Business Web Site of the Week - Business Filings Databases

Researching private companies is hard. They don’t have to disclose anything to anyone, except their Secretary of State and the IRS. While the IRS is pretty tight-lipped, the SoS Offices can be a good source for basic private company info.

This Business Filings site, maintained by the online legal research firm LLRX, provides links and commentary to every Secretary of State Office in the U.S. If you’re researching a private company and know which state it operates in, use this site to learn more about what can be found online and then jump directly to the proper SoS database to find it.

Not every SoS Web site is created equal, so the amount of data available for free online will vary, but when the alternative is “no information” you can’t really argue with “a little bit of information.”