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The Provincial Practitioner, in his usual tongue-in-cheek style, laments ongoing problems with the CIS Scheme more than three years after its introduction.

6 April 2007 – a Change for the Worse?

The new CIS scheme filled me with dismay because I knew exactly what practical problems it would subsequently pose.  

The mind of your typical salt of the earth subcontractor is often a dark and empty place, where the electrical activity fizzing between the synapses is frequently short-circuited by the most trivial of interference: page 3 of the Sun, several pints after a hard day’s work, or a row with the wife about the half-built kitchen extension.

Jolly Green Vouchers 

The old Monopoly-like tax deduction voucher was therefore a masterful way to focus his mind. The CIS25 was uniformly shaped, vivid green and with a pre-printed gravitas that shouted: ‘This is worth a few quid.’

The interior of a subcontractor’s van often resembles Tracy Emmin’s ‘My Bed’, which was shortlisted for the Turner Art Prize in 1999. The CIS25 used to trumpet from the general detritus of chip wrappers, screwed up invoices, empty soft drink cans, and old copies of the Daily Star: KEEP ME SAFE.

So what spiffing idea did HMRC come up with? They swept away the old voucher system and put the onus on the main contractor to provide his subcontractors with a certificate showing the tax deducted.

There’s Just One Problem.

Main contractors are often subcontractors who have moved up the construction evolutionary scale without a suitable adjustment to their mindset. Under the old system it was mandatory and simple to produce three instantaneous vouchers: one for the subbie, one for HMRC and one to be retained. I now see individually generated tax deduction certificates the size of table napkins, some that look like they have emerged from a car park ticket machine, and others whose lack of clarity and definition is suggestive of a printing process involving potatoes. The natural consequence of these non-standardised and innocuous pieces of paper is:

The Subbie Loses Them.

Once upon a time we simply added up the old monthly vouchers to arrive at the income for the year. Not anymore.

Call for Columbo

‘I need a refund, but I think a few of the cistificates (sic) are missing: the wife put some in the wash, others weren’t issued in the first place and the dog ate the rest.’

‘Can we have your bank statements then?’

‘I always chuck them out; you’ve never asked for them before.’

‘That’s because you always kept the green vouchers safe,’ I mutter between gritted teeth. ‘You’ll have to obtain duplicates from the bank then.’

‘No way; I’m not paying those robbers for copies.’

‘How else are we going to arrive at an income figure then?’

‘Well with this recession it’s a lot less than last year I can tell you that.’

So we wait for the bank statements to arrive, usually weeks later. They relate to a personal building society account to save on bank charges.

‘Are all the deposits in this account for work done?’

‘Good God no,’ replies the subbie. ‘My wife’s incapacity benefit goes in there, and I had a small win on the lottery and my gran left me some money when she snuffed it. Oh, and I did a couple of car boot sales, and flogged my old motorbike.’

By now the will to live is oozing from me and forming a large puddle at my feet.

‘How do you get paid?’ I ask wearily.

‘Cheque mostly, but some pay direct to the bank and some pay cash.’

‘Have you got any paying in books?’

‘What are they?’

After several more weeks involving third party verification of various deposits and other evidence obtained upon threat of a fee note guaranteed to have an ocean-going diuretic effect on the subbie’s bladder, we come up with a set of accounts. A small refund is secured, the destination of which is open to doubt (see previous article, HMRC and the Curious Case of the Errant Apostrophe).

HMRC are Very Helpful: Not.

Ten months later we receive a letter from an HMRC compliance office, informing us the CIS tax entered on the self assessment return exceeds their figures. The cynic in me wonders whether they would have bothered writing if the CIS claimed had been a lesser amount. A telephone call to them elicits a very helpful assurance that they will send us details of their figures so that we can attempt to explain the discrepancy.

‘Couldn’t we ring you up prior to preparing our client’s accounts to obtain the figures you have and check them against ours?’ I ask.

‘Oh we couldn’t do that.’

No, I don’t suppose you could I think, as my will-to-live puddle grows ever larger.

More telephone calls to the client, who succinctly sums up the problem.

‘We never had all this buggering about when we had the old vouchers. Why did they change it?’

A question which proves beyond doubt that despite his many faults, there hums beneath an apparently thick skull a brain capable of prodigious feats of common sense.