CHECKLIST
CIS Monthly Compliance
The CIS month in the order it has to happen, built around the 19th. About forty-five minutes, spread across the month rather than spent on the 18th.
- Five sections, seventeen checks, forty-five minutes
- Why the tax month ends on the 5th and not the 31st
- The return that is due in a month you paid nobody
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Who this checklist is for
Contractors who file every month and would rather do it in four calm stages than in one evening with a folder and a deadline.
You work to calendar months
A CIS tax month runs to the 5th. Payments made on the 6th belong in the next return, which is why working to calendar months puts a handful of payments in the wrong month every year and the returns never quite reconcile.
Work went quiet and the returns stopped with it
A return is due for every tax month whether or not you paid anybody. A month with no subcontractors is a nil return, not no return, and it is the most common CIS penalty there is. Tell HMRC you are inactive and they stop falling due for six months.
Your subcontractors chase you for statements
Every subcontractor you deducted from is owed a written statement within fourteen days of the end of the tax month. Issuing them by the 11th means the questions arrive before the deadline rather than after it.
FACTS
What being late actually costs
A hundred pounds the day it is late. Two hundred more at two months. At six months and again at twelve, three hundred pounds or five per cent of the deductions, whichever is higher. Those are per return, so a forgotten winter is four penalties for paying nobody anything.
17 checks
Five sections
45 minutes
Spread across the month, not the 18th
FACTS
Two dates, and only one of them moves
The return and the payment are both due by the 19th, but if you pay electronically you have until the 22nd. The filing date does not move with it. Missing the 19th for filing while paying comfortably on the 21st is a penalty for a month in which you did nothing wrong with the money.