James Wheeler

20/06/2026

Always appreciate it when a client takes the time to leave a review. Cheers Kane.

"Excellent service. Been using Jameco Group since starting my business over 2 years ago, and has been great. Would highly recommend."

Kane Parratt, KP Electrical Services Ltd

16/06/2026

Convinced you don't qualify for gross payment status? You might be wrong...

A lot of construction directors think they need £100,000 of turnover to get gross payment status. They don't.

It's £30k per director, or £100k for the whole company, whichever's lower. So a one-director company only needs £30k of net construction turnover. Plenty have been over the line for years without realising.

There are three tests to pass: the business test, the turnover test, and the one that catches people out, compliance, which since April 2024 includes your VAT.

Full breakdown of gross payment status, who qualifies and whether it's worth applying, on the channel.

15/06/2026

New video: How to Pay Subcontractors Under CIS.

Once you start taking subcontractors on, CIS becomes your job as the contractor, and getting it wrong costs you, not them.

I cover registering, verifying, deducting the right amount, the monthly return, and how CIS suffered nets off against CIS deducted.

How to pay subcontractors under CIS, the full process from start to...

12/06/2026

Proud to partner with Fathom.

Fathom turns your management accounts into clear reporting. Profit trends, cash flow, and performance against targets, all in one place and easy to follow.

It's central to the management reporting we deliver for construction clients each month.

11/06/2026

The most common CIS gross payment advice misses the bigger picture...

The usual advice on CIS gross payment status: if you're not great with money, leave the 20% deduction in place so the tax is handled for you.

It's poor advice, and here's why. The deduction doesn't change your tax bill by a penny. All it does is hand HMRC a fifth of everything you earn on labour and keep it out of your reach for the best part of the year. You're lending the taxman your own cash, interest free, for nothing back.

The real fix isn't leaving it in. It's having the reporting in place to take the full payment and still know your tax is covered when it's due.

More on gross payment status and whether it's right for you, on the channel.

11/06/2026

New video: CIS Gross Payment Status, is it worth it?

If you do subcontract work in construction, there's a good chance 20% is coming off every labour invoice you send. Gross payment status stops that, so you get paid in full.

I cover who qualifies, whether it's worth applying, and how to keep it.

CIS gross payment status lets your construction company get paid in...

10/06/2026

Meet Claira, partner at Jameco Construction CFO.

ACCA qualified, with years of experience in construction finance. Claira leads on the technical side of the practice and makes sure every client gets advice that's accurate and proactive.

09/06/2026

From 6 April 2026, HMRC has new powers to penalise construction contractors for non-compliance committed by their subcontractors, even when the contractor wasn't directly involved.

If you engage subcontractors in your construction business, this changes the risk profile of your supply chain significantly.

The new rule applies when HMRC determines that a contractor knew or should have known that a payment, or a CIS deduction being claimed, was connected to deliberate non-compliance by another party. This is an objective test, so HMRC doesn't have to prove you knew. They only need to show that a reasonable business in your position should have recognised the risk.

Where HMRC finds the test is met, the consequences are significant. The business can be assessed for a CIS charge of 20% of the payment made, plus a penalty of 30% of that assessment. Gross payment status can be removed immediately, with a minimum five-year bar on re-applying. And penalties can be transferred to directors or officers personally where the behaviour is attributed to them.

For a contractor making £100,000 of subcontractor payments connected to non-compliance, that's a £20,000 CIS charge plus a £6,000 penalty, on top of losing gross status and potentially exposing the directors personally.

What this means in practice is that supply chain due diligence is no longer optional. HMRC expects contractors to understand who they're paying, to verify CIS registration and compliance status, and to respond appropriately where risks are identified.

The contractors most exposed under the new rule are those engaging subcontractors without a structured verification process. CIS checks done once at the start of a relationship and never refreshed are exactly the situations HMRC will be looking at.

If you engage subcontractors and don't have a documented process for ongoing CIS verification and supply chain review, the next step is sitting down with a construction-specialist finance team to put one in place before HMRC reviews your position.

04/06/2026

A lot of construction directors charge the same rate across every client, regardless of how much that client costs to serve.

A straightforward repeat client who pays on time gets quoted at the same gross margin as a client with scope changes, slow payment, and overruns.

But the cost of serving the two clients is significantly different. The difficult client absorbs more management time, ties up more cash through longer payment terms, and carries a higher risk of disputes that need resolving. None of that is built into the quoted margin.

By the time the job is delivered, a contract priced at 20% gross margin can be realising 12%. That's an 8-point compression on the margin that was meant to be there.

Most construction directors have never broken this down by client because they don't have the reporting to show it.

When we go through this analysis with the directors we work with, the pattern is consistent. A handful of clients are delivering strong returns, a handful are breaking even once the true cost of servicing them is accounted for, and one or two are making losses that haven't been visible.

The answer isn't always to charge more. Sometimes the right move is to restructure the relationship to reduce the cost of serving them, and sometimes it's to walk away from work that's never going to be profitable. None of those decisions can be made without knowing what each client is costing you to serve.

The clients that cost more to deliver are doing what they always have. What needs to change is the pricing. And without the visibility to see what each one is costing, the realised margin keeps falling further behind the quoted margin, regardless of how much work the business is winning.

If you'd like to know whether your quoted margin is really being delivered, get in touch.

02/06/2026

If HMRC decides that someone you're paying as a self-employed subcontractor is working like an employee, they can reclassify the arrangement. I've seen it happen to construction businesses I work with, and the financial impact is substantial.

When the reclassification happens, the business becomes liable for the employer's National Insurance and the income tax that should have been deducted through PAYE, backdated up to six years. Penalties and interest apply on top, and the liability sits with the business, not the worker.

Depending on how many subcontractors are involved and how long the arrangements have been in place, the total can run into the tens or hundreds of thousands.

Construction is one of the most actively reviewed sectors for this. HMRC pays particular attention to contractors where the same subcontractors appear month after month on the CIS300 returns, which is one of the patterns they associate with disguised employment.

When HMRC assesses whether a subcontractor is genuinely self-employed, they look at the practical reality of the arrangement. The tests cover whether the subcontractor only works for the business in question, whether they use their own tools and equipment, whether they set their own hours and methods, whether they have a genuine right to send someone else in their place, and whether they bear commercial risk on the work they're delivering.

If any of these factors describe arrangements you currently have in place, the position is exposed, because the contract isn't the test. The day-to-day reality of the engagement is what HMRC assesses against.

Get the arrangements reviewed by someone who specialises in employment status in construction. If HMRC reaches a different view, the exposure is too significant to ignore.