What expenses can you claim on CIS?
As a contractor or subcontractor working on CIS, you’ll have various running costs depending on the work you do. You can deduct these costs from your taxable profit as long as they’re eligible expenses. This means things that you paid out of pocket that you need for work.
So if you earn £50,000 and you claim £9,000 in expenses, you’d only be taxed on £41,000 for the year.
Note that if your expenses are under £1,000, you can claim the tax-free trading allowance, meaning that you don’t need to keep your receipts, but you won’t be entitled to claim any expenses.
Being a construction worker, you might expense things like:
- Cost of traveling to and from sites, such as fuel if you use your own vehicle or public transport costs
- Vehicle costs, comprehending its maintenance
- Parking fees
- Meals and accommodations (if you’re working away from home and need to stop overnight)
- Any equipment you purchased by you, for example, safety equipment and protecting clothing.
- Use of your home as an office base, meaning bills, phone usage, postage, etc
- Public liability insurance
- Accountancy fees (did you know that Earnr can manage your tax return for only £99? And you can use our other features for free!)
Be aware that if you use the same vehicle for your own personal use then you’ll need to factor this in when any expenses are claimed. If you work out that you use your vehicle 40% of the time for personal use, then you would need to reduce any relevant vehicle running expenses by 40%. The same happens if you use your home as an office base, you should calculate which portion of your bills or phone usage can be counted as running expenses.
How can Earnr Help?
Earnr allows you to track your ingoings and outgoings over the course of the year, and automate your tax return. You mark each payment and each expense as you go so that by the time you get to do your tax return, we’ll have everything we need to do the process for you.
