HMRC is warning business owners to ignore a letter from fraudsters pretending to be the tax authority and demanding confidential business information and bank statements.
The mailed letter has a fake letterhead with the HMRC logo and pretends to have been sent from the ‘Indv and Small Business Compliance’ team.
The quickest way to identify the fake letter is to check out the email address which is clearly bogus. All HMRC email addresses contain the government domain name gov.uk. It asks the recipient business to verify their financial information by sending a host of documents proving who their company is.
Ironically, the fraudsters state that the letter is being sent as a result of a ‘government initiative aimed at verifying declared income’ to ‘prevent tax evasion and tax fraud’. They go on to ask for digital copies of everything from pdf copies of business bank statements for the last 13 months, VAT returns, filed accounts, full profit and loss accounts (which are, of course, not available on Companies House for smaller companies reporting under micro accounts or filleted accounts rules).
Equally worrying in terms of identity fraud, digital copies of passports or driving licences are also demanded by the fraudsters. They stress that ‘paper copies and screen shots will not be accepted’.
A sign-off paragraph states: ‘Once we have verified your information, we will let you know if we are satisfied with the information you have provided us or if we require any further documents.’
The quality of the English is reasonable on this letter although some of the terminology is a little strange, but the fraudsters do let themselves down when they say ‘information you have provided us’, which is clearly not grammatically correct.
The big giveaway on the letter is the response email which is clearly not a legitimate HMRC email. The fraudsters are using a bogus email: companies-review@hmrc-taxchecks.org HMRC email addresses always end with @hmrc.gov.uk so that is the first thing to check.
In addition, HMRC very rarely requests any information by email, with the default method of communication being by letter or through the online portal and digital tax accounts.
Please be very careful!
