In pursuit of my small practice being more efficient, I am reducing the volume of paperwork I touch.
After the last 5 years of "jumping through hoops" for CIS subcontractor clients, to facilitate my practice being more efficient, I have decided that my CIS subcontractors should now be making "alternative arrangements"
Are your CIS subcontractor clients holding you back?
Are they more hassle than they are worth to your practice ?
Interested to know your thoughts ...
Replies (8)
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No problem
I find that my CIS clients are often less of a problem than others.
Mind you, they know that if they don't have a bill, with a few exceptions, they don't get any tax relief.
The bigger problem is poorly administered systems set up by HMRC.
CIS subbies are among the easiest
They generally get their info in early as they hope a refund is due, and the long standing clients know exactly what we need. We spend a little time educating them when they first come to us, but that is true of most clients.
My CIS clients are down to earth people. They want paper work sorted out straight away after 5 April.
Once you have tweaked a spreadsheet for them, its generally plain sailing.
Same as above really
Subbies are notorious bad record keepers but you just have to educate them so they give you want you need. Often the problem lies with the people they work for as building contractors are often poor at issuing paperwork. I don't mind sSubbies as they are usually decent guys who appreciate what you do for them and I would sign up more if I could. The hardest part is HMRC side of things which seems to often result in unnecessary delays in issuing repayments.
40 years and happy
I've dealt with CIS clients for over 40 years.
No more trouble than other industry segments.
I sometimes wonder if these CIS clients are perhaps better suited to OMB accountants rather than growing practices, or if there's an economies of sale thing applying here, practices might need quite a few of these CIS clients to feel contented with having them as clients.
One of my current clients who is within the CIS made over £200k profit per his last accounts, I have dealt with him from when he was starting out as a school leaver with a 715s certificate about 30 years ago.
The most troublesome ones are not necessarily trouble because of their own making - the most difficult one that I currently have works for about 8 different customers / contractors a year and most of them fail to give him monthly tax certificates so I have the job of listing out his sales invoices, working out 20% tax deductions off each invoice and then comparing to bank statements to ascertain correct and complete tax deductions. Annual fee £650 because of the work involved. Others with more organised records / full set of tax certificates are about half that fee. All are worthwhile clients.
Some of the best
Several of my subbie clients work for one of my bigger clients pretty much exclusively.
Makes preparing their tax returns very straight forward - £250 plus vat for 1-1.5 hours work.
I love subbies!
Its the contractors that are the pain!
The subbies paperwork may be crap but as ShirleyM says they get their stuff in early to get their refund which, of course, comes first into my Client Account so I can take my fee before refunding the balance.
I will echo Steve's comment - please direct any you dont want my way and we can come to some sort of referral/purchase agreement. As a firm we deal with subbies all over the UK.