Quote Originally Posted by David_D View Post
All comes down to who your contract is with. If the contractor is arranging and managing subcontractors, that doesn’t help an analysis that the customer is separately engaging individual trades. There’s CIS tax to consider too, of course.
I'd agreed that the customer needs to recognise the potential downside of not having one main contractor and who they'd hold responsible for what in the event of any issues, especially when the attraction of an immediate saving is so appealing.

If HMRC were to check then they would want to ensure there's sufficient evidence to support the existence of separate contracts with multiple tradesmen and IME separate invoices from each would usually be sufficient. Any commission they pay to the main contractor would also need to be correctly accounted for but none of that is of concern for the end customer.