This month I’ve noticed a substantial increase in the number of people who are hitting our website searching for ways to avoid or otherwise appeal their automatic penalty notices received under the new Construction Industry Scheme. HMRC started charging penalties in October 2007 although our logs this month have recently shown a vast increase in the number of contractors who are searching Google for a way to appeal their penalties.
Anyone who has recently migrated to the UK from North Korea, China or the Islamic Republic of Iran in order to start a new live of freedom and a business will feel like they never left home now that new powers and penalties have been granted to our incumbent government’s fighting hand; HM Revenue & Customs.
The New Construction Industry Scheme will be officially one year old in two weeks; on April 6th 2008. After a very shaky start with plenty of mass confusion, hysteria and technical glitches, have HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the construction industry finally gotten their systems “bedded down” for new CIS compliance or are there still problems?
It’s astonishing that as an independent software vendor how many construction contractor companies prefer to contact us to ask for advice on the new Construction Industry Scheme. The hottest topic at the moment are the CIS penalties that a lot of businesses are receiving for non-compliance with the new scheme, it’s rules and it’s deadlines.
CIS penalties have been rolling for five months now, three of which we already have the statistics for. The numbers are terrifying, a total of 118,458 penalty notices were issued in a three month period from October to December. Assuming that these three months are representative, that’s a minimum of £47 million a year in fines, paid for by construction businesses like yours.
