Illinois Business Search

What the Illinois business search shows

The Illinois Secretary of State business entity search finds a company by business name, keyword, registered agent, officer or file number. It finds a company by business name, keyword, registered agent, officer or file number. Use it to confirm a company exists and is active, not to get its federal number.

The Illinois file number

The Illinois Secretary of State, Department of Business Services gives every company a file number when it is formed. It identifies the company in state records, and it is not the company’s EIN.

Check if an Illinois LLC is active

Search the company in the Illinois business search and open its record. The status tells you whether the state counts the company as active. Words such as dissolved, revoked, forfeited, inactive or delinquent mean it is not in good standing, usually because an annual filing or fee was missed, and the company may need to be reinstated before it can do business there.

To prove a company is in good standing to a bank, a lender or another state, order a Certificate of Good Standing from the Illinois Secretary of State, Department of Business Services. Our LLC status check reads the status from public data where a state publishes it.

Good to know in Illinois

• Illinois charges LLCs and partnerships a Personal Property Replacement Tax on income, on top of the tax the owners pay personally. Most states tax a pass-through entity once at the owner level, so an Illinois LLC has a state filing obligation its equivalent in another state simply does not have.
• The Illinois annual report is due before the first day of the month the LLC was formed in, so every company has its own deadline rather than a single statewide date. Owners who move from another state routinely miss the first one.
• The Department of Business Services issues a file number for the company. It appears on the formation paperwork and is not a tax ID of any kind.
• Illinois tax registration is one application, Form REG-1, filed through MyTax Illinois. It opens sales tax, withholding and the replacement tax account together and asks for the federal EIN and the Secretary of State file number, so both have to exist before the state side can start.
• Illinois has no general state business license, but Chicago and many suburbs license businesses locally, and the state requires a separate employer account with the Department of Employment Security the first time wages are paid. New Illinois owners often finish the Secretary of State and Revenue steps and still have two registrations left.

Questions

More for Illinois companies

• Illinois EIN lookup: where a company’s federal number can be found.
• EIN for an Illinois business: what Illinois asks for after the EIN.
• LLC name check and LLC status check.
• Business search in other states.