Life hack for business: how to check an American company in the USA?

How to check an American company in the USA is of interest to absolutely all businessmen who plan to cooperate with local legal entities. A quality check carried out by professionals will reduce the level of risk, protect against fraudsters and unscrupulous counterparties. As a result, it will be possible to avoid losses and increase business efficiency. So, let’s look at how the verification of a company in the United States should take place.

US business

What information can be obtained during the verification of an American company in the USA
Checking an American company in the USA will provide information on:

  • on the status of a legal entity (active, liquidation, absorbed, bankrupt, etc.);
  • about management and founders;
  • about the type of activity;
  • on the presence / absence of debts to tax authorities, counterparties, local departments;
  • about the absence of violations in the terms of payment of taxes, filing reports;
  • on financial and tax reporting;
  • on the presence of open/closed court cases;
  • the name and address of the registered agent,
  • as well as other information.

The federal structure of the country complicates the search for data about an American company, since each state has its own trade registers of legal entities, property, licenses, etc. Therefore, in order to get maximum information and thoroughly check an American company in the USA, you will have to spend a lot of time. Moreover, the costs of the latter can be even greater if you do not know where to look. Therefore, for a qualitative and detailed check of an American company, we recommend contacting our experts. We know where to look and find up-to-date information.

Find out in which US state it is better to register a company.

Where to look for information about an American counterparty

Conventionally, all sources for checking an American company in the USA can be divided into two types:

  • publicly available – usually include constituent documents, lists of directors, data on the structure of a legal entity;
  • confidential – confidential information that can be obtained only with special access.

Attention!!! Disclosure of insider information in the United States is prohibited by law. Violation is even punishable by imprisonment.

It is recommended to start checking an American company with open sources:

search for news about the counterparty and its sites through the search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo;
look for data in open US registries: trade, property, judicial, etc.
The information received will be quite enough to understand whether the legal entity conducts real activities or is a “dummy”. And the result of the search will indicate the direction where you can get more detailed information about the counterparty.

Also conditionally, all sources for searching and checking an American company can be divided into:

  • regional are state registries;
  • nationwide – Better Business Bureau (base of legal entities working with consumers), EDGAR (registry of the Securities and Exchange Commission), Dun & Bradstreet (credit registry, access to it is limited), crunchbase (base of start-ups, investors and incubators), Hoover’s database (contains reviews, profiles, reports of more than 18 thousand legal entities from the USA), PrivCo (this database contains information about private companies with an income of more than 1 million USD), Referenceusagov (contains data from private companies in the USA and Canada, it contains information from more more than 5,000 directories, including Chambers of Commerce and State registries), Thomas Manufacturers Register (thomasnet.com), database of all State Registrars .