Verify Massachusetts businesses

How Massachusetts's business registry works

Massachusetts doesn't publish a status field. Search the Corporations Division's Corporate Search for an entity and the summary tells you it's active by omission — there's a Date of Registration and no dissolution date. When an entity goes inactive, the record doesn't flip a word from Active to Dissolved; it grows a dated event whose label names the reason: a Date of Involuntary Dissolution by Court Order or by the SOC, a Date of Withdrawal, a Date of Voluntary Dissolution, or — if the entity came back — a Date of Revival. Reading Massachusetts status means reading which dated event, if any, is present. BizVerify does that inference and returns one status field: active, dissolved, withdrawn, revoked, merged, or inactive.

The Corporate Search itself is free and public, searchable by entity name, individual name, identification number, or filing number. It covers domestic and foreign business corporations, professional and nonprofit corporations, LLCs, limited partnerships, and limited liability partnerships. Every entity carries a Corporations Division ID Number; older entities also show an Old ID Number from the prior numbering scheme, so one Massachusetts record can hold two identifiers for the same legal entity. BizVerify returns the current ID Number as jurisdiction_id.

Massachusetts also keeps its own vocabulary. The agent an entity must appoint is a Resident Agent, not a registered agent, and the LLC formation document is a Certificate of Organization, not articles. The entity summary exposes more than most states' free surface — the resident agent's name and address, the principal office, the officers and managers, the state the entity was organized under, and those dated events. That depth is why Massachusetts supports both a quick check and deep verification.

What Massachusetts specifically charges and requires

Formation

A Massachusetts LLC files a Certificate of Organization for $500 — among the highest LLC formation fees in the country. A domestic business corporation's Articles of Organization start at $275 for up to 275,000 authorized shares and add $100 for each additional 100,000 shares, so the corporate fee scales with the authorized share count. Limited partnerships register for $200; limited liability partnerships pay $500. Orders of $500.01 and above carry a 4.5% expedited surcharge.

Annual obligations

Both major deadlines are entity-relative, not a fixed statewide date — you can't hardcode one annual date for Massachusetts. An LLC files its annual report on or before the anniversary date of its original Certificate of Organization, and the fee is $500 every year. A corporation files within two and one half months after the close of its fiscal year end; the fee is $125 ($100 filed electronically), or $150 if it's late. An LLC that fails to file for two consecutive years can be administratively dissolved by the Division, and reinstatement requires filing every owed annual report.

Resident agent

Every Massachusetts entity must maintain a Resident Agent with a Massachusetts address, and the resident agent's name and address sit on the public record. Deep verification returns the resident agent, the principal office address, the officers and managers on file, and the date of organization.

Common ways developers use Massachusetts verification

Verify-before-provision in an AI agent

An onboarding agent takes a customer's stated Massachusetts LLC name and calls verify_business({ entity_name, jurisdiction: "us-ma" }) through the BizVerify MCP server before provisioning. Because Massachusetts publishes no status word, the agent would otherwise have to interpret dated dissolution events itself. BizVerify collapses that to a status of dissolved or withdrawn, so the agent drops into manual review instead of auto-approving. The same call runs from Claude Code or a LangChain agent.

Catching entities that are dissolved-but-still-listed

Massachusetts keeps dissolved and withdrawn entities in Corporate Search indefinitely, each carrying its dated dissolution event but no one-word inactive flag. KYB tooling that only confirms the name exists in the database will pass a company that was involuntarily dissolved years ago. A quick check for us-ma returns dissolved or revoked directly — the dated event is already interpreted, so a defunct entity reads as defunct on the first call.

Marketplace seller onboarding

Massachusetts has a deep base of small operators — agencies, trades, restaurant and real-estate LLCs. A marketplace verifying a new seller's Massachusetts LLC confirms status is active — not dissolved for two missed anniversary-date annual reports — before enabling payouts. A quick check is one credit and fast enough to sit inline in a signup flow; wire it through Zapier or n8n once and reuse it.

Cap-table and formation tooling

Tools that manage formation or cap tables need the structured record, and Massachusetts already exposes much of it publicly. Deep verification for us-ma returns the resident agent, principal office, officers and managers, and date of organization — the fields a KYB pipeline builds a company profile around, returned as structured JSON instead of a summary page you read by hand.

Frequently asked questions

How do you report status when Massachusetts has no status field?

Massachusetts records don't carry a status word. An active entity simply has a registration date and no dissolution date; an inactive one carries a dated event — a Date of Involuntary Dissolution, a Date of Withdrawal, a Date of Revival. BizVerify reads which event is present and returns a normalized status: active, dissolved, withdrawn, revoked, merged, or inactive. You get one field instead of a date puzzle.

What does revoked versus dissolved mean for a Massachusetts entity?

Both mean the entity is no longer in good standing, but the cause differs. dissolved maps to a dissolution event — voluntary, or an involuntary dissolution by court order or by the Secretary of the Commonwealth. revoked maps to a revocation of authority, which most often hits foreign entities. Treat either as a hard fail for a KYB decision; a live counterparty should read active.

Which identifier do you return for a Massachusetts entity?

The jurisdiction_id is the entity's current Corporations Division ID Number. Many older Massachusetts entities also carry an Old ID Number from the prior numbering scheme, shown in a separate column on Corporate Search. BizVerify returns the current ID Number; if you reconcile against legacy records that store the old one, match on entity name and resident agent as well.

Does a Certificate of Good Standing prove tax compliance in Massachusetts?

No — and Massachusetts is explicit about it. The Corporations Division's Certificate of Good Standing for a corporation costs $12 and is expressly not a Tax Good Standing; tax standing comes from the Department of Revenue. BizVerify's status and good_standing reflect the Corporations Division record — that an entity exists and hasn't been dissolved, withdrawn, or revoked — not its DOR tax status.

Do you handle foreign entities registered in Massachusetts?

Yes. Out-of-state entities registered to transact business in Massachusetts appear in Corporate Search with the same dated-event model as domestic ones. A foreign entity that has left the state carries a Date of Withdrawal and reads withdrawn; one whose authority was revoked reads revoked. The entity summary also shows the state and country the entity was originally organized under.

How current is Massachusetts entity data?

Status reflects the Corporations Division record at the time the check runs — no cached snapshot in between. A newly dissolved or revived entity shows the change as soon as the Division's record reflects it. Deep verification returns the resident agent, principal office, officers and managers, and date of organization from that same live record.

What does deep verification add over a quick check for Massachusetts?

A quick check returns the entity name, type, Corporations Division ID, and normalized status — enough to confirm the entity exists and is active. Deep verification adds the resident agent's name and address, the principal office, the officers and managers on file, and the date of organization. Use quick on the hot path; use deep when you need the structured company record.