Letter decoder
What the letter is, and what we can do about it.
Free to try, no account. On a paid plan we keep every letter and file the return a notice asks for.
A dormant company's year is mostly post: requests for a tax return, reminders, penalty notices, strike-off warnings. You can read them. What you cannot do from the envelope is answer them. Photograph the letter and the decoder reads it — who sent it, what it is, what it costs if it's a penalty, and the date it puts on the calendar — and then points at the one thing worth doing: filing the return it asks for, checking a penalty for grounds to appeal, or putting the reference it carries onto your company. Try it free with no account: two letters a day, two pages each.
See the letter decoder working · 58s
How a scan goes
Take a photo with your phone, or upload a JPEG, PNG or PDF. The image is shrunk in your browser before it leaves, sent over an encrypted connection to private storage, and read by a model. About half a minute later you have the verdict: sender, letter type, how urgent, what it asks for, and the dates and amounts printed on it.
A penalty is not always the last word
Where the letter is a Companies House late filing penalty or an HMRC penalty notice, we check your own filing record and the public register for grounds to appeal — delivered on time, the wrong band, a doubling that shouldn't apply, a company that was dormant for tax that year (outside the charge to Corporation Tax) — and where there are grounds we write the letter and post it, for £9.99 a letter on top of your plan. The check itself costs nothing, and where there are no grounds we say so plainly.
What the free reader tells you — and keeps back
Signed out, you get what the letter is, roughly what it costs if it's a penalty, and when the next date is. It doesn't spell out the steps: those need your company's own record, which an anonymous scan never sees. The scan is held for up to 48 hours so that signing up can save it, then deleted.
What a plan adds
Reading the letter is the easy half. What a plan adds is everything after it — up to 20 pages a day, each letter saved against the company it's about, cross-checked with the record we hold (so a notice for a period you've already filed says so), and the next step pointing straight into the right filing flow.
Details offered, never added silently
An HMRC notice states your company's tax reference (UTR) and the period it wants a tax return for — the one authoritative source for a value we otherwise make you copy off paper. When your company is missing either, the letter page offers to add it in one click, showing exactly what will be written. You confirm every one; nothing changes until you do, and every action is recorded on the letter.
How your letter is handled
Your photo travels over an encrypted connection to private storage with no public link, ever. Our AI model that reads it sees only your letter, and your data is not used to train it. On a plan it's kept while your account exists and deleted the moment you delete it.
What it deliberately doesn't do
The scan itself files nothing — filing is the separate, previewed step that follows it — and it doesn't decide whether HMRC wants a return from you; HMRC's letter is always definitive. It never derives a Corporation Tax period: when a notice states one, the period is read off HMRC's own notice and you confirm it before it's added. And no government portal is named in its answers.
Questions, answered
- Is it really free?
- Reading a letter is free and needs no account: two letters a day, up to two pages or one short PDF each. What a plan adds is everything that comes after the reading — the letter kept with your company, checked against your own record, and the one-click actions — from £19/year.
- What happens to my photo?
- It's stored privately, never in our database, and read by a model rather than a person. Signed out, it's held for up to 48 hours in case you sign up to save it, then deleted. On a plan it's kept with your account until you delete the letter or the account.
- Will it file the return the letter asks for?
- Not from the scan itself — and on a plan, yes: we file the return a notice asks for. The decoder tells you what the letter is and what it asks for; filing is the separate, previewed step you take in your account. If the letter asks for a Company Tax Return (a 'notice to deliver'), the letter page can add the period HMRC printed — you confirm it — and point you at the filing flow.
- Does it read LLP and Companies House letters too?
- Yes. It recognises Companies House accounts reminders, penalty notices, confirmation statement reminders and Gazette strike-off warnings, and HMRC's requests for a tax return (CT603), reminders, penalty notices and the letter that gives a new company its tax reference (CT41G) — for companies and LLPs alike. A letter asking an LLP for its Partnership Tax Return (SA800) is handled the same way.
Keep reading
Try it on the letter in your hand.
No account needed. Photograph it and see what it is — and what we can do about it.