The District keeps its business register in a licensing agency rather than a Secretary of State. The Corporations Division sits inside the Business and Professional Licensing Administration of the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection at 1100 4th Street SW, and its head, the Superintendent of Corporations, is the Corporate Registrar for the District under Title 29 of the D.C. Code. The corporations page explains that every entity, domestic or formed elsewhere, that conducts business in the District registers here before it applies for a business license, a permit or a tax registration.
The records are reached through BOSS, the portal the department describes as formerly CorpOnline, signed into with an Access DC account. Among the services the registration questions page lists is a search of all registered entities with expanded entity information, including report history, trade name, registered agent and governor information, and the portal front page carries a Global Search beside an explanation of fees. The District has no counties, and the District of Columbia pages on this site cover its records offices.
- More than ten percent: the ownership line above which a person is named, with residence and business address, on every formation filing and biennial report.
- Three hundred dollars: the BRA-25 biennial report for a for profit entity, due by April 1, with one hundred dollars added after that date.
- Fifty dollars: a certificate of good standing or status, or a certified copy of one filing, ordered through BOSS and delivered to the account.
- Five months, then sixty days: a report or fee five months overdue opens dissolution, and the entity has sixty days from notice to cure.
Written by SearchSystems.net from District of Columbia's own systems: the DLCP Corporations Division page, the Corporations Division business registration questions, the corporate registration details page, the fees for corporate registration services page, the limited liability company fee table, the business corporation fee table, the foreign entity fee list, the trade name filing fees, the DLCP license and corporate filing fee summary, the biennial report, trade name renewal and revocation lists page, the regulatory advisory on fake ownership reporting forms, the BOSS portal, D.C. Code Section 29-102.11 on the biennial report, D.C. Code Section 29-106.01 on the grounds for administrative dissolution, D.C. Code Section 29-106.02 on the dissolution procedure, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The ownership line the District draws at ten percent
Few American registers hold ownership at all, and the District holds it by statute. Section 29-102.11 of the D.C. Code requires every biennial report made on or after January 1, 2020 to state the names, residence and business addresses of each person whose aggregate share of direct or indirect, legal or beneficial ownership of a governance or total distributional interest exceeds ten percent, and of any person below that line who controls the financial or operational decisions of the entity or can direct its day to day operations.
Where the owner is itself a foreign entity, the report must name the people behind that entity on the same test. A report that leaves the ownership paragraphs out is not merely rejected: the section says its submission results in administrative dissolution of a domestic entity or termination of a foreign registration.
The registration questions page sets the District rule apart from the federal one. The District has required beneficial ownership reporting from everyone formed or registered to do business here since 2020, through the existing filings, articles of incorporation and the BRA-25 report, and the federal Corporate Transparency Act is a separate requirement filed with FinCEN, not with the Corporations Division. When ownership changes between reports, a domestic entity with no report yet on file amends its articles, a foreign entity amends its registration, and an entity with a report on file corrects it with a GN-2 Statement of Correction.
The biennial report, the three hundred dollars and April 1
The report every entity files is form BRA-25. Under the same section, the first report is due by April 1 of the year after the calendar year in which the entity was formed, qualified or registered, and the next by April 1 of every second year after that. It gives the entity name and jurisdiction of formation, the registered agent with street and mailing address, the principal office, at least one governor, meaning a director, member or partner, and, for a foreign entity, a statement that it is in good standing at home or a description of what it is doing to get there.
The business corporation fee table and the limited liability company fee table both price it at three hundred dollars for a domestic or foreign for profit entity, with a late fee of one hundred dollars, and the foreign entity fee list gives nonprofit corporations and general cooperative associations one hundred thirty dollars with fifty added when late. The department summary page states the late fee applies to a report filed after April 1 of the year it is due, and it adds that the division can file back reports, so an entity that commenced business in the District before registering owes every report and fee from its commencement date forward.
How an entity loses its standing, and the sixty day cure
The questions page gives the two conditions for staying in active and good standing: file the BRA-25 when due and keep a registered agent with a physical street address in the District, never a post office box or a third party mailbox. Section 29-106.01 lists the grounds on which the Mayor may begin administrative dissolution of a domestic entity: a fee or penalty unpaid five months after it fell due, a biennial report not delivered five months after it was due, or sixty days without a registered agent in the District.
Under Section 29-106.02 the Mayor serves notice, the entity has sixty days to cure every ground or show it does not exist, and after that the Mayor signs a statement of dissolution reciting the grounds, serves a copy and publishes a notice on a website. A dissolved entity continues to exist but may do nothing except wind up and liquidate, or apply to be reinstated, which the fee tables price at three hundred dollars for a domestic LLC or corporation after administrative dissolution and three hundred for a foreign entity whose registration was terminated.
The department keeps lists of revoked entities and expired trade names, and of the entities and trade names due to file or renew, on its lists page, and a BOSS video titled Help, My Entity is Revoked walks through how a revoked entity returns to active and in good standing.
Certificates of good standing and certified copies
A Certificate of Good Standing is requested inside BOSS under Certificates and Certified Copies, by searching for the entity, selecting it and paying; the certificate then appears in the account under Certificates and Filing Images. The fee is fifty dollars for a certificate of good standing or status certificate and fifty for a certified copy of a filing on the for profit tables, forty and forty for a nonprofit, and the questions page notes that a separate request is needed for each filing copied and that no good standing certificate can be issued for a trade name.
Two documents people ask the division for are issued elsewhere. The division provides no apostille or authentication: a certified copy ordered in BOSS is taken to the D.C. Office of the Secretary, or to the United States Department of State, for that. And a Certificate of Clean Hands, which the District requires for licenses and contracts, comes from the Office of Tax and Revenue, not the Corporations Division. Regular online filings are processed within five business days of submission, and the fee services page adds one hundred dollars for same day service and fifty for three day service on top of every statutory fee, with expedited service compulsory for walk in customers at the Business License Center.
Trade names, which the District registers itself
Unlike the states that leave fictitious names to a county clerk, the District registers trade names in the Corporations Division. A business may not use any name other than its registered corporate name unless that name is registered as a trade name, and the questions page gives its own illustration: Capital One Arena is the trade name of DC Arena, L.P. A trade name cannot be the true legal name of a person, nor the same as an active entity name or another active trade name on record.
Sole proprietors and general partnerships, which do not otherwise appear in the register, register their trade names here too, which makes the trade name search the one place a District sole trader shows up. The trade name fee page prices registration, renewal, amendment and cancellation at fifty five dollars each, with a fifty five dollar late fee on renewal. A trade name is renewed every two years by April 1 of the year it expires; one not renewed by then pays the late fee, and one still not renewed by September 1 is canceled and loses its protection against use by others.
What the District register will not settle
The division registers and records in an administrative capacity, and its questions page lists the limits. It offers no legal advice and will not say whether a given activity counts as conducting business, pointing instead to the definition of a business as any trade, profession or activity providing goods or services to the public for hire or compensation in the District and to Section 29-105.05 for the activities that do not count, with one worked example: an entity owning District real estate usually need not register unless the property produces income.
It issues no employer identification numbers, which the Business Resource Center four step guide sends to the Internal Revenue Service, and it does not hold a Certificate of Occupancy or Home Occupation Permit, which belong to the Department of Buildings. A business license is a separate record altogether, verified through the department Quick Services rather than the entity search, and the District of Columbia background check guide covers the person level checks the register never performs.
The fake ownership letters of August 2024
On August 24, 2024 the department issued a regulatory advisory about official looking letters sent to District businesses in the name of a United States Business Regulations Department or a Department of Records Management, carrying notice identification numbers, seals and watermarks, citing reporting obligations under the Corporate Transparency Act and federal filing requirements against financial crimes, and directing the recipient to a website or a QR code to report ownership information under threat of large fines.
The advisory names three red flags: payment directed to a private entity rather than a government agency, urgency built on harsh penalties, and a demand the recipient had no reason to expect. Its advice is not to respond or pay, and to report the letter to the Office of the Attorney General Office of Consumer Protection, the Federal Trade Commission and, for a mailed letter, the United States Postal Inspection Service. Since the District already collects beneficial ownership through its own filings, a letter asking for that information with a fee attached is the kind the advisory describes.
Questions about looking up a District of Columbia business
Related District of Columbia records
The other District of Columbia guides on this site are the District of Columbia public records law guide for the D.C. Freedom of Information Act, the District of Columbia court records guide for the Superior Court and the Court of Appeals, the District of Columbia background check guide for the Metropolitan Police Department record check, and the District of Columbia pages for the records offices of the District.