What does right to transact business mean in Texas?

Texas tracks a company's franchise tax standing, and the right-to-transact-business flag is the state's equivalent of good standing. A company that has fallen behind on franchise tax loses it. For a counterparty check this is the single most useful field the Texas register publishes, because it answers whether the entity may legally do business today rather than merely whether it once existed.

Why is a New York company's address in Albany?

Because the address on the New York register is usually the service-of-process address, not the operating headquarters. Many corporations designate a corporate services provider in Albany to receive legal notice. The register is built to tell you where to serve a legal document, which is a different question from where the company actually works.

Do state registries include financials?

No. US state registers publish identity, status, entity type, dates and addresses — not revenue, headcount or accounts. That is a real difference from European registries, where filing annual accounts is often mandatory. For US financial data you need a different source: SEC filings for public companies, Form 990 for nonprofits, or FDIC for banks.

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US state business registries: there is no national register, and that changes everything

Q: Is there one national US company register?

No. Unlike the UK or most of Europe, the United States registers companies at state level. There is no federal company register, which is why verifying a US counterparty means going to the specific state where it is incorporated. Federal datasets like USAspending cover companies that transact with the government, but they are not a register of existence.

Q: Which US state publishes diversity-ownership data?

Connecticut. Its business registry tags each entity with five self-reported ownership characteristics — woman-owned, veteran-owned, minority-owned, LGBTQI+-owned and disability-owned — and publishes them as open data. In our measured run all five flags populated on 100% of rows, which makes Connecticut unusually useful for supplier-diversity programmes. The flags are self-reported at filing, not state-certified.

Anyone arriving from the UK or the EU expects a single national company register. The United States does not have one. Companies are registered by state, each with its own database, its own fields and its own idea of what "active" means. This guide covers what three of those registers actually publish, where each one is unusually rich, and why the address you find is often not where the company works.

Why there's no Companies House equivalent

Incorporation in the US is a state matter. A company formed in Delaware, headquartered in California and selling in Texas may appear in all three registers, in different forms, under slightly different names. There is no federal register of existence — federal datasets like USAspending recipient profiles cover companies that transact with the government, which is a different population entirely.

The practical consequence: "verify this US company" is not one lookup. It is a lookup in the right state, and knowing which state is half the work.

Texas: standing, not just existence

The Texas Comptroller publishes active franchise tax permit holders — effectively the state's list of businesses in good standing. Its most useful field has no equivalent in most registers: the right to transact business, a boolean that answers whether the entity may legally operate today.

A measured row:

{
  "companyName": "TESLA, INC.",
  "registrationNumber": "19121977292",
  "status": "active",
  "rightToTransactBusiness": true,
  "legalForm": "CT",
  "address": "1 TESLA RD, AUSTIN, TX, 78725",
  "county": "TRAVIS"
}

Texas also carries two identifiers — the taxpayer number and the Secretary of State file number — plus the date standing last changed, which tells you whether a lapse is recent. In our measured run every field populated on every row, which is unusual and makes Texas the cleanest of the three.

Texas business entity search →

Connecticut: the diversity flags nobody else publishes

Connecticut's registry does something no other state register in our set does: it tags every entity with five self-reported ownership characteristics — woman-owned, veteran-owned, minority-owned, LGBTQI+-owned and disability-owned — and publishes them as open data. In our measured run all five populated on 100% of rows.

For supplier-diversity programmes this is materially better than a questionnaire: it is a state filing rather than a vendor's claim on your form. The honest caveat is that the flags are self-reported at filing and not state-certified, so they are a shortlisting tool, not a certification substitute.

Connecticut also publishes the annual report due date — a quiet but useful outreach signal, because it marks when a business is already handling filings and thinking about compliance.

Field sparsity here is real and worth designing for: parsed city and postal code populated on about 65% of rows in our run, because a share of filings carry only a mailing address. The mailing address itself was present on every row.

Connecticut business search →

New York: built for serving legal process

The New York Department of State's active-corporations register is designed around a specific purpose: telling you where to serve legal documents. That explains its most confusing feature for newcomers — the address is usually not the operating headquarters.

{
  "companyName": "PELOTON INTERACTIVE, INC.",
  "registrationNumber": "4738435",
  "legalForm": "FOREIGN BUSINESS CORPORATION",
  "incorporatedOn": "2015-04-07",
  "address": "CORPORATION SERVICE COMPANY, 80 STATE STREET, ALBANY, NY, 12207"
}

Peloton does not operate from Albany. That is its registered agent's address. The register also tells you the entity is a foreign business corporation — foreign to New York, meaning formed elsewhere — which is itself a useful signal about where the real incorporation sits.

A registered agent appears on roughly 46% of rows in our measurement, and the reason is substantive rather than a data gap: New York does not require corporations to appoint one. Many designate only the Secretary of State for service, which is what the process-name field records on every row.

New York entity search →

What US state registers do not give you

Coming from Europe, the absence is striking. State registers publish identity, status, entity type, dates and addresses. They do not publish revenue, headcount, accounts or beneficial ownership. Filing annual accounts is not a US state requirement the way it is in much of Europe.

So US financial data has to come from elsewhere, depending on what the company is:

Company type	Where the numbers live
Public company	SEC EDGAR filings
Bank	FDIC BankFind — assets, deposits, ROA, ROE
Federal contractor	USAspending totals
Employer with a retirement plan	Form 5500 filings
Private company, no federal footprint	Estimates only — firmographic enrichment

Practical workflow for a US counterparty check

Find the state. The website footer, the contract or the LinkedIn HQ usually tells you. Delaware incorporation with operations elsewhere is extremely common.
Confirm existence and standing in that state's register — Texas's right-to-transact flag is the clearest example of what "standing" means in practice.
Check the address type. A registered-agent address is not evidence of operations.
Layer the money separately from the table above; the register will not have it.

Fitting US states into a global check

US state registers are unusual among the world's company registers, and it is worth being explicit about how they differ if you are building coverage across jurisdictions. There is no national company register in the United States — registration happens at state level, which means a single company can be registered in one state, headquartered in another and operating in a dozen more.

Three consequences for a cross-border pipeline:

"Registered in the US" is not a meaningful statement. You need the state, and knowing which state to look in is itself part of the problem.
Foreign qualification is the useful trail. A company operating in a state where it was not formed generally registers there as a foreign entity, so those filings map where a business actually operates.
The federal layer does different work. For US-listed companies, EDGAR and the LEI system carry financials and ownership that no state register holds; for federal contractors, award data confirms real operating activity.

The KYB guide covers how to build a verification check that degrades gracefully across jurisdictions that publish very different amounts — a design problem the US makes unavoidable.

Frequently asked questions

Is there one national US company register?

No. Registration is by state, and there is no federal register of existence. Verifying a US company means going to the right state.

What does "right to transact business" mean?

It is Texas's good-standing flag, tied to franchise tax status. It answers whether the entity may legally operate today.

Which state publishes diversity-ownership data?

Connecticut — five self-reported flags on every row. Useful for shortlisting diverse suppliers, though self-reported rather than certified.

Do state registers include financials?

No. Identity, status and addresses only. Financials come from SEC, FDIC, Form 5500 or estimation, depending on the company.

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