Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services, NJ Department of the Treasury
New Jersey Business Entity Search: Free Names and IDs, Paid Status
New Jersey’s business registry belongs to the Treasury, not the Secretary of State, and its free search stops at five facts: name, 10-digit Entity ID, city, type and formation date. Status, registered agent and officers or LLC managers start at a $5 status report, plus a $1.25 portal fee. The search on this page covers the same records by any word in a company’s name or by its 10-digit Entity ID.
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New Jersey onlyOne distinctive word finds more than the full legal name.
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NJ SOS Business Search: The Treasury Runs It, Free
The Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services (DORES), part of the Treasury, keeps the registry, and its free Business Entity Name Search works without an account. “You may browse the names/10-digit IDs of business entities online free of charge.” The old New Jersey Business Gateway address, nj.gov/njbgs, now redirects to DORES.
Step 1: Business Name, Keyword or Entity Id
Business Name reads from the first word, with “a wild card automatically inserted at the end”; Keyword Search takes up to five words found anywhere in the name; Entity Id is “exact match only.” Leaving Inc. or LLC off the name gives more results, and more than 500 means the search needs narrowing.
Step 2: Five Columns, Nothing to Click
An NJ LLC lookup there returns one row per match: Business Name, Entity Id, City, Type and Incorporated Date, and no row opens a record. Type is a code: DP for a domestic profit corporation, LLC for a domestic LLC, FLC for a foreign LLC, NP for a nonprofit. The search on this page returns the name, Entity ID, type and date, and finds words anywhere in the name, like Keyword Search.
NJ Business Status and Registered Agent: The $5 Status Report
New Jersey’s free search never says whether a company is active, and it can’t be searched by registered agent. Both are in the Business Records Service: a Business Entity Status Report costs $5 plus a $1.25 portal fee and lists the status, formation date, annual report month and last report filed, registered agent and its address, associated names, principals and filing history. A business document search runs through the same service: Business Entity Documents sells copies of filed documents, normally ready to download within 30 minutes and at most 24 hours.
The Business Records Service also searches by registered agent, by principal (officer, director, manager or managing member) and by associated name, an alternate, fictitious or previous name. “Principals” in the report are the most recently reported officers and directors of a corporation or managers and members of an LLC. Orders are PDFs only, downloadable for 30 days, and electronic filings can take two business days to appear.
| Status code | Meaning |
|---|---|
ACT | Active |
DRV | Revoked for not filing annual report for 2 consecutive years |
REV | Revoked for failure to pay taxes |
DIS | Dissolved after commencing business |
RST | Annual report reinstatement |
XFR | Expunged: failure to provide home state good standing |
Standing Certificates: $25 for a Corporation, $50 for an LLC
New Jersey calls good standing proof a standing certificate, in three forms: short form, long form with officers and directors, and long form with charter documents. Corporations and limited partnerships pay $25; an LLC or LLP pays $50 for the short form and $100 for a long form. A certificate with a validation number under the printed seal can be checked online in Certificate Validation, except one with a gold embossed seal.
NJ Name Availability: What the Free Check Ignores
New Jersey’s Business Name Availability search “ignores all capitalization, spaces, punctuation (periods, commas, dashes, apostrophes, ampersand), leading articles (A, AN, THE), trailing ‘s’, as well as the words AND, OR, and OF,” then adds a wildcard at the end. It won’t accept a name ending in LLC, Inc., Corp. or another entity designator.
Name test
Distinguishable under the Business Name Availability search?
Applies the Division of Revenue's rules on punctuation, capitals, spacing, a, an, the, and, or, of, a trailing s and entity endings. The state makes the final call.
The check also refuses 26 restricted words, among them bank, insurance, trust, Olympic and realtor, which need an email to the Corporate Filing Department and a paper filing. With those ignored letters and words set aside, a name still needs at least four characters. Reserving one costs $50, and Business.NJ.gov calls it “optional and not recommended”: a reserved name can’t be used in the online formation service. A name on file isn’t a trademark, so a broader check of an LLC name belongs before forming a New Jersey LLC, which costs $100.
New Jersey DBA Search: Alternate Names, County Trade Names, DBAs
New Jersey keeps three kinds of business names apart. A corporation, LLC or LP registers an alternate name with DORES, $50 for five years; a sole proprietor or partnership files a trade name with the county clerk; and a DBA is reserved for a company formed elsewhere whose own name is taken in New Jersey.
An alternate name “will not provide exclusive rights to its usage,” and using one before registering it costs an extra $50 for each year of use. It shows up in a status report under associated names. A sole proprietor’s trade name is filed with each county clerk instead: “To protect your trade name across New Jersey, you must register in all 21 counties.”
Two Missed $75 Annual Reports Get a New Jersey Business Revoked
“Every business in NJ must file an annual report,” $75 for an LLC, corporation, LP or LLP and $30 for a nonprofit, due on the last day of the month the business was formed. “Businesses that fail to file annual reports for two consecutive years may have their charter voided or authority to do business in New Jersey revoked.”
Reinstatement starts with the online annual report service: every missed report, plus $75 for an LLC or $95 for a corporation. An LLC revoked less than two years ago can finish online; after that, it needs a $20 tax clearance certificate, and its issuance “is a lengthy process and may take several months.” Two missed reports can also invalidate the Business Registration Certificate. How to file is in the New Jersey LLC annual report guide.
Private mailers may look official, but “the State of New Jersey does not authorize Internet postings or mailed solicitations for private business service providers.” DORES’s free Corp Watch alerts an owner by text, push or email to filings on the company’s record, “including any potentially fraudulent filings.”
Entity ID, EIN and the 12-Digit NJ Tax ID
The Entity ID, New Jersey’s business entity identification number, is the 10-digit number “assigned by the Division of Revenue upon completing your Business Formation,” free to look up in the name search. The IRS issues the EIN, which isn’t public in New Jersey, where “information contained in tax returns is confidential and not part of the public record.” The state tax ID is the EIN or SSN followed by 000.
A Business Registration Certificate (BRC) is “required only for those doing business with the public sector and with the casino service industry,” not a general license; that page links the online registration inquiry, which shows whether a business is already registered. Business.NJ.gov’s Licensing and Certification Guide lists 551 licenses, permits and certifications by activity, none of them a general business license. An NJ business lookup can’t reveal another company’s EIN; the records that can show a company’s EIN are listed separately.