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This guide is outdated and will be removed on 1 November 2026. The up-to-date Texas (US) reference is on the Texas (US) country page.

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This guide contains public integration notes for Texas. 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.

Texas 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.

Table of Contents

Data Sources

Texas uses three data sources depending on the request mode and entity type. Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts (prefill mode)
  • Franchise Tax API (primary source). Covers entities set up for franchise tax under Tax Code Chapter 171: corporations, LLCs, LPs, LLPs, professional associations, and other entities doing business in Texas. ~3.4M taxpayers. Provides company name, registered office address, SOS registration status, state of formation, officer/director information, and registered agent details. Equivalent open dataset: Active Franchise Tax Permit Holders.
  • Sales Tax Payer API (fallback + establishments). Covers holders of a sales tax permit under Tax Code Chapter 151, Subchapter F. This includes any person or entity authorized to collect sales tax on tangible personal property, including sole traders. Provides business name, individual name (for sole traders), address, permit status, and outlet locations (establishments) with addresses and permit dates. Equivalent open dataset: Active Sales Tax Permit Holders.
Texas Secretary of State (verification mode + documents) The Texas Secretary of State is the official corporate registry for entities formed or registered to do business in Texas. It is the authoritative source for entity status, filing history, registered agent, officer/director records, and assumed names. Used for verification-mode company profiles and for issuing the Information Letter document, both read from the Secretary of State’s online system, SOSPortal. Covers formal entities only: sole traders are not registered with the SOS.
In prefill mode, franchise tax is tried first (richer data with officers and registered agent). If the entity is not found there (sole traders, entities not set up for franchise tax), it falls back to sales tax automatically. Establishments are always fetched from the sales tax endpoint.
Entity coverage varies by source. Franchise tax (Chapter 171) covers corporations, LLCs, LPs, LLPs, and professional associations. The sales tax endpoint covers holders of a sales tax permit (Chapter 151, Subchapter F): any person or entity selling taxable goods, including sole traders. Businesses that only provide services (consultants, lawyers, SaaS) typically don’t hold a permit and won’t appear in either source. Verification mode is limited to formal entities registered with the Secretary of State: sole traders have no SOS filing and are not covered.

Company Identifiers

Query Identifiers

Which identifier to use? For search, use the 11-digit Taxpayer Number or the SOS File Number. For company profile, you must use the 11-digit Taxpayer Number returned in the search result id field. The detail API only accepts this format.
Search first, then fetch. The SOS File Number only works for search. To retrieve company data, use the id from the search result (always the 11-digit Taxpayer Number). Passing an EIN or SOS File Number directly to the company profile endpoint will fail.

Identifiers in API Response

GLEIF is the supplementary data source for this identifier. company.identifiers.lei is returned when sosFileNumber has a unique match against Texas Secretary of State registration or validation references in GLEIF. The padded and unpadded spellings of the SOS number are equivalent for this match. Taxpayer numbers and federal EINs are excluded. An LEI (Legal Entity Identifier) has 20 uppercase letters and digits, ending in two check digits. Coverage varies by entity. The field is omitted when no unambiguous match is available. Lapsed or retired LEIs may be returned; annulled records are excluded.

Search Capabilities

SOS File Number. Pass it zero-padded (0803367205) or as the Secretary of State displays it (803367205); both resolve. A 9-digit input is read as an SOS File Number. Search by the Federal EIN is not supported.
Name search is prefix-based. Searching for "TOPOGRAPH" returns all entities whose name starts with or contains that string, including TOPOGRAPHIC OM, INC., TOPOGRAPH LLC, etc.

Active companies only

Search can return companies that are no longer active. activeOnly=true removes those whose status is known at search time; the others are kept. Lookups by taxpayer number are filtered. Name searches and file-number lookups may still include inactive companies, because most of their results carry no status.

Quirks & Gotchas

Mappings

Company Status

Prefill mode uses sosRegistrationStatus from the Comptroller (which mirrors the SOS), not rightToTransactTX (franchise tax standing). Verification mode reads entity status directly from the Secretary of State. Legal form is sourced differently depending on the request mode. Prefill mode uses the Comptroller’s taxpayer_organizational_type code, a closed 2-letter set defined in the Franchise Layout record layout, fetched from the Comptroller open data API. It distinguishes domestic vs foreign entities (e.g. CT Texas Profit Corporation vs CF Foreign Profit Corporation) and covers types not detectable from names (nonprofits, associations, trusts, joint ventures). Falls back to name-suffix extraction (BOC §5.054-§5.063) when the open data lookup returns no result. Verification mode uses the entity type field from the Secretary of State register directly. The SOS uses the full English description from the Texas Business Organizations Code — a closed set of 24 types organized as Domestic/Foreign pairs (e.g. “Domestic Limited Liability Company (LLC)”, “Foreign For-Profit Corporation”). Source: Texas BOC forms index.
Domestic entities are formed under Texas law; foreign entities are registered to do business in Texas. The parenthetical abbreviation (LLC), (LP), (PLLC) is part of the official SOS display string.
ISO 20275 (ELF) codes are from the GLEIF US-TX jurisdiction list.

Activity Codes

NAICS codes are sourced from the Texas Comptroller open data. ISIC Rev. 5 codes are derived from NAICS through the US Census Bureau concordance table (NAICS to ISIC Rev. 4), chained with the official ISIC Rev. 4 to Rev. 5 correspondence. NACE Rev. 2.1 codes are derived from the ISIC code through a correspondence table; they are not a copy of it.

Officer Roles

Both sources report the most recently filed management appointments. Known titles use the published role catalogue, including retained source abbreviations; unfamiliar titles are interpreted with their source context. A filed office does not specify a sole or joint signing rule. Explicit compound offices are preserved separately, including a vice president who also serves as secretary. Incomplete abbreviations do not invent an unreported second title. Corporate holders retain their identity and available address; a US contact address does not establish domicile. For foreign entities, the governing law and source appointment determine authority. The published formation jurisdiction takes precedence over a generic LLC or partnership label. Where that jurisdiction is missing, a generic form alone does not establish Texas agency. Uncertain formatted addresses retain their source text without an assumed country; a corporate registered agent’s Texas office does not establish its formation country.

Data Availability

Documents

Information Letter

The Information Letter is an official document issued by the Texas Secretary of State. It states the entity’s name, type, jurisdiction, file number, filing date and status, the registered agent and registered office address, the assumed name certificates on file, and the managerial officials with their titles and addresses. It is the closest equivalent to a trade register extract for Texas.

Sales Tax Permit

The Sales Tax Permit is the official Comptroller record confirming permit status, mailing address, and all outlet locations. For sole traders it is the primary official government record confirming their business registration.

Example API Responses

Search by Name

Company Profile (Prefill Mode)

Sole Trader (Sales Tax Fallback)

Sole traders are not in the franchise tax system. Data comes from the sales tax payer API.
Sole traders are identified by the IS (Individual Sole Owner) organizational type code from the SODA3 open data API. No officers or registered agent data is available for sole traders.