In April 2007 the Government introduces a new scheme to manage the tax liability of sub-contractors involved in the construction industry. The new scheme replaces old manual vouchers, grubby certificates, and annual returns. The scheme simplifies the variety of ways in which a sub-contractor might be categorised. It will allow contractors to verify the identity and tax status of subbies on-line and will require that companies make monthly returns, with on-line submission being the preferred route. However, as with all new systems the transitionary period might be painful. Companies will need to ensure that the data that they hold on their sub-contractors matches exactly the data held by HMRC. A mis-match in a sub-contractors name will result in the whole return being rejected. HMRC will be providing companies with either listings or CDs containing the data identities of sub-contractors that the company has employed within the last 2 years. For larger companies it will be a task of some magnitude, to match this HMRC data against their own records. The Access CIS software will contain tools to assist with this matching process. For those companies that have traded with less than 125 subcontractor records then they will only receive a paper listing from HMRC. In these cases a manual reconciliation process will be required. It is obvious that companies need to plan well in advance to ensure that their data will be "cleaned" and prepared for the new scheme.
Kevin Misselbrook
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