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

When Making Tax Digital starts for scaffolders

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 scaffolders

The law names putting up scaffolding as construction work, and HMRC treats taking it down as finishing work, so both ends of the job are covered. Hiring out scaffolding with no labour is outside CIS, and so is just delivering it. If one contract covers both hire and erection, every payment under it is covered, hire weeks included, even on separate invoices. Scaffolding you hired from another firm for the job comes off as materials before the deduction is worked out. Scaffolding you own does not.

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 scaffolders 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

Scaffolders carry more kit than most trades, and the key question is whether it is yours or hired in. Tube, fittings and boards you buy are business equipment, and so is the lorry that moves them. Scaffolding you hire from another firm for a job is a running cost, and on CIS work it also comes off before the deduction is worked out, so keep every hire invoice. If you run the business from a yard, the drive from home to the yard is commuting, but trips from the yard to sites are business travel.

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.