How California's business registry works
A California entity can be suspended by two different agencies, and the status string tells you which. SOS Suspended/Forfeited means the Secretary of State pulled the entity's rights for failing to file its Statement of Information. FTB Suspended/Forfeited means the Franchise Tax Board did it for tax non-compliance. SOS/FTB Suspended/Forfeited means both. A KYB pipeline reading a California status learns not just that an entity is in trouble, but the cause.
The Business Entities Section of the Secretary of State maintains the register, searchable through the bizfile Online portal at bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov since its April 2022 relaunch. You search by entity name or by entity number — and the number format signals the type: a corporation carries a 7-digit number with a C prefix, while an LLC or limited partnership carries a 12-digit number with no letter. The register covers stock and nonprofit corporations, LLCs, limited partnerships, limited liability partnerships, and general partnerships.
The full status vocabulary runs to 13 values. Beyond Active and the three suspension/forfeiture variants, you'll see Dissolved, Merged Out, Converted-Out, Surrender (a foreign corporation that gave up its right to operate in California), Term Expired, Canceled and SOS Canceled (a filing voided because the fee payment bounced), Pending Cancel, and Inactive.
bizfile Online is free to search — California doesn't paywall basic entity records. BizVerify supports both quick checks and deep verification for California: a quick check returns name, entity type, entity number, and status; deep verification adds the Agent for Service of Process, officers, addresses, and filing history.
What California specifically charges and requires
Formation
A California LLC files Articles of Organization for $70; a stock corporation files Articles of Incorporation for $100. Reserving a name ahead of filing costs $10. California sells paid expedite tiers — 24-hour service for $350 and same-day for $750 through bizfile Online, plus a 4-hour drop-off filing at $500 — each added on top of the base fee.
Annual obligations
This is where California gets expensive. Every LLC, corporation, LP, and LLP owes an $800 minimum annual franchise tax to the Franchise Tax Board — regardless of revenue, profit, or whether it did any business at all. It's due the 15th day of the fourth month of the tax year. Corporations skip it their first year; LLCs no longer get that break. An LLC with California income at or above $250,000 owes a gross-receipts fee on top of the $800.
| Filing | Fee |
|---|---|
| LLC Articles of Organization | $70 |
| Articles of Incorporation (stock) | $100 |
| LLC Statement of Information (biennial) | $20 |
| Corporation Statement of Information (annual) | $25 |
| Minimum annual franchise tax | $800 |
| LLC gross-receipts fee ($250K–$5M+ income) | $900–$11,790 |
| Late Statement of Information penalty | $250 |
| Certificate of Status | $5 |
The Statement of Information cadence differs by type: corporations file every year, LLCs every two. Miss it and a $250 penalty follows, then SOS suspension.
Registered agent
California records carry an Agent for Service of Process — either a named individual resident in the state, or a registered corporate agent that has filed to act for many entities at once. Deep verification returns whichever the entity designated, alongside the officers and addresses from its latest Statement of Information.
Common ways developers use California verification
Verify-before-provision in an AI agent
An AI onboarding agent takes a customer's stated California LLC name and calls verify_business({ entity_name, jurisdiction: "us-ca" }) through the BizVerify MCP server before it provisions an account. An FTB Suspended/Forfeited result tells the agent the entity exists but is delinquent on tax — enough signal to route to manual review instead of auto-approving. The same call runs from Claude Code or a LangChain agent.
Marketplace seller onboarding
California has a dense base of small operators — agencies, contractors, e-commerce sellers. A marketplace verifying a new seller's LLC confirms it reads Active — not SOS Suspended/Forfeited from a lapsed Statement of Information — before enabling payouts. A quick check is one credit and fast enough to sit inline in a signup flow, Zapier included.
Cap-table and formation tooling
Tools that manage entity formation or cap tables need the structured record, not a yes/no. Deep verification for California returns the Agent for Service of Process, officers and addresses from the latest Statement of Information, registration date, and filing history — the fields a KYB pipeline builds a company profile from.
Catching the cadence mismatch
Tooling that assumes one Statement of Information schedule misreads California: corporations file annually, LLCs biennially. A monitor flagging an LLC as delinquent on a one-year clock generates false positives. An n8n watch flow that keys off the actual status string — not a guessed filing date — sidesteps the whole class of error.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between SOS Suspended and FTB Suspended in California?
SOS Suspended/Forfeited means the Secretary of State suspended the entity for failing to file its required Statement of Information. FTB Suspended/Forfeited means the Franchise Tax Board did it for tax non-compliance — usually the unpaid $800 minimum franchise tax. SOS/FTB Suspended/Forfeited means both agencies acted. The status string names the responsible agency, so you know whether the fix is a filing or a tax payment.
Does the $800 franchise tax show up in a California entity's status?
Not directly — until it does. An entity that owes the franchise tax still reads Active right up until the Franchise Tax Board suspends it, at which point the status flips to FTB Suspended/Forfeited. There's no intermediate "tax due" status. If you need to know an entity is current on tax before suspension, that's a separate signal from the registry status.
Which identifier do you return for a California entity?
The jurisdiction_id is the California entity number. The format tells you the type on sight: a 7-digit number with a C prefix is a corporation; a 12-digit number with no letter is an LLC or limited partnership. It's the stable key for the entity — reconcile California records on the entity number, since names can be reused over time.
Do you handle foreign corporations registered in California?
Yes. Out-of-state entities registered to transact business in California appear in the register with the same status vocabulary as domestic ones. A foreign corporation that ends its California registration reads Surrender — distinct from Dissolved, which means the entity itself was wound down in its home jurisdiction.
How current is California entity data?
Status reflects the bizfile Online record as it stands when the check runs — there's no nightly snapshot sitting between the source and your response. Status changes show up within seconds of the registry updating. The trade-off is that p95 latency tracks the Secretary of State's own responsiveness.
What does deep verification add over a quick check for California?
A quick check returns entity name, type, California entity number, and status — enough to confirm an entity exists and is Active. Deep verification adds the Agent for Service of Process (individual or registered corporate agent), the officers and addresses from the most recent Statement of Information, registration date, and filing history. Use quick checks on the hot path and deep when you need the full record.
Do I get charged for a California entity that doesn't exist?
A confirmed "no match" still counts as a quick check (1 credit, ~$0.08 on public pricing) — the verification ran and proved the entity isn't on the California register. Hard errors from the registry side (timeouts, 5xx) don't consume credits.