Maryland - Topograph

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This guide contains public integration notes for Maryland. Use it for identifier formats, search behavior, and country-specific caveats. The live source of truth for coverage, pricing, data sources, documents, legal forms, roles, and status values is the pricing page.

Maryland coverage, pricing, and sources

Open the current catalog for supported datapoints, documents, sources, identifiers, and availability.

This jurisdiction may be in preview or limited availability. Check the live pricing page or contact support before relying on it in production.

Country details below are preserved as integration notes. If a table or example conflicts with the live pricing page, use the pricing page as the source of truth and contact support.

Data Sources
Company Identifiers
Search Capabilities
Quirks & Gotchas
Mappings
- Legal Forms
- Entity Status
Data Availability

API access: US-MD is not yet part of the public countryCode enum. Contact us to enable it on your workspace. Requests sent with countryCode: "US-MD" will otherwise return 400 until the enum is expanded.

Data Sources

Maryland uses a single integration against the Maryland State Department of Assessments and Taxation (SDAT), served through the Maryland Business Express public entity-detail portal. The public detail page returns the SDAT Department ID, legal name, principal office address, resident agent name and address, current status and good-standing flag, business type and business code, formation/registration date, state of formation, stock and close-corporation classifications, mailing address, and the entity’s filing history. The free Trade Register Extract (a printable record of the public entity-detail page) is included with every lookup at no extra charge.

Single authoritative mode. All Maryland lookups are live reads from the SDAT portal. There is no non-authoritative snapshot or onboarding-mode fast path in v1.

Officers not on the public surface. Officer, director, member, and manager rosters are not published on the Maryland Business Express public entity-detail page. They are visible only after authentication with a Maryland Business Express account or through a paid Personal Property Assessment record. The publicly-served Resident Agent (statutory service-of-process address) is included in the Trade Register Extract but is not returned as a legal representative in the API response.

Company Identifiers

Query Identifiers

Identifier Type	Format	Example	Notes
SDAT Department ID	One letter (A-Z) followed by 8 digits	`D22958060`	Primary identifier assigned by SDAT. Case-insensitive on input; normalized to uppercase.

The Department ID always starts with one uppercase letter followed by exactly eight digits (e.g. D22958060, F04793998, Z25352915). The prefix letter is an SDAT-internal classifier and is not a stable indicator of entity type. Do not use it to infer domestic vs. foreign status or entity form.

Identifiers in API Response

Identifier	Format	Example	Notes
`departmentId`	Letter + 8 digits	`D22958060`	Present for all entities. Primary identifier.
`businessCode`	Two-digit code + label	`04 ORDINARY BUSINESS - NON-STOCK`	Secondary SDAT classification code. Not present for all entities.

Search Capabilities

Search Type	Pattern	Example	Match Type	Notes
By Business Name	2-100 chars	`"Acme"`	Starts-with (case-insensitive)	Capped at the portal’s result limit.
By Department ID	Letter + 8 digits	`D22958060`	Exact	Returns one result.

Name search anchors on the beginning of the legal name (case-insensitive). Use a fuller query string to narrow the result set. Fictitious names (DBAs) and trade names are not indexed; search only resolves legal entity names as registered with SDAT.

Quirks & Gotchas

Quirk	Details
Prefix letter is not a reliable entity-type signal	The letter prefix of the Department ID (D, F, Z, W, etc.) is an SDAT-internal classifier. It does not map cleanly to domestic vs. foreign or to a specific legal form. The authoritative entity type is the `Business Type` field published on the detail page (e.g. “DOMESTIC LLC”, “FOREIGN CORPORATION”).
Officers require authentication	Officer, director, member, and manager rosters are not part of the anonymous public detail page. They are gated behind a Maryland Business Express user account or a paid Personal Property Assessment record.
Resident Agent is informational only	The Resident Agent (name and address) is printed on the public detail page and included in the Trade Register Extract, but is not returned as a legal representative in `legalRepresentatives`.
No shareholder or UBO register	Maryland does not publish shareholders or beneficial owners for any entity type on the public register. Federal FinCEN BOI records are a separate restricted system.
No activity codes	Industry classification codes are not published on Maryland SDAT business summary records.
No tax identifier on the public surface	The SDAT Department ID is an internal entity identifier. Federal EIN and Maryland Comptroller tax accounts are not surfaced on the public business search.
Paid documents carry a fixed statutory fee	Certified copies of charter filings, Certificates of Status, and the long-form Personal Property Assessment record each carry a mandatory statutory fee at SDAT. There is no non-expedited (lower-cost) path for document orders in Maryland. These paid documents are not offered through Topograph in v1.
No public bulk extract	SDAT does not publish a free public bulk entity dataset. The SDAT Corporate Master File is distributed through a licensed contractor on a subscription basis. The Maryland Open Data Portal does not republish entity-level data.

Mappings

Legal Forms

Maryland reports entity type as a free-text Business Type field on the SDAT entity-detail page (e.g. “CORPORATION”, “DOMESTIC LLC”, “FOREIGN CORPORATION”, “DOMESTIC LLC”, “FOREIGN LLC”). A secondary Business Code (e.g. “04 ORDINARY BUSINESS - NON-STOCK”) further classifies the entity. The full vocabulary of observed business types, their standardized Topograph categories, and ISO 20275 ELF mappings where available are published on the pricing page.

Common Maryland entity types (representative sample)

SDAT Business Type	Standardized
CORPORATION	Corporation
DOMESTIC LLC	LimitedLiabilityCompany
FOREIGN CORPORATION	Corporation
FOREIGN LLC	LimitedLiabilityCompany
LIMITED PARTNERSHIP	Partnership
LIMITED LIABILITY PARTNERSHIP	Partnership
BUSINESS TRUST	Trust
NON-STOCK CORPORATION	NonprofitOrganization

The complete list of observed SDAT business types and their mappings is on the pricing page. The sample above covers the most common forms. Stock status (“STOCK” / “NONSTOCK”) and close-corporation flag (“YES” / “NO”) are additional qualifiers published on the detail page.

Entity Status

Maryland reports entity status as a free-text field (e.g. “Active”, “Incorporated”, “Forfeited”, “Dissolved”, “Cancelled”). The API normalizes it into a structured status object with a localName (the raw SDAT value) and an active boolean.

SDAT Status	`active`
Active	`true`
Incorporated	`true`
In Good Standing	`true`
Forfeited	`false`
Dissolved	`false`
Cancelled	`false`
Terminated	`false`
Merged	`false`

Data Availability

Data Point	Available	Notes
Company name	Yes	Current legal name from SDAT
Company status	Yes	Normalized from SDAT free-text status + good-standing flag
Registration date	Yes	Date of formation/registration as published by SDAT
Legal address	Yes	Principal office address (street, city, state, ZIP)
Mailing address	Yes	Annual report mailing address when published
Legal form	Yes	SDAT Business Type, normalized to standardized category
Business code	Yes	Secondary SDAT classification code, when published
State of formation	Yes	State where the entity was originally formed (relevant for foreign entities)
Legal representatives	No	Not on the public detail page; requires account authentication
Registered agent	Informational	Resident Agent is printed on the Trade Register Extract but not modeled as a legal representative
Activity codes	No	Not published on SDAT business records
Shareholders	No	Not held by SDAT public register
UBOs	No	No Maryland or public federal register
Trade Register Extract	Yes	Free printable record of the public entity-detail page, included at no extra charge
Certified copies / Certificate of Status	No	Paid documents at SDAT; not offered through Topograph in v1
Financial data	No	Not collected

Example API Responses

Search by Name

curl -X POST "https://api.topograph.co/v2/search?country=US-MD&query=Acme" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

[
  {
    "id": "D12345678",
    "legalName": "ACME HOLDINGS, INC.",
    "countryCode": "US-MD",
    "matchReason": {
      "matchType": "default"
    },
    "address": {
      "region": "MD",
      "countryCode": "US"
    }
  }
]

Search by Department ID

curl -X POST "https://api.topograph.co/v2/search?country=US-MD&query=D12345678" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

[
  {
    "id": "D12345678",
    "legalName": "ACME HOLDINGS, INC.",
    "countryCode": "US-MD",
    "matchReason": {
      "matchType": "id"
    }
  }
]

Company Profile

curl -X POST "https://api.topograph.co/v2/company" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"countryCode": "US-MD", "id": "D12345678", "dataPoints": ["company"]}'

{
  "company": {
    "id": "D12345678",
    "countryCode": "US-MD",
    "identifiers": {
      "departmentId": "D12345678",
      "businessCode": "04 ORDINARY BUSINESS - NON-STOCK"
    },
    "legalName": "ACME HOLDINGS, INC.",
    "registrationDate": "2010-03-15",
    "legalForm": {
      "localName": "CORPORATION",
      "standardized": "Corporation"
    },
    "legalAddress": {
      "addressLine1": "100 COMMERCE DRIVE",
      "city": "ANNAPOLIS",
      "region": "MD",
      "postalCode": "21401",
      "countryCode": "US"
    },
    "status": {
      "localName": "Incorporated",
      "active": true
    }
  }
}

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Maryland coverage, pricing, and sources

​Table of Contents

​Data Sources

​Company Identifiers

​Query Identifiers

​Identifiers in API Response

​Search Capabilities

​Quirks & Gotchas

​Mappings

​Legal Forms

​Entity Status

​Data Availability

​Example API Responses

​Search by Name

​Search by Department ID

​Company Profile

Start here

Table of Contents

Data Sources

Company Identifiers

Query Identifiers

Identifiers in API Response

Search Capabilities

Quirks & Gotchas

Mappings

Legal Forms

Entity Status

Data Availability

Example API Responses

Search by Name

Search by Department ID

Company Profile