CIS · Template · 6 min read

CIS payment and deduction statements: the template and the rules

Every subcontractor you deduct from is legally owed a statement every month. Here is what must be on it, when it is due, and a copy-ready template.

By Connor McKay, founder of Trade PA · 18 August 2026

Who must produce one, and when

If you are a contractor making CIS deductions, you must give each subcontractor a written payment and deduction statement for every tax month in which you deducted from them. The tax month runs from the 6th to the 5th, and the statement is due within 14 days of the tax month end: in practice, by the 19th. Pay a subbie in the month, deduct, and the statement follows. No deduction (gross payment status), no statement required, though many contractors send one anyway and subbies appreciate it.

This is not admin theatre. The statement is the subcontractor's evidence for offsetting the deduction against their own tax bill. Miss statements or get them wrong and you are costing your subbies real money at their year end, which is why HMRC can penalise contractors who fail to provide them, and why the subbies who know their rights will chase you for them.

What must be on it

• Your business name, address and contractor employer reference (your PAYE reference in the format 123/AB456)
• The end date of the tax month the statement covers (the 5th)
• The subcontractor's name and their unique taxpayer reference (UTR)
• For 30% deductions where the subbie could not be verified: the verification reference HMRC gave you
• The gross amount paid (excluding VAT)
• The cost of materials (excluding VAT), which reduced the amount liable to deduction
• The amount deducted

The template

The habits that keep statements painless

Generate from the payment record, not from memory. Every statement error we ever hear about traces back to reconstructing the month afterwards: a payment logged against the wrong subbie, a materials figure recalled optimistically, a deduction recalculated differently the second time. If the labour and materials split is captured when the payment happens, the statement is just that record printed with the right headings. That is also exactly the number your deduction and your monthly return came from, so all three always agree.

Send them on a schedule, not on request. The contractors with good subbie relationships send every statement in the same window each month without being asked. In Trade PA this is a sentence: "Email Dave his CIS statement for April" and Eve builds it from the payments you logged and sends it for your nod, or produces the whole month's statements in one go.

Keep copies. You need your CIS records for at least three years, and when a subbie loses theirs two Januaries from now (they will), resending beats reconstructing.

For where statements sit in the wider machine of returns, verification and penalties, the pillar guide covers the lot: CIS for subbies in 2026.