CHECKLIST
New Subcontractor Onboarding
Everything to do before the first payment leaves. About thirty minutes, and the order matters more than the length, because verification cannot be done retrospectively.
- Five sections, twenty-one checks, thirty minutes
- Why verifying after the first payment is too late to fix
- The three questions that decide employment status
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Who this checklist is for
Contractors taking on someone new, who would rather find out now that the rate is wrong than after four payments have gone out at it.
Contractors who have been burned by the higher rate
If you cannot verify a subcontractor, thirty per cent applies from the first payment and cannot be re-rated later. On £20,000 of labour that is £2,000 more taken off them than needed to be, caused by you, and you cannot give it back.
Anyone relying on the contract to settle status
Correct CIS treatment is no defence at all against an employment status challenge. They are separate systems that do not talk to each other, and it is the engager who owes the PAYE and the employer National Insurance if the answer is wrong.
Firms where insurance certificates live in an inbox
Public liability lapses quietly and you find out on the day something happens on site. The expiry date belongs on the register, not in a thread from eighteen months ago.
FACTS
Verification is not retrospective
The higher rate applies from the moment you cannot identify someone. Verify in August and you cannot re-rate what you paid in June, so those payments stay wrong permanently. It is the only step on this list where the order is the whole point.
21 checks
Five sections
30 minutes
Once per subcontractor, not once a month
FACTS
When an old verification number still counts
You can reuse one for the same subcontractor if you have paid them in the current or the previous two tax years. Longer than that and they need verifying again, and assuming otherwise is how a long-standing subcontractor quietly ends up on the wrong rate.