Fake payslip: 6 checks before you approve a rental application

In a rental application, one line usually decides everything: net pay. It is what the income-to-rent ratio is built on, so it is the first thing an applicant tempted to force the decision will change.

Editing has become common because it has become easy: an online PDF editor, a white box dropped over an amount, a figure typed on top. On screen, the payslip looks untouched.

Checking is not accusing. A document may have been reopened by a tool for perfectly ordinary reasons — compressing an oversized attachment, merging two files. The point of the six checks below is not to name a fraudster, but to know what you are holding before you decide, and to keep a record of having looked.

A payslip is a calculated document: every line follows from the others. A manual edit almost always breaks one of those relationships, because staying consistent would mean recalculating everything else.

Start with the basic arithmetic. Gross pay minus the listed deductions should equal net pay. Taxable pay and net pay should differ by an amount the deductions themselves explain. Tax withheld should match the rate shown applied to taxable pay.

Then look at the year-to-date totals, usually at the foot of the slip. They add up the months since the start of the tax year: divided by the number of months, they should land close to the current month's figure. This is the most revealing spot, because an edit normally targets a single month and nobody remembers to restate the cumulative totals.

Finally, compare several consecutive payslips. The payroll or national insurance number, the start date, the tax code and the hours worked should follow each other logically from month to month.

A fake tax document often travels with a fake payslip, because the two have to agree. That is exactly what makes cross-checking effective: the income stated on the tax paperwork should be consistent with twelve months of taxable pay.

Do not judge a tax document by its appearance. In France, the tax authority runs an online service that confirms whether a tax notice is genuine from its reference numbers; elsewhere, check what verification the relevant authority or payroll provider offers. A check at the source beats any visual inspection.

Bank statements close the loop. A salary arrives from the same payer, on a regular date, for an amount that matches net pay. A round transfer from a personal account, or a reference that changes every month, is worth a question.

A payslip can be perfectly consistent and still describe a job that does not exist. The company registration number is on the document: public company registers let you confirm for free that the business exists, is active, and sits at the address shown.

Check that the job hangs together too: a trade-specific collective agreement on an office worker's slip, or a company incorporated last month backing three years of service, deserves an explanation.

If you call the employer, use the number from the register or the company's official website — never the one printed on the document you were given. A number printed on a questionable document sometimes leads straight back to whoever produced it.

The first three checks look at content. This one looks at the file itself, and it is the only one the eye cannot perform.

A PDF records the application that composed the document and the library that wrote it out. When a payslip names payroll software on one side and an online PDF editor on the other, it was reopened after it was created. The format also logs each successive rewrite: a document straight out of a payroll system has normally been written once.

Then come the visual traces. A white box over an amount deletes nothing: the original text usually stays in the file at its exact coordinates and can be recovered. A retyped figure often takes the editor's default font, leaving two different fonts inside a single line.

One important caveat: a scanned or photographed document is only an image, and these signals disappear with it. A file made entirely of scans is not suspicious in itself, but it cannot be checked this way — the first three checks are then all you have.

This is what Veritas-Doc automates: the report names each signal, weights it, marks the covered areas, shows the text recovered underneath, and stays printable so you can file it.

Taken one at a time, the documents may hold up. Placed side by side, they sometimes contradict each other.

Check that the name is spelled the same way everywhere, that the address on the tax paperwork matches the application, and that the dates follow: an employer's letter dated before the start of the job, or a proof of address later than the move it describes, needs clearing up.

Another signal is where the files came from. Documents produced by different systems — payroll software, a tax authority, a bank — have no reason to share the same producing tool or the same creation minute. When a whole application comes out of one editor on one day, it was reassembled.

What a landlord may ask an applicant for, and how long it may be kept, is set by law and differs by country — in France, a decree lists the documents that can be requested and nothing outside it may be demanded. Whatever the rules where you let, apply the same level of checking to every applicant: uneven scrutiny is how a process turns into discrimination.

The documents you receive are personal data. Keep them for as long as the decision takes, do not pass them on, and delete those of unsuccessful applicants. An archived verification report documents your process, which is precisely what it is for.

Finally, a signal is not proof. When a document carries traces of editing, the right move is to ask for the original file or an explanation, not to make an accusation. Producing a false document is a criminal offence in most jurisdictions, but that is a finding for the courts, not for a landlord.

This article describes a verification method; it is not legal advice. If a dispute arises, speak to a qualified lawyer.