What you withheld, and who you withheld it from

Pay › Withholding return answers one question: in this period, what did the workspace keep back under a withholding scheme, and from whom?

You need two permissions: Manage pay rates and Manage bills & expenses. A return covers suppliers as well as people, and somebody holding only one of those should not read the other half by asking for the return. Without Manage bills & expenses, the tab says the return could not load, because it needs payables access too.

A return has two halves

This is the part worth reading twice.

• Subcontractor companies. A company sent an invoice — or you raised it for them — you took a deduction off the labour on it, and you paid the rest. This half is also visible under Commercial › Bills › Deductions; see what was withheld from subcontractors.
• Contractors on the books. Somebody works for you as a contractor rather than an employee, they are on a pay calendar, and the scheme's deduction came off their pay run. See contractors in a pay run.

Both are withholding. Both belong on the return. A workspace that files only the supplier half under-declares, and nothing about the figure looks wrong — it is a real number, correctly added up, for half of the business.

The screen shows both halves every time. When one is empty it says so with none beside its heading, because a return with nobody on one side should be a claim somebody made on purpose.

Employees are not on it

Income tax and social insurance come off an employee's wages, and none of it belongs here. Withholding under a scheme is money kept back from somebody who is not an employee and paid to the revenue authority on their behalf. Maliru leaves employees out of the return entirely.

The period is the scheme's, not the calendar's

Pick the month under Period. It offers this month and the eleven before it, and opens on last month, because a return is filed after the period it covers.

The window comes from the first deduction scheme under Commercial › Invoices › Document settings › Deductions (see document settings), and the screen prints the two dates beside the period every time, with the scheme's name. Read them.

• A scheme set to run tax months, such as the UK's Construction Industry Scheme, runs from the 6th to the 5th, and the header adds (tax month). Money paid on 5 June belongs to the May return.
• Ireland's RCT, and any scheme set to calendar months, run plain calendar months.

A workspace that assumes the 1st to the 31st when its scheme means the 6th to the 5th files each return wrong by a fortnight at both ends.

Payment decides which return it lands on

Not the invoice date, not the period the work was done in, not the day you closed the run: the day the money went out.

• A bill raised in March and settled in May is on May's return.
• A pay run closed in March and paid in April is on April's return. The date is the one recorded with Mark as paid on the run.
• A run you closed but have not marked as paid is on no return yet.

This is the same rule on both halves, on purpose. If nothing was paid in the window, the screen says Nothing was withheld in this period.

What the figures mean

Across the top: Paid, Labour, Materials and Withheld, totalled over both halves — one set per currency if you pay in more than one.

Each line shows who was paid, what they were Paid, how much of it was Labour, how much was Materials, and how much was Withheld. A subcontractor company also shows its UTR (its tax reference) and a Standard or Higher rate pill from its status on the supplier record.

The split matters because a labour-based scheme deducts on labour and leaves materials alone. If somebody's pay included materials they bought, the return shows the whole payment and the deduction against the labour part only.

A scheme that deducts on the whole payment — its Basis set to Whole net amount under Document settings › Deductions, as for Ireland's RCT — has no labour split. A contractor's whole pay shows as Labour, with nothing under Materials, because that is what the deduction was taken on.

For a contractor on the books, Withheld is what their pay runs actually took — at their own rate if one is set on their Pay tab, such as 30% for a contractor whose status is unverified. See contractors in a pay run.

A subcontractor with no tax reference shows Not on record, and the screen warns A supplier here has no UTR on record. A return missing one is usually rejected, and it is cheaper to notice here than on rejection. The reference is kept on the supplier under Commercial › Bills › Suppliers.

Maliru does not file it

These are the figures to file. Submitting them, and everything that follows, stays between you and the revenue authority. Nothing on this screen sends anything anywhere.

Self-billing a subcontractor

Sometimes the arrangement runs the other way: a subcontractor company supplies people who work alongside your own, and rather than waiting for their invoice you raise it for them. That is self-billing, and Self-bill a supplier is on this screen.

Setting it up

1. The supplier needs a deduction status. Open the supplier under Commercial › Bills › Suppliers and, in Subcontractor deduction, set CIS status to anything other than Not registered. Only those suppliers can be chosen. See bills and suppliers.
2. Say who they supply. Open each person under Users › Pay › Show pay. Their record says On the payroll; press Supplied by a company, choose the supplier under Supplied by, and Save.
3. Record a rate on each person. Their hours are priced at their own rate, and that is what the company is invoiced for.
4. Say how each is settled. On their Pay tab, after Show pay, they show Settled by self-billing. Where VAT or its like applies, self-billing needs their agreement on file: press Change and record Self-billing agreement signed on and, if you have it, the Agreement document, chosen from their documents, so upload it there first. Somebody who sends their own invoice instead is settled by Invoice check; see checking a contractor's invoice.

Saying a company supplies somebody does two things:

• Their work can be invoiced on that company's behalf.
• They stop getting a pay run line of their own from the next run. You owe the company, not the person. Paying both would pay the same labour twice, through two ledgers that never meet. Runs already closed are not touched. Choosing Nobody — they are on the payroll puts them back.

Raising the bill

Self-bill a supplier asks for the Supplier and a Period (it starts on last month). Before anything is raised, it shows whose work it is, one line per person and kind of pay — materials marked Materials — and what it comes to, split into labour and materials.

• If the same period has already been raised for that supplier, it says which bill already covers this, and won't raise it again.
• If nobody the company supplies recorded work in those dates, there is nothing to invoice.
• No self-billing agreement on file names anybody the company sends with no agreement recorded. The bill can still be raised; whether one is needed is yours to know.
• Not on this bill names people settled by invoice check: they send their own invoice.
• Piece work comes from the contractor ledger: approved work that is not held, disputed, already paid or in an open run. Each line quotes its ledger reference, such as [ML-12]. Raising the bill settles that work, so no run pays it again; voiding the bill unsettles it.

Raise the bill, and the result is an ordinary bill in Bills, waiting to be paid like any other. It has a number from the same sequence, the category Subcontractor, the reference Self-billed with the two dates, and the scheme's deduction taken off the labour at the supplier's status. Nothing under Pay › Contractor withholding is used — what the company takes off its own people is its business. There is no second route for money out, because a second route is a second place for the totals to disagree.

Like any bill, it reaches the return when it is paid, not when it is raised.