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

When Making Tax Digital starts for roofers

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 roofers

CIS covers building, altering and repairing roofs, so a re-roof and replacing a few slipped tiles are both covered when a contractor pays you. A gutter repair on its own, or routine gutter clearing, is outside the scheme. CIS looks at the whole contract, so one contract to repair a gutter and replace roof tiles brings every payment under it into CIS. Putting up and taking down scaffolding is covered, but hiring it out with no labour is not. Homeowners paying for work on their own home are not contractors, so they don’t deduct CIS.

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 roofers 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

Scaffold is where roofing tax gets particular. If you hire scaffold or a tower from another firm for a CIS job, show it on its own line on your invoice, because the contractor can treat it like materials and leave it out of your deduction. Scaffold you own cannot be treated that way, and nor can kit on hire purchase, although fuel your plant uses on the job can. If you pay a scaffolding firm to put scaffold up and take it down, that is construction work, so you may have to register as a CIS contractor and deduct from them. Most roofers drive from home to a different site every few days, which HMRC usually treats as business travel. Travel to a fixed yard is commuting.

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.