New York Business Search

What the New York business search shows

The New York Department of State business entity database finds a company by entity name or DOS ID. The fields the Department of State publishes, and the state's open dataset of the same records, include no EIN or tax ID.

New York's Tax Department says a business's federal EIN, or a temporary New York ID if it has none, appears on its sales tax Certificate of Authority, which must be displayed at each place of business. For a retailer, that certificate is the likeliest place to see the number in person.

The New York DOS ID number

The New York Department of State, Division of Corporations gives every company a DOS ID number when it is formed. It identifies the company in state records, and it is not the company’s EIN.

Check if a New York LLC is active

Search the company in the New York 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 Status from the New York Department of State, Division of Corporations. Our LLC status check reads the status from public data where a state publishes it.

Good to know in New York

• New York is one of very few states with an LLC publication requirement: within weeks of formation the LLC must publish a notice in two newspapers designated by the county clerk and then file a Certificate of Publication with the Department of State. It has nothing to do with the EIN, but new owners routinely assume the EIN letter satisfies it, and it does not.
• New York asks for a biennial statement rather than an annual report, so the Department of State hears from an LLC every two years rather than every one. Owners arriving from annual-report states tend to file a year early or a year late.
• The Division of Corporations issues a DOS ID number that identifies the entity in state records. Banks in New York sometimes ask for it alongside the EIN; the two are unrelated, and the DOS ID is not a tax number.

Questions

More for New York companies

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