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The UK Government announced in mid November 2007 that it is encouraging employers to develop apprenticeship
training schemes. There are now an increasing number of organisations offering vocational training covering the main trades in
the building industry, including plastering, bricklaying, electrics and plumbing.
Our section on Education & Training covers
the range of courses now available from skill centres to university degrees.
Tax: October 2007
HM Revenue and Customs has been pressing ahead with
a compulsory shift to online tax filing from April 2007 for the construction
industry - a year later than its original target of April 2006 following
warnings from the industry that too little time has been made available for
the testing of IT systems. The Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) is an electronic means of deciding which sub-contractors are paid gross and which have tax and national insurance deducted at source.
From April 2007, every construction company that used sub-contractors
and every other employer that drafted in sub-contractors for construction work
had to use the CIS. This appears to be part of a wider plan by the Taxman to put self-employed contractors into the category of employees and so recover more National Insurance and Tax. Existing custom and practice within the industry suggests that if a bricklayer or joiner has a Construction Industry Scheme card, usually a CIS4, then he or she is self-employed.
The possession of a CIS4 card convinces workers that they are "self-employed
labour-only subcontractors" and, as such, the contractor has no requirement
to pay National Insurance contributions in relation to that worker. The Taxman
does not agree and is using all means to recover these payments by regarding
sub-contractors by default as employees of the main contractor. It now appears
that the Taxman is chasing self-employed workers in the industry if they have
not filed a paper tax return before the end of September 2007, even though
the deadline is the end of January 2008.
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