What can a self-employed tiler claim?
Adhesive, grout and tanking, the tiles when you are the one buying them, the wet saw and its blades, knee pads and the van all come off your profit before tax. Here is why a customer who buys their own tiles changes your turnover, how a price per square metre should be split for CIS, when a bathroom showroom has to deduct, and a worked year that ends with HMRC owing you.
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What a self-employed tiler can claim
Tiles you buy, and tiles the customer buys
Who buys the tiles decides what your turnover is. When you source the porcelain and charge the customer for it, the whole invoice is your income and the merchant's bill for the tiles is your expense, recorded as Goods for resale, HMRC's goods used box. That holds whether you add a margin or pass them on at cost. When the customer orders their own tiles from a showroom and pays for them directly, those tiles never enter your books at all: your income is the labour plus whatever you supplied, and their tiles make no difference to your tax. Keep the two kinds of job clearly labelled in your records, because the difference in turnover can be thousands over a year.
Adhesive, grout, primer and tanking
Even on a job where the customer bought every tile, you still turn up with flexible adhesive, grout, primer, self-levelling compound, backer board, a decoupling mat, the tanking kit for a wet room, trims and silicone. All of it stays in the room when you leave, so it is materials, recorded as Goods for resale, and what you charge for it is turnover. Under the cash basis a bag of adhesive is deducted when you pay the merchant, not when it goes on a wall, so stock you buy in the last week of March belongs to that year.
Wet saw, manual cutter and levelling kit
The bridge saw or wet cutter, a manual snap cutter, an angle grinder, a mixing drill and its paddles, notched trowels, grout floats, the levelling system pliers, a laser level and the suction cups for large-format slabs are equipment, and FileThat's box for equipment is Repairs and maintenance. A £650 wet saw comes off in one go in the year you pay for it, exactly as a £12 float does. A replacement pump or motor for the saw, or having it repaired, belongs in that box as well.
Blades, clips and what a job uses up
Diamond blades dull, core drill bits burn out on porcelain, and the clips in a levelling system snap off and go in the bin with the wedges. Those, along with spacers, sponges, buckets, mixing tubs and grout bags, are consumables, recorded as Other expenses. Knee pads, the FFP3 masks you wear when cutting (tile dust carries silica), gloves, eye protection and safety boots protect you rather than your clothes, so they are allowable in the same box.
Breakages, cuts and the extra ten per cent
Ordering ten per cent over for cuts, breakages and a spare box is normal, and the tax follows the money: everything you paid the merchant is a cost, whether every tile went on the wall or a dozen cracked on the saw. If you replace a tile you broke at your own expense, that replacement is a cost of the job too. A box left with the customer for future repairs was sold to them with the rest; a box kept on the van for another job is still deducted in the year you paid for it. When a damaged delivery is credited by the merchant, record the credit so the expense comes down to what you really spent.
Insurance, waste, the phone and keeping current
Public liability, which a bathroom company will ask to see, and cover for the saw in the van go in Insurance. Tip charges for the old tiles and rubble from a rip-out, and a skip when there is a floor's worth of screed to clear, are Other expenses. A listing on a tiling or trades directory, the website and vinyls on the van are Advertising costs; the part of your mobile bill that is for work is allowable, and the accountant is Professional fees. A course on large-format porcelain or wet-room tanking when you already tile for a living keeps your skills current, which gov.uk allows; training for a different trade from scratch is not an expense of this one.
The rules behind every claim: allowable expenses for sole traders.
A different bathroom every few days, and the tile merchant
A tiler working for a bathroom company is sent to whichever house the company is fitting that week, and the private jobs in between are scattered across town, so the miles move around with the work. Claim the van either at HMRC's flat mileage rates, 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the tax year and 25p after that, or at the business share of what it actually costs in fuel, insurance, servicing and tyres, recorded as Motor and fuel, and whichever you pick stays with that van for as long as you run it.
Buying a van outright has its own rule: the cash basis lets you deduct the price in the year you pay, after taking off any share for private use, and a van deducted like that stays on real running costs for good, the flat rate being closed to it. A car does not get its price deducted that way. Driving from home to each new bathroom, and the detour to the merchant for adhesive, is business travel when home is where you run the trade from. The exception is the long single site: most of a year tiling plot after plot on one development can be treated as where the business is carried on, with the daily drive there ordinary commuting.
Keep the date, the postcode and the miles for every trip. A mileage entry in FileThat turns the miles into the deduction at the flat rates, and running costs for a van on the actual-cost method take a business-use percentage so only that share goes to HMRC.
Which trips qualify, and the van bought outright: can I claim mileage.
CIS and VAT
Tiling for a builder or developer is CIS
HMRC's CIS manual, at CISR14240, lists tiling among the finishing operations that bring a construction project to completion, right next to kitchen and bathroom fitting, with no condition attached. So when a builder, a developer or a main contractor pays you to tile, they take 20% off your labour, or 30% if you are not registered, and never off materials. Your turnover is the figure before the deduction. Type what each contractor's monthly statement shows into FileThat, and the tax they have already handed to HMRC for you is set against what you owe.
A bathroom showroom that fits what it sells is a contractor
The scheme is not only for builders. HMRC's guide CIS340 counts as a mainstream contractor any business whose activities include construction operations and which pays others for that work, and bathroom fitting is one of those operations. A showroom that sells a customer their bathroom and then sends you, a plumber and an electrician to install it is carrying out construction for that customer, so it has to register as a contractor and deduct from your labour like a builder would, even though selling baths is most of its business. A showroom that only sells, leaving the customer to find their own tiler, is paying nobody and deducting nothing.
Price by the square metre, but split the line
The deduction is worked out on the payment less the materials you paid for directly, so a rate per square metre that quietly includes adhesive and grout gets 20% taken off the lot. HMRC's own example in CIS340 is a tiler who is not VAT registered: £600 charged, £240 of it materials with the VAT included, so £360 is liable, £72 is deducted and £528 is paid over. Put your metres and rate on one line, the adhesive, grout, primer and tanking on another at your cost price, and hold on to the merchant receipts: the contractor can ask to see them, and gov.uk tells a contractor with no evidence to put its own figure on the materials and deduct from the remainder. Any margin you add on top of the materials cost is treated as labour for the deduction.
Domestic bathrooms, VAT and the reverse charge
A homeowner who hires you directly to tile their bathroom or kitchen floor is never a CIS contractor: they pay you in full and you pay the tax on it yourself at the end of the year. A shop or a landlord is a business but not a construction one, and only becomes a contractor after spending more than £3 million on construction in any 12 months. On VAT, every tile you charge on counts in the £90,000 rolling turnover test, so a tiler who supplies the tiles gets there on far less labour than one whose customers buy their own. Once registered, tiling for a VAT-registered contractor under CIS usually comes under the domestic reverse charge, recorded in FileThat as Construction industry - reverse charge sales.
See what you could get back: the CIS refund calculator.
A tiler's year: a bathroom company by the square metre, and a refund
Take a tiler in England who spends most of 2026-27 tiling bathrooms for a showroom that sells and fits them. The showroom supplies the tiles its customers chose; the tiler is paid by the square metre for labour and supplies the adhesive, grout, primer and tanking. Over the year the invoices to the showroom total £38,000: £35,000 of labour and £3,000 of materials shown at cost. The showroom deducts 20% of the labour, £7,000, and the tiler receives £31,000. Private work for homeowners, kitchen floors, splashbacks and two bathrooms, brings in another £14,000 received in full; on three of those jobs the tiler bought the tiles and charged them on, £5,000 of the £14,000, while the other customers had bought their own. Turnover for the year is £52,000.
Costs: £8,600 of tiles, adhesive, grout, primer, tanking and trims (the £3,000 and the £5,000 charged on, plus £600 absorbed into private prices); a £650 wet saw, a £180 manual cutter and £270 of trowels, floats and levelling pliers, £1,100 of equipment in Repairs and maintenance; £520 of diamond blades, core bits, clips, wedges and sponges; £210 of knee pads, masks, gloves and boots; £410 of insurance; 10,500 miles between the showroom's customers, the private jobs and the tile merchant, which is £5,500 for the first 10,000 and £125 for the remaining 500; £240 of the mobile bill; £180 of tip charges; £120 for a directory listing and the website; and £250 for the accountant. Together that is £17,255, leaving a profit of £34,745.
After the £12,570 Personal Allowance, £22,175 is taxable. Income Tax at 20% comes to £4,435, and 6% Class 4 National Insurance on that £22,175 is another £1,330.50, making the year's tax £5,765.50. The showroom has already sent HMRC £7,000, which is more than the whole bill, so when the return is filed the tiler is owed £1,234.50 back. The deductions covered more than 80% of the tax, so HMRC asks for no payments on account towards 2027-28 either.
Had the square-metre rate swallowed the adhesive and grout with no materials line on the invoices, the showroom would have deducted 20% of all £38,000, £7,600, and the refund would have been £1,834.50: the same tax, with £600 more of the tiler's money sitting at HMRC until the return went in. And had none of the £17,255 of costs been recorded, Income Tax and Class 4 on a £52,000 profit would have come to £10,528.60, leaving £3,528.60 to pay by 31 January 2028 plus two payments on account of £1,764.30. Scotland has its own Income Tax rates and bands, so a Scottish tiler's figures come out a little differently.
What you cannot claim
The trousers under the knee pads
Knee pads, boots and a dust mask are protective and allowable. The work trousers, T-shirt and trainers you kneel in all day are everyday clothes, and grout on them does not change that.
A meal deal on a bathroom job
A sandwich from the shop round the corner from the house you are tiling is a meal you would have had regardless, so it stays private. Meals only count when the work takes you away from home overnight or well outside your usual routine.
Your own splashback
Tiles and adhesive for your own kitchen, or a bathroom done for your sister at trade price, are private spending even when they were bought on the trade account. Put them through the records flagged as disallowable and the profit is unaffected.
Parking tickets, late interest and tax
A ticket outside a customer's terrace, interest HMRC charges when tax arrives late, what you draw for yourself each month, and the Income Tax and Class 4 on the profit itself are never expenses of the trade.
Where each line is drawn: knee pads versus everyday trousers, lunch, breakfast and overnight meals and the two ways to claim a van.
Straight answers
The customer bought the tiles themselves. Do they go on my tax return?
No. Tiles the customer ordered and paid the showroom for directly never pass through your business, so they are neither your income nor your expense, and they do not count towards the VAT or Making Tax Digital thresholds. Your turnover from that job is your labour plus the adhesive, grout and trims you supplied. The picture changes if you paid for the tiles on your trade account and the customer reimbursed you: then the tiles are your income on the way in and your Goods for resale on the way out, even at cost with nothing added.
Is my wet saw tax deductible?
Yes. A wet saw or bridge saw is equipment, which FileThat records as Repairs and maintenance, and the cash basis takes the full price off your profit in the year you pay, whether it cost £300 or £1,500. A new blade, a replacement water pump and a repair go in the same box. If you hire a rail saw for one large-format job rather than buying one, the hire charge and its delivery fee are allowable as Other expenses for that job.
Do I pay CIS when a bathroom showroom pays me?
If the showroom fits the bathrooms it sells, yes. A business whose activities include construction operations and which pays others to carry them out is a contractor under the scheme, and HMRC lists bathroom fitting among those operations, so the showroom should deduct 20% from your labour, or 30% when you have not registered as a subcontractor. Register with HMRC before the first payment so it is 20%, and expect a statement each month showing what was paid and what was deducted. A showroom that sells only, with the customer paying you separately to fit, is not paying you at all, and the customer is a householder, so nothing is deducted.
How do I show materials on an invoice for CIS when I charge per square metre?
Two lines. One for the labour, as metres times your rate, and one for the adhesive, grout, primer and tanking at what you paid for them, including the VAT on them when you are not VAT registered yourself. The contractor deducts only from the labour line, and only materials you paid for directly come off, so a tile the showroom supplied has no place on your invoice. Keep the merchant receipts behind each invoice, because the contractor is entitled to ask for them and, without them, is told to estimate what the materials cost and take 20% from the rest. Any mark-up on the materials is deducted from like labour.
Can I claim tiles I broke or over-ordered?
Yes. The expense is what you paid the merchant, not what ended up on the wall, so the extra box ordered for cuts and the tiles that cracked on the saw are all part of the cost of the job. A tile you broke and replaced at your own expense is a cost too. If the merchant credits you for a damaged batch, record the credit against the purchase so the cost comes down to what you actually spent. Leftover boxes kept on the van are deducted in the year you paid for them, with no stock adjustment at 5 April.
Carpet fitting is outside CIS. Is floor tiling?
Not in the same way. HMRC's manual puts carpet fitting outside the scheme in all circumstances unless it is part of a mixed contract, and brings vinyl, lino and laminate in only when they are fitted as part of a wider project of construction. Tiling is listed separately, among the finishing operations, without that qualifier. What matters more for your tax is who is paying: a builder or developer who pays you to tile a floor deducts, a homeowner who pays you to tile their own kitchen floor never does, whatever the surface.
Do self-employed tilers have to use Making Tax Digital?
When your qualifying income passes the threshold, yes. It has been £50,000 since 6 April 2026, and falls to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028. Qualifying income is turnover before costs, so the tiles you charged on and the gross amount the showroom paid before CIS came off both count, while tiles the customer bought themselves do not. HMRC decides from a return you have already filed, so the £52,000 year in the example above brings that tiler in from a later April, not during the year itself.
Keep every claim, file it with HMRC
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