Hardhats
The 2024 employment status case between HMRC and the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) has sent shockwaves through the compliance world [Commissioners for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (Respondent) v Professional Game Match Officials Ltd (Appellant) – UK Supreme Court]. Whilst on the surface it’s about football referees, the underlying principles touch every business […]
What happens when compliance meets chaos? At HardHats, we’ve never been big fans of doing things the “usual way” – whether that’s how contractors manage subbies or how we show up at events. So when we were invited to sponsor the 18th hole at the TSM Group Charity Golf Day at the prestigious London Golf Club, we decided […]
When we launched HardHats, we weren’t thinking about offices, payroll, or team culture. We weren’t dreaming about staff socials or writing employee handbooks. We had one simple mission: Help contractors use subcontractors long-term without HMRC breathing down their necks. Back then, it was just the two of us. Laptop, phone, a bit of blind optimism […]
Some stories just hit different. For Marlon Pack, it was pulling on the blue shirt of Portsmouth FC. He grew up in the stands at Fratton Park. Dreamed of one day stepping onto that pitch. And years later – he’s come full circle as captain of the club he supported as a kid. That’s the […]
Construction’s a tough game – especially when clients don’t pay up. A few years back, one of our clients found out just how brutal it can get: four projects went sideways and they ended up £345,000 out of pocket. A Loss That Hits Everywhere It wasn’t sloppy work or poor quality. It was simply clients […]
The best contract in the world means nothing if your subcontractors don’t get it. Most construction firms get the paperwork sorted. Contracts, status determinations, UTRs on file, maybe even a software system behind it. But here’s the bit that gets missed – and it’s where everything can fall apart: If your subbies don’t understand what […]
Big changes are coming. From April 2026, legislation comes into force that could leave construction firms exposed to HMRC claims – even if they’re working with a payroll or umbrella company. It’s a shift that hasn’t made big headlines yet, but it should be on the radar of every contractor using subcontractors long-term. Because the […]
Being self-employed isn’t just about being your own boss and taking care of your own tax affairs. Being self-employed means you are in business for yourself. But being in business for yourself doesn’t always mean having an office, a team, a website or even a business name. And it doesn’t always involve having multiple clients. […]
The Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) was introduced to combat tax fraud by getting contractors to “tax” subbies at source. The construction industry is the only industry in the UK where this happens – hence why it is called the Construction Industry Scheme. Under the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS), a contractor makes deductions before issuing payment […]
The construction industry is the only industry where self-employed contractors are ‘taxed’ at source. This is done under the construction industry scheme (CIS). CIS was created in an attempt to stop construction companies from disguising employees as subbies so they could pay less tax. Under the construction industry scheme, the main contractor must deduct CIS […]
Despite what you may have been told, using subcontractors long-term is not a grey area. There is no limit on how long you can work with subbies – nothing in UK law and nothing in HMRC’s regulations. So why on earth does it cause so much confusion? Probably because there is no clear definition of […]
The construction industry can be a minefield for disputes as there are so many things that can go wrong. And if there is a problem with a project, the client is likely to hold the main contractor responsible, regardless of whether it was the fault of a subcontractor. So what happens in this scenario? Would […]