Scam letters to UK companies: telling real HMRC and Companies House post from fakes.

The letter looks official. There is a crest, a reference number, a firm deadline. It says your company owes a fee, and it says you have days — not weeks — to pay it. Your company is three weeks old. You have never dealt with any of this before. So you reach for your card.

Stop there. That letter is almost certainly a scam, and you are far from the first new director to receive one. Here is how the con works, how to tell the real thing from the fake, and how to make sure you never pay a fraudster by mistake.

Why do scam letters arrive so soon after incorporation?

Because the Companies House register is public, and fraudsters watch it. The moment you incorporate, your company name, your registered office address and your incorporation date become visible to anyone in the world. Scammers scrape the new registrations, print official-looking demands and post them to the address you just filed. It is not that you were unlucky or careless. It is simply that a new company is a fresh mark, and your details are sitting there in the open for anyone to copy.

This is why the post often lands within weeks. The fraudster is not responding to anything you did — they are responding to the register itself. A director with no back office, no accountant on speed dial and no experience of what real official post looks like is exactly who these letters are written for.

What do the common scams actually look like?

Most fall into a handful of well-worn patterns. Once you have seen them, they are hard to unsee.

• Fake “business register” invoices. A letter dressed up as an official registration fee, often for a private “directory” or “register” that has nothing to do with Companies House. It looks like a bill. It is really a con to sell you a listing you never asked for and do not need.
• Letters imitating Companies House. These demand a filing fee and tell you to pay it into a bank account. Genuine Companies House fees are small and paid through the official service — never by bank transfer to an account printed on a letter.
• Letters and emails imitating HMRC. Two flavours dominate: a fake “final demand” with an urgent deadline designed to panic you, and a fake “tax refund” that asks for your bank details so the fraudster can drain the account rather than fill it.
• Lookalike websites and payment pages. A letter or email points you to a site that mimics gov.uk, complete with a payment form. You are typing your card details straight into a criminal’s database.

What does genuine official post look like?

Real letters from HMRC and Companies House share a few honest habits that the fakes struggle to copy. Learn these and most scams fall apart on sight.

• They quote a reference you can verify. Genuine Companies House post cites your company number. Genuine HMRC post cites your UTR — your Unique Taxpayer Reference. You can check both against your own records.
• They never ask you to pay a personal or unfamiliar bank account. Official payments go through official channels. If a letter directs money to a random sort code and account number, that alone is a red flag.
• Their fees make sense. Genuine Companies House fees are small and paid through the official service, not wired to a letter.
• Their deadlines follow your own cycle. Real deadlines track your company’s statutory timetable — your accounts, your confirmation statement, your Corporation Tax. They do not arrive out of nowhere giving you 48 hours to comply. Manufactured urgency is the scammer’s favourite tool, because a frightened person does not stop to check.

Urgency is the tell. Genuine deadlines belong to your company’s own calendar. A stranger’s 48-hour ultimatum belongs in the bin.

What should you do with a suspicious letter or email?

Do not pay, and do not call the number printed on it. That number connects you to the fraudster, not to HMRC or Companies House. Instead, slow down and verify through channels you trust.

1. Check it yourself. Go to gov.uk’s guide to identifying HMRC scams, sign in to your own HMRC online account, and look your company up on the Companies House register to see what is genuinely due.
2. Report the phishing. Forward suspicious HMRC emails to phishing@hmrc.gov.uk and suspicious texts to 60599. You can also report suspicious emails and websites through the gov.uk phishing service.
3. Report the fraud. If you have lost money, or nearly did, tell Action Fraud. Reporting it helps others too.

Can LtdRecord read the letter for you?

Yes — and it is built precisely for the moment your stomach drops. You paste the text of the letter or email into LtdRecord’s letter decoder. You do the pasting; it does not watch your inbox and never will. The AI reads what you paste and tells you where you stand.

If it is genuine official post, you get a plain-English summary, an explanation of what it means, and a numbered what-to-do list. Any real deadline it finds joins your compliance radar, so the date does not slip. The whole decode is saved as a numbered record, so you have a permanent account of what arrived and what you did about it.

If it looks like impersonation, the decoder flags it as dangerous with an explicit phishing warning. The very first action it gives you is to verify through official channels. And here is the part that matters most: it deliberately never repeats the scam’s payment details, bank accounts or links. It will not launder the fraudster’s instructions into a tidy to-do list you might follow on autopilot. The dangerous parts stay out of your hands. Each decode uses one record pack.

LtdRecord gives you guidance, not legal or tax advice, and it never files anything with HMRC or Companies House on your behalf. What it does is put a calm, careful reader between you and a letter designed to make you panic — which, on the day one of these lands, is worth a great deal.

The one habit that keeps you safe

Never pay or reply because a letter told you to hurry. Genuine official post can wait the ten minutes it takes to verify. A scam cannot survive those ten minutes — which is exactly why it demands you skip them. Check the reference against your own records. Look the company up on the register. Sign in to your real HMRC account. If any of it does not line up, you have your answer, and no money has left your account.

New companies get targeted because they look green. The moment you know the patterns, you are not green any more.