Did anyone else who owns a business get one of these? A $78 filing fee is BULLSHIT. It's not as if the feds don't take enough of our money already.

I was under the impression there was no fee for the BOI filing. Are you sure the letter isn't from a 3rd party trying to make it look like an official government letter and offering to file it on your behalf for a fee?

It seems legit to me; even the QR code and provided web address link to the same form location, which seems to be the official one.

Never heard of that.
I’d suspect it’s a scam letter.
The form is only new companies formed in 2024 and later to ID the actual owners and doesn’t have a fee.
The email address on that form posted isn’t a .gov address.

From the Fincen.gov/boi website (which is the LEGIT website):

“ Alert: FinCEN has been notified of recent fraudulent attempts to solicit information from individuals and entities who may be subject to reporting requirements under the Corporate Transparency Act. The fraudulent correspondence may be titled "Important Compliance Notice" and asks the recipient to click on a URL or to scan a QR code. Those e-mails or letters are fraudulent. FinCEN does not send unsolicited requests. Please do not respond to these fraudulent messages, or click on any links or scan any QR codes within them.”


What you posted is not kosher, it is not a .gov web address.

If you go to the root “deptofbusiness.us” web address it gives you official looking but BS info. The site redirects to tprepamerica.us web address, and shows a logo that says “Business Filing Division a Dept of Taxprep America”


Definitely NOT a legit government website.

Also from the real website, you cannot even file until January.

Send the letter back with "FUCK.YOU." written over it.

That letter and URL looks fake. I hope the scammers didn't get any money from you.

BBB Scam Tracker says Phishing Scam.

Scam Type
Phishing

Learn More
Business name
Phishing Scam

https://www.bbb.org/scamtracker/lookupscam/787229

quote:

Originally posted by flesheatingvirus:
It seems legit to me; even the QR code and provided web address link to the same form location, which seems to be the official one.

Scam

Note the email address of "deptofbusiness.us"

It's fake, look at the web address it's a ".us" not ".gov". All U.S. government web addresses are .GOV.

Dot "us" is not gov. Dot gov is gov. Sometimes you'll see .us.gov. But the top level .us could be registered by any scammer, and in this case, was.

There is no government agency with that name. At all.

Somewhere on there is a note in very small print that says "we aren't a government agency" but few people actually read it.

It's 100% a scam, similar to the "Business Owner: Notice, you can be fined a trillion dollars if you don't have these posters" mailings.

Assholes. Good to know. At least I was skeptical; they put some effort into this one.

quote:

Originally posted by flesheatingvirus:
It seems legit to me; ...

Wouldn't be a very good scam if it didn't have the appearance of legitimacy, would it?

One must be exceedingly careful these days. I'm a retired I.T. guy with many years experience and even I am sometimes nearly fooled by some of the stuff that arrives in my inbox.

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
Dot "us" is not gov. Dot gov is gov. ... But the top level .us could be registered by any scammer, and in this case, was.

This ^^^^^

quote:

Originally posted by DennisM:
There is no government agency with that name. At all.

Yeah, "Department of Records Management" and "Department of Business" are kind of dead give-aways.

Kicking myself for not seeing it so easily now. It probably didn't help that it came at the worst time- sick for 2 days with almost no sleep. These people should be put against a wall and shot.

This is common with many state and federal registration requirements. There are companies that get the list of active businesses in the state, then send an official looking notice with a fee that they can "register" your business.

Got them forever on my company, and at first you'd think it was an official government form but like with the .us address it's clearly not an official federal form.

quote:

Originally posted by flesheatingvirus:
These people maggots should be put against a wall and shot.

Yeah, that's how I feel about it.

agreed

you only need to do this once or twice, and scammers will get the idea

it should be national policy to track down scammers and make their remaining lives excruciatingly painful

again, do this once or twice and the scammers will go away

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:

Send the letter back with "FUCK.YOU." written over it.

While I did not use your exact terminology, I have replied to a few of these scams, inviting them to sit on a cactus.

I have never received one of those.