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.

With blatant cheek 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’.

The fraudsters 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 the 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.