CIS for decorators: do you need to register?

Do you have to register for CIS as a decorator?

Registration is not compulsory for subcontractors, GOV.UK confirms, but skipping it costs a higher deduction rate. That is the real decision, not “must I register” but “what does skipping it cost me on every payment”. GOV.UK sets the standard CIS deduction at 20% once registered, rising to 30% if you are not, with gross payment status the route to 0%, as of Jul 2026. A decorator paid by a contractor or developer who never registers is not breaking the law. He is handing over an extra 10% of every payment for no return. Over a run of jobs for the same contractor, that gap is the cost of a decision most decorators make once and forget about.

Is painting and decorating classed as construction work under CIS?

Yes. HMRC’s Construction Industry Scheme Reform Manual (CISR14250) confirms painting and decorating falls within the scheme, and HMRC’s CIS340 guide states plainly that painting and decorating is a construction operation. Neither source treats this as a border case. So the scope question most decorators quietly worry about, whether their trade even counts, is settled directly by the two sources GOV.UK itself publishes. What decides whether CIS reaches a given job is not the type of decorating work. It is who is paying for it, which is the next question.

What’s the difference between a contractor and a subcontractor here, and how does verification work?

A contractor pays for the work, a subcontractor does the work and gets paid for it; most decorators sit on the subcontractor side of that line. A builder taking on a refurbishment and bringing in a decorator to paint the finished rooms is the contractor. The decorator is the subcontractor. Before paying you, a contractor checks (verifies) your CIS status with HMRC, which sets the deduction rate that applies to that payment. Verification happens before the first payment on a new working relationship, and it is the contractor’s obligation to run, not yours. What comes back from that check, registered, unregistered or gross, is what sets the rate on your invoice from that point on.

Does CIS apply if you only work for homeowners?

Often not, and this is the point most guides skip past. HMRC’s CIS340 guide states plainly that painting and decorating is a construction operation, but the same guide is equally plain that a private householder is never a contractor under the scheme. A decorator working solely for homeowners, painting their own houses, on their own instruction, is doing construction work that CIS was never built to touch, because the person paying is not a contractor in the scheme’s sense. The scheme reaches you through your client, not your trade. A decorator who splits time between homeowners and builders, developers or property-management clients is inside CIS only for the second kind of work. The homeowner jobs stay outside it, deduction and all, while the same week’s work for a developer sits fully inside the scheme. Keeping the two client types separate in your own records is what makes this distinction usable rather than theoretical, because a contractor’s verification and deduction only ever apply to the payments that come from a contractor.

What do you need to register for CIS?

To register, GOV.UK asks for your business name, UTR, VAT number if you have one, and your business start date. Sole traders without a UTR register for Self Assessment first, since CIS registration sits on top of that record, not before it. A partnership adds partner details or, for a joint venture, the Joint Venture Agreement; a limited company adds its company registration number. None of this is paperwork you invent for the occasion. It is the same set of facts HMRC already holds for your tax affairs, gathered once for CIS. Registering online through this route gives you net payment status, the 20% rate, not gross payment status; that is a separate qualification, covered next.

What is gross payment status, and how do you qualify?

Gross payment status means a contractor pays you in full with nothing deducted, and you handle tax and National Insurance yourself through Self Assessment. Gross payment status needs at least £30,000 in construction turnover for a sole trader, GOV.UK states, on top of clean tax and payment records, alongside a business test and a compliance test. This is a different test from VAT registration, and the two get conflated often enough to be worth separating cleanly: the GOV.UK VAT registration threshold of £90,000, as of Jul 2026, is a separate test from CIS gross payment status. One is about turnover crossing a line for VAT. The other is about qualifying for a payment status inside CIS. Passing one says nothing about the other.

CIS settles what leaves each payment before it reaches you; pricing decides what the payment should have been in the first place. Once the deductions side is straight, the guide on how to price a decorating job covers the other half.