Bricklayer CIS Deductions and Price-Work Pay in 2026

The 20% comes straight off the invoice

Here is the whole mechanism in one example. A bricklayer finishes a price-work phase and invoices £4,500 for labour, supplying no materials. The contractor deducts 20% — £900 — and pays it to HMRC. The bricklayer receives £3,600. That £900 is not a fee and not a tax bill: it is an advance payment sitting on the bricklayer's HMRC account, credited against the tax and National Insurance owed when the Self Assessment return goes in.

The deduction happens payment by payment, all year. There is no Personal Allowance applied at source, no adjustment for expenses, no recognition that some of the money is profit and some merely passes through to cover costs. HMRC takes its 20% of the gross and sorts out the truth in April. For a trade paid in lumps — a £4,500 invoice here, a £3,200 one there — this means the effective tax paid during the year bears little relation to the actual liability building up underneath.

HMRC takes its 20% of the gross and sorts out the truth in April. Registration is what keeps it at 20%: the contractor verifies the subcontractor with HMRC before the first payment, so sorting registration before starting on a new contractor matters more than any other piece of CIS admin.

What the deduction is never taken from

CIS is a deduction on labour, not on everything on the invoice. Three things are always excluded: VAT on the invoice, the cost of materials the subcontractor has paid for directly, and plant hire costs. If a brickie invoices £4,500 for labour plus £1,200 for materials bought and supplied for the job, the 20% comes off the £4,500 — £900 — not off the £5,700 total.

This is why itemising the invoice matters. A single-line invoice for £5,700 invites the contractor to deduct on the whole amount — £1,140 instead of £900, a £240 over-deduction on one invoice. Split labour and materials onto separate lines with the materials cost shown, and the deduction lands where the rules say it should. Over a year of invoices, sloppy line items cost hundreds.

The same logic applies to plant hire passed through the invoice and to VAT: none of it is construction work in CIS terms, so none of it suffers the deduction. Keep receipts for materials and hire — they are the evidence if HMRC ever asks why the deducted amount looks low against the invoiced total.

Why brickies almost always get a rebate

A flat 20% on gross turnover is a high rate of tax for most bricklayers' actual profits. Run the shape of it: a brickie turning over £46,000 in a year with £9,000 of allowable expenses — materials top-ups, tools, van costs, phone, accountancy — has £37,000 of profit. Against that, the Personal Allowance (£12,570) and the 20% basic-rate band leave a real income tax bill far below the £9,200 that CIS deducted at 20% of turnover. The gap comes back as a rebate.

Expenses are the lever: every legitimate cost of the work reduces the profit tax is actually owed on, while CIS was taken before any of those costs were recognised. Brickies with vans, hired plant, specialist tools and long travel have bigger gaps between turnover and profit — and therefore bigger rebates. The bricklayer who keeps no receipts and claims nothing is donating money to HMRC. The rebate itself arrives through the Self Assessment return: total the CIS deducted across all contractors for the year, compute the real tax and National Insurance on the profit, and HMRC repays the difference — for most brickies the biggest single payment of the year after the wages themselves.

Gang CIS: every member is deducted individually

Gangs confuse the paperwork because the work is collective but CIS is individual. When a brickie and a hod carrier agree a £400-a-day gang price, the contractor does not deduct 20% from £400 and leave the gang to sort it out. Each gang member is verified and deducted separately on their own share — the bricklayer's £260 suffers £52 of CIS, the hod carrier's £140 suffers £28, and each receives their own deduction statement.

This matters at Self Assessment time: each member claims only their own deducted amounts against their own return. A gang that pools payments through one person's invoice — one deduction statement, cash split afterwards — breaks the chain, and the statements will not match who did the work. New gangs should agree the split in writing before the first invoice and make sure the contractor knows who is who.

The 30% trap for the unregistered

Subcontractors who have not registered for CIS, or who cannot be verified by the contractor, are deducted at 30% instead of 20%. On price work the arithmetic is punishing: a £200 day grosses £160 after 20% CIS but only £140 after 30%. Over 220 laying days that is £4,400 a year handed over unnecessarily — money that was never owed and can only be reclaimed later through the return, if at all.

There is no upside to sitting on 30%. Registration is free, done online or by phone, and once HMRC has the details the contractor's verification returns the 20% rate from the next payment — so register before your first invoice with a new contractor, not after the first 30% deduction lands. The 30% rate also applies where verification fails on wrong details (wrong UTR, mismatched name); if a contractor says verification failed, fix it immediately rather than shrugging through months of 30% deductions.

Keep every deduction statement

Contractors must give a deduction statement for each payment showing how much CIS was taken. These small pieces of paper — often just a line on the remittance — are the entire evidence base for the Self Assessment rebate. No statements, no provable deductions, no rebate.

Brickies working for multiple contractors need statements from each one: one folder per contractor, every statement filed as it arrives, totals added up at year end. Photograph paper statements the day they arrive — site cabins eat paperwork — and if one goes missing, ask the contractor for a copy from their records.

Gross payment status: the 0% option

There is a third rate: 0%. Subcontractors with gross payment status receive the full invoice with no CIS deducted and settle all tax through Self Assessment instead. It is not a tax break — the same tax is owed — but it ends the cycle of over-deduction and rebate, which suits brickies with steady high turnover and disciplined saving for the January and July payments on account.

HMRC grants it only to businesses that pass its tests: a qualifying turnover level, a clean compliance record, and proper business records. Most brickies are better off at 20% with the annual rebate than chasing gross payment status before they are ready — the rebate is forced saving; gross payment status is freedom that has to be earned with bookkeeping.

Where the figures come from

CIS rates and rules are from GOV.UK's Construction Industry Scheme pages, verified on 24 September 2026: 20% for registered subcontractors, 30% where unregistered or unverifiable, 0% with gross payment status, registration free, no deduction on VAT, directly-paid materials or plant hire, overpaid CIS reclaimed through Self Assessment. The £4,500 invoice example and gang-split figures are illustrative arithmetic built on those verified rules.

Employed-pay context (£16.47 an hour, £640 a week) comes from ONS ASHE 2025 provisional data for bricklayers and masons (SOC 2020 5313), all employees, pay period April 2025. ASHE measures employees, so it does not capture subcontractor price-work earnings.

How to use this guide

If you are starting as a CIS subcontractor, read the sections in order: register first, itemise invoices from day one, and file every deduction statement where you will find it in January. If you are already working and wondering where the rebate is, the statements folder and the Self Assessment return are the two things to fix. Employed brickies with payslips should use the take-home calculator instead — CIS does not apply to PAYE pay.