E-BOOK
The Trade’s UK Tax Handbook
Everything the tax system does to a building business, in one place, on 2026/27 rates. Ten chapters, about twenty minutes to read and written to be kept rather than skimmed once.
- Ten chapters, from status to the year end
- Why most double cab pickups stopped being vans in April 2025
- The CIS line that turns a profit into a loss on paper
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Who this book is for
Sole traders, subcontractors and small contractors who have picked up the tax system in fragments and want the whole shape of it once, in order.
You are new to working for yourself
Read it front to back. It starts with whether you are employed, self-employed or something else, moves through sole trader against limited company, and only then gets to the two things construction adds to an ordinary business: CIS and the VAT reverse charge.
You have been trading for years and something changed
Chapters four to six are the ones people come back to. What you can actually deduct, the van, and travel to sites under the 24 month rule. All three moved recently and none of the changes were announced anywhere a builder would see them.
You want to know what it costs to get wrong
The last chapter is ten years of the same conversations in order of expense, from paying a subcontractor before verifying them to leaving work in progress out of the year end entirely.
FACTS
The vehicle change most trades have not costed
A van benefit is flat at £4,170 whatever the van cost. A car is the list price times an emissions percentage. On a £40,000 vehicle at 37 per cent that is £4,968 against £25,604, or about £11,350 a year for a higher rate taxpayer. Most double cab pickups moved from the first to the second on 6 April 2025.
10 chapters
Status, CIS, VAT, vehicles, the year end
2026/27
Every rate current, with its HMRC source
FACTS
Turnover, for gross payment status, means labour
HMRC measures the turnover test on net construction turnover, which its own manual defines as gross income from construction work excluding VAT and the cost of materials. A trader who invoiced £48,000 with £20,000 of materials has £28,000, and fails a £30,000 threshold by £2,000.