Do a plumber's website prices have to include VAT?

“£90 + VAT” is how the trade has always quoted. Since 6 April 2025, a price a plumber shows a homeowner on a website has to be the total price, with VAT included. On 19 and 20 October 2026 we read the websites of 2,182 UK plumbing and heating firms, and looked at how the ones that price a boiler service for homeowners show it.

What we found

• 220 sites show their own price for a boiler service on a page aimed at homeowners.
• 83 of them show it “+VAT” or “ex VAT”, with no VAT-inclusive figure on the page. 40 show the price including VAT, 3 show both, and 94 don't mention VAT (a price with no VAT wording is read as the full price).
• The typical figure is “£90 + VAT”, which is £108 on the invoice. Half the “+VAT” prices sit between £79 and £100 before VAT.

We checked 50 of the sites by hand. Of the 40 we had flagged, 35 were confirmed. 4 were false alarms (two landlord-only pages, a rival's price quoted for comparison, and an hourly rate), and 1 we couldn't read. None of the 10 we hadn't flagged turned out to show “+VAT”. Allowing for that, and for a few sister sites that share the same words, about one in three plumbing and heating sites that price a boiler service for homeowners show it “+VAT” without the total: most likely between 24% and 38%.

What the law says

These rules come from the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which applies across the UK. They cover prices shown to consumers, not to other businesses. We're not lawyers: check the rule and the guidance for your own business.

• The total price. A web page that names a service and its price, and lets a homeowner decide to buy, is an “invitation to purchase”. Under section 230 it has to give the total price, including any taxes the customer will have to pay. For a VAT-registered firm, “£90 + VAT” isn't the total.
• No need to prove anyone was misled. Under section 225, leaving required information out of an invitation to purchase is an unfair practice in itself.
• Business customers are different. Prices aimed only at businesses, such as a trade price list or a landlord's gas safety certificate, can be shown without VAT. We left those out.

The Competition and Markets Authority now enforces these rules directly. In October 2026 it said it will “continue to tackle drip pricing, partition pricing” and that complete, accurate pricing remains a priority.

Five things to check on your website

1. Show the price a homeowner will pay: “£108 including VAT”, not “£90 + VAT”. You can show both, as long as the total is there.
2. Check every page with a price, not just the price list: service pages, FAQs, special offers and old blog posts.
3. Include any charge the customer can't avoid, such as a call-out fee, in the price or right next to it.
4. Keep landlord and trade prices on their own pages, and say who they're for.
5. Not VAT registered? Your price is already the total. Saying so (“no VAT to add”) stops a customer wondering.

How we measured it

We started from the UK plumbing and heating firms in our August review of small-business websites: 2,289 sites. On 19 and 20 October 2026 we read up to 200 pages of each site, including linked PDFs, and managed to read 2,182. We picked out pages showing a price for a plumbing job, and read each price exactly as written, with its VAT wording. We kept only the firm's own boiler-service price, and left out cover plans, add-ons, cost guides and landlord gas safety certificates. A site counts as aimed at landlords or businesses if every price page mentions landlords, letting agents, commercial or trade customers and none mentions homes or homeowners.

“No total” means we didn't find a VAT-inclusive figure on the page we read. Some of these sites say elsewhere that “all prices exclude VAT”, which still doesn't show the total. We're not naming any firm, and this isn't a finding that any firm has broken the law. Our reader identified itself and obeyed each site's robots.txt.

Journalists and the trade are welcome to the figures and the method: chris@themesmith.ai.

More from our research: what letting agents' websites must show, and the SRA transparency rules for law firms. And if your own website is due a rethink, what a small business website costs.