Tax obligations, business registration, insurance requirements, and administrative guides by country for service contractors.
ACC sends CoverPlus invoices to the self-employed around September. The bill rests on your classification unit and the earnings on your IR3. How to check both, the 2026/27 work levy by trade, the full-time minimum, paying in instalments, and when CoverPlus Extra is worth a look.
The building, plumbing and electrical contracting awards each require two months' written notice to direct annual leave over a Christmas shutdown, so a 24 December close needs notice by about 24 October. What a direction covers, the 2026–27 public holidays by state, and workers short of leave.
For 2026 W-2s, qualified overtime goes in box 12 under code TT — and it is the half, not the whole. Here is what to check in payroll before the last run of the year.
The £90,000 VAT threshold rolls forward every month, and crossing it starts a 30-day clock. How the backward and forward tests work on a trade's monthly turnover, why materials count, what late registration costs, and why the Flat Rate Scheme can cost a labour-only trade more.
A self-employed tradesperson in Ireland can pay a pension contribution before the 2025 return deadline and have it treated as paid in 2025, at up to 40% income tax relief. The deadlines, the age-related limits and €115,000 cap, what the relief does not reduce, and how to claim it on Form 11.
Crossed the ATO's thresholds on your last return? You are now paying this year's income tax in quarterly PAYG instalments, the first due on 28 October. How you were entered, the instalment amount versus the rate, when varying helps, and the interest charge for varying too low.
The 2027 Employment Insurance rate and earnings ceiling were published on 17 September. Here is what the increase costs per employee and across a crew, why the employer's 1.4 multiple is the part that gets underestimated, how Quebec differs, and the separate self-employed opt-in that is far harder to leave than to join.
A business customer who pays late owes you statutory interest at 11.75% a year and £40, £70 or £100 in compensation, whether or not your terms mention it. When an invoice is legally late, how to work out the figure, how to claim it, and what the Commercial Payments Bill would change.
Unbilled extras are not lost at the invoice. They are lost in the four seconds before you say sure. The four things a change order has to carry, three ways to price one, the text message that works from the driveway, and why a commercial directive is a different instrument entirely.
Labour Day is Monday 26 October 2026. Whether each person on your crew gets a paid day off, time and a half, or a day in lieu turns on one test in the Holidays Act: would Monday otherwise have been a working day for them? The test, the pay, alternative holidays and a worked example.
