stilts from job to job in a van, and hire bigger kit such as a spray machine when a job needs it. Kit you buy is 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 run of short jobs from home usually counts as travel to temporary workplaces, so the miles can be claimed. A drive to the merchant on the way to a job is business; the school run is not.

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.