CIS payment and deduction statements

What the statement is for

Under the Construction Industry Scheme, the contractor pays part of your money to HMRC instead of to you. The payment and deduction statement is the paperwork that proves it happened. Without it, you're relying on your own records to reclaim tax you've already paid — and HMRC has no obligation to take your word for it.

It's often called a "CIS voucher" or "CIS certificate" on site. There's no official form number, but the required content is fixed.

What it must show

• The contractor's name and their employer reference
• The tax month the payment falls in (tax months end on the 5th)
• Your name as the subcontractor
• Your unique taxpayer reference, or your verification number if unmatched
• The gross amount paid, excluding VAT
• The cost of materials deducted before tax was calculated
• The amount of tax deducted

Source: GOV.UK — what you must do as a CIS contractor.

Checking the numbers add up

The most common error isn't fraud, it's materials. If the contractor ignores your materials line and applies the deduction to the whole invoice, you lose 20% of a figure you should never have been taxed on. On a £3,000 job with £1,200 of materials, that's £240 out of your pocket.

Take the amount that actually reached your bank, subtract your materials, and run it through the CIS deduction calculator in reverse mode. If the labour and deduction it produces don't match your invoice, something has gone wrong — raise it while the job is fresh rather than at year end.

If the statement never turns up

Start with a short, unemotional message: you need the statement for the tax month, and you'd like it emailed. Most of the time it's an admin oversight rather than an attempt to withhold anything.

If nothing comes, HMRC's CIS helpline can confirm what has actually been reported against your record and will follow it up with the contractor. Contractors face penalties for failing to issue statements, so a polite reference to that duty tends to be effective.

In the meantime, keep every invoice and matching bank credit. A clean paper trail of what you invoiced and what you were paid lets you evidence the deduction even if the statement is late.

Storing them properly

You need these records for at least the current tax year plus the following five years. The pragmatic approach is to photograph or save each statement the day it arrives into a folder named by tax year, and reconcile it against your invoice list monthly rather than in one grim evening the following January.

Frequently asked questions