Washington Business Search

What the Washington business search shows

The Washington Corporations and Charities Filing System finds a company by business name or UBI number. It finds a company by business name or UBI number. Use it to confirm a company exists and is active, not to get its federal number.

Washington's main number is the nine-digit Unified Business Identifier, or UBI. It registers a business with several state agencies and is sometimes called a tax registration number, but the Department of Revenue treats the federal EIN as a separate registration with the IRS.

Charities are the exception. The record template has a Nonprofit EIN field, and the charity search in the same system accepts an FEIN.

The Washington UBI number

The Washington Secretary of State, Corporations and Charities Division gives every company a UBI number when it is formed, such as 603-123-456. It identifies the company in state records, and it is not the company’s EIN.

Check if a Washington LLC is active

Search the company in the Washington 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 Washington Secretary of State, Corporations and Charities Division. Our LLC status check reads the status from public data where a state publishes it.

Good to know in Washington

• Washington issues one Unified Business Identifier, a nine-digit UBI number, that the Secretary of State, the Department of Revenue, the Employment Security Department and Labor and Industries all share. The UBI is assigned at formation and is the number every later state filing asks for, alongside the federal EIN.
• Washington has no personal or corporate income tax. Instead it taxes gross receipts through the business and occupation tax, filed with the Department of Revenue, and nearly every business needs a state business license from the Department even if it never collects sales tax.
• A Washington LLC owes the Secretary of State an initial report soon after formation, separate from and in addition to the annual report. The initial report names the governors and is where most first-year delinquencies come from, because owners assume the certificate of formation was the only filing.

Questions

More for Washington companies

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