Entity number lookup facts for a number you were handed

A number on an invoice or in an email is a claim, and the person who typed it chose it. A file number looks like the hardest fact on a registry record, yet it is only a key into one office's records.

These entity number lookup facts cover the moment you are handed a number and have to decide what it is worth. They run in the order you meet the questions: what kind of number, which register, what the search returned.

What to take away

What kind of number did you get?

The file number is issued by the entity register when the entity is created there, while revenue agencies issue tax identifiers through a separate application. They are different numbers, from different offices, in different formats, and a company will have both.

The register does not hold the tax number and the revenue agency does not hold the file number. The IRS describes the employer identification number as a federal tax ID number for businesses and other entities. Searching a tax number on a state register will return nothing, and that nothing means nothing.

The entity number lookup pillar lists the common identifiers side by side. If the number you were handed cannot be sorted into one of them, ask the sender what it is before you search.

There is also no national file number for ordinary US companies. No federal register of entities exists, so a company registered in several states has several unrelated numbers. Countries with a central registrar issue one number per company, valid nationwide. The United Kingdom's Companies House is the standard example, and that number says nothing about a company's US registrations.

Which register does the number belong to?

The number means nothing until you know the register. Two entities cannot hold the same number on one register within one series, but across states they can, because each register numbers independently. One state's digits can match an unrelated entity in another.

Some registers also run separate series per entity type, with the type encoded in a prefix. The digits alone can then collide within one state. Florida's Division of Corporations, for example, issues document numbers whose leading letter tracks the entity type, while Delaware issues plain sequential digits.

Read the type from the record rather than decoding the number. Encodings change on migration, and a decoded prefix is a guess about the register's history rather than a fact about the entity.

Shape is no test either. A number that looks wrong may be an older series, and one that looks right may be from a different state. The only validation is a search on the issuing register, and the only thing it validates is that the record exists.

What the search should return

Open the register, search the number, and compare the name, status and formation date against the document and what you were told. Getting to the right register in the first place is the work of secretary of state search.

A number that resolves to a different name, or to an entity formed last month when you were told twenty years, is a discrepancy to raise. One that resolves cleanly confirms only that a matching record exists.

It does not describe a business that trades, has staff or pays its debts. A number can be perfectly valid and belong to a dissolved shell, a dormant registration, or an entity that has never done anything. The registration status field says more than the number ever will.

The same check, in order:

When the name does not match

A different name on the register is not automatically a lie. On most registers the name is a field and the number is the key, so a name change leaves the number in place. In Delaware, a name change is an amendment and the file number stays.

Whether the number survives a conversion, domestication or reinstatement is a property of the register, and the filing history shows which happened. A conversion row followed by the same number is continuation. A fresh formation row is a new entity.

Where the history shows the old name, the register is treating the number as the constant. Where it shows nothing that explains the gap, treat the mismatch as a question for the counterparty.

If the formation date is recent and your document is old, the number may have been reissued to a new entity. Registers do not, as a rule, reassign a retired number, and "as a rule" is a policy of each office. Search the number, read the formation date, and go looking for the earlier entity by name.

What to write down

Record the jurisdiction, the number exactly as the register shows it, the name beside it, the status, and the date you looked. If someone gave you the number, write down where it came from. A mismatch later can then be traced to its source rather than to you.

The legal person behind the record is created by filing a form, which is all that creating the entity the Legal Information Institute describes under corporation requires.

Common questions

The number I was given returns nothing. Is it fake?

Usually it is the wrong register, a transcription error, or a stripped leading zero. Try the number as printed in the state you were told, then try it as text with any prefix restored, then search the name instead. Treat a genuine nil result as a question for the counterparty rather than a conclusion.

Can I store the number as a number?

No. Leading zeros disappear, prefixes are lost, and long identifiers lose precision. Store it as text, exactly as displayed, and keep the jurisdiction in the adjacent column.

Two states show the same digits for two companies. Which one is mine?

Neither, until you say which register you mean. The digits are not the identifier; the jurisdiction plus the digits is. This is the single most common way an entity check ends up describing the wrong company.

Does quoting the file number on a contract help?

It helps a great deal, because it fixes which record everyone meant if the name later changes or turns out to be shared. Quote the jurisdiction alongside it, for the reason above.