Verify a business’s tax ID number is legitimate with TIN Match
Use Middesk’s IRS TIN matching tool to check if a business has a unique and valid TIN, signifying it’s properly registered to pay taxes and legally operate in the U.S.
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What is a TIN matching tool?
A TIN matching tool is a Know Your Business (KYB) software integration that allows for checking if a business has a properly registered Tax Identification Number – sometimes referred to as an Employer Identification Number (EIN) – from the IRS. A business needs a unique TIN to operate legally in the U.S.
Matching TINs to business names helps your company identify risk signals if businesses have missing, invalid, or stolen TINs. This helps your company avoid legal liability and financial losses from partnering with these illegitimately-operating businesses.
How the TIN checker works
Step 1
Input a business’s name and the TIN you want to try and match it with into the TIN checker.
Step 2
Our TIN verifier searches the IRS and other sources for the combination of the business name and TIN you entered.
Step 3
If we can’t find a match, our TIN matching system will search for the business that the TIN belongs to.
Step 4
You can order more information about the business, such as its Secretary of State (SOS) filings, U.S. watchlist status, and so on.
Information you can get with our TIN matching software
TIN matching with Middesk can also find other pieces of information needed for compliance purposes
Middesk Compliance Data Sources
Data You Can Access
What Do You Need to Know?
EIN / TIN (Business Tax ID)
Does the business have a unique tax identifier from the IRS for the purpose of filing taxes, and does that TIN actually correspond to that business based on the information you have about it?
Business verification information
Does the business have a physical headquarters or branch somewhere in the U.S.? Is the location’s contact information registered with U.S. government agencies?
Business documentation
Does the business have the necessary documents to operate legally in the U.S. – such as articles of incorporation – filed with a Secretary of State office? If the business is in an industry with additional licensing requirements, does it have that license registered with the associated regulatory agency?
People associated with the business
Do I actually know who is behind this business? Do they have TINs registered with the IRS to pay taxes in the U.S. as well?
Industry classification
What goods or services does the business produce or deliver? Does this present extra legal, regulatory, or reputational risks if my company gets involved with this business?
Liens, litigations, & bankruptcy
Could the business or individuals associated with the business be risky due to being involved in legal proceedings or having liens placed on its property? Are the liens from failing to pay taxes? Is the business in the midst of filing for bankruptcy protection? Has it (or its owners) filed for bankruptcy before?
Watchlist screening
Does the U.S. forbid or restrict dealings with the business, anyone associated with it, or the country it’s headquartered in?
Web presence analysis
Can you quickly retrieve insights about a business’ online presence including its website, industry, and NAICS/SIC/MCC codes?
Ongoing monitoring
Do I have a way to get notified if there’s a change in the status of this business, or they are no longer in good standing with the IRS?
Applications for a TIN match tool
A TIN number checker is a simple yet powerful tool for verifying a business’s name and tax registration status, applicable in many fields.
Fintechs
Verifying a business’s TIN is unique and valid is an easy way for fintechs to filter out illegitimate or risky businesses early in the sales funnel. This helps fintechs manage risk and comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements while maintaining smooth onboarding processes.
Insurance
Insurers don’t want to underwrite businesses that aren’t operating legally in the U.S. IRS TIN matching lets insurers quickly check if businesses have cleared at least one legal requirement: being registered to pay taxes in the U.S.
Commercial banking
Using TIN matching services, commercial banks can determine if a TIN supplied during onboarding belongs to a legitimate business. This helps them confirm the person signing up is an authorized representative of that business.
Lenders
A TIN match helps lenders verify that a person is applying for a loan on behalf of a real company that is operating legally in the U.S., rather than trying to commit fraud to get free money for themselves.
Marketplace
Each item sold on an online marketplace has to have taxes factored into pricing and revenue. So marketplaces need to be sure that vendor businesses are properly set up to process taxes by checking that their TINs are valid.
Payments Service Providers (PSPs)
Using the EIN search tool, payments providers and Payment Service Processors (PSP) can instantly verify the legitimacy of your merchant customers before onboarding, keeping the trust present within your payments platform for all customers.
Industry-based risk assessment made easy with a TIN matching system
Quickly check a business’s legitimacy
Without having a unique TIN, a business can’t legally operate in the U.S. TIN matching software helps you catch this simple risk signal early in onboarding.
Get a business’s official name right
The name you have for a business may be a “doing business as” (DBA) name and not its official name. Checking the business’s TIN is a way to confirm its true legal name.
Match TINs with minimal inputs
All you need to use Middesk’s TIN matching services are a business’s legal name and the TIN you want to attempt to match to it – that’s it.
Speed up other parts of business verification
In addition to matching a business’s TIN, you can also order other information you need for verifying its identity, such as registration details and formation document copies.
Start verifying with our TIN matching tool today
What makes Middesk’s TIN checker different?
Direct from government sources
Middesk directly searches databases from the IRS and Secretary of State (SOS) records to quickly get you official, accurate TIN data.
Complete U.S. coverage
Middesk can match TINs to more than 100 million business profiles across the U.S., with over 92% of our records being updated within 10 days so you’ll have the freshest data possible.
Extended lookup support
If we can’t match a TIN to a business’s exact name, we’ll perform additional lookups to see if the business is registered under a similar name, or if it’s a completely different business.
Additional business verification information
Matching TINs to business names isn’t the only way Middesk can help verify businesses. Get other identity and risk-related information on a business, all in the same package.
How Bill introduced significant automation and efficiency to onboarding workflows
“With Middesk, we’ve introduced significant automation and efficiency into our onboarding flows. We can now compliantly auto-approve over 50% of new applicants, eliminate the risk of onboarding bad actors, and convert good customers faster using their technology."
How Checkr acquired a new customer segment by automating regulatory compliance with Middesk
"Middesk has taken the brunt of the compliance workload off of our customer support team so they can continue helping our customers with timely resolutions to any issue they encounter with their background checks."
How Radius Bank finds more hours in the day with Middesk
“Every minute we’re able to save in processing loans is a minute faster than a small business will have access to the capital they need. With Middesk, what ordinarily would have taken us hours to do is now taking us minutes. We take pride in partnering with technology companies that help us serve our customers better.”
How Novo redefines its KYB process with Middesk’s verification product
“Middesk's market-leading methods challenge the established legacy approach to verification. Their product has unlocked significant efficiency, enhancing the onboarding experience for small businesses to access Novo. Middesk’s ground-up approach to product development played an integral part in increasing confidence in KYB, both internally and with partners.”
Driving team efficiency and performance with Clearco
“Middesk's Lien Search product has allowed my team to focus on value-add activities like making deals rather than tedious tasks like sifting through UCC portals. My team is faster and happier with getting business owners the capital they need to grow their businesses.”
Leveling up Plaid’s onboarding process with seamless KYB
“When a customer signs up for Plaid, they want to start building on our APIs right away. Middesk has been a critical partner enabling us to quickly and seamlessly onboard new customers.”
Frequently Asked Questions about TIN verifier tools
Checking that a business’s name and its TIN match is a required step when your company wants to work with another business. You’re legally obligated to verify a business is real, what it claims to be, and not a significant risk to your business (legally, reputationally, operationally, etc.).
But matching a business’s name to a TIN to ensure it’s registered to pay taxes – and, therefore, operate – in the U.S. is just one small part of business identity verification. And consider that you may have to do it for hundreds (or even thousands) of clients, not only during onboarding, but also periodically as part of ongoing risk assessment.
Doing these checks manually will take up way too much of your time and put you behind on the rest of your work. So it’s much more efficient to find a tool that can automate the process of IRS TIN matching for businesses. The time you save on AML compliance tasks can then be used towards doing what your company is meant to do.
A business has to apply directly to the IRS for a TIN. If the application is approved, the IRS assigns the business a unique TIN called an EIN (Employer Identification Number).
No. Every business in the U.S. has a unique TIN that specifically identifies that business when it files tax returns with the IRS. However, a business may need to apply for a different TIN if it changes its ownership structure, such as if it evolves from a partnership into an LLC or corporation. This is fairly rare, though.
A business TIN, or EIN, is a 9-digit number in the form “XX-XXXXXXX”. The first two numbers are only allowed to be in certain combinations, as per the IRS’s list of valid EIN prefixes. This is an easy way to tell if a business’s TIN is legitimate (i.e. it will never start with 00, 07, 08, 09, 17, 18, 19, 28, 29, 49, 69, 70, 78, 79, 89, 96, or 97).
TIN matching is required as part of Know Your Business (KYB). This is a mandatory process where companies that want to work with other businesses have to first check that those businesses are authentic, truthfully representing themselves, and operating within applicable laws. This also includes identifying a business’s ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs) and determining if they’re real people who are who they claim to be.
Additionally, KYB involves assessing the risks of working with other businesses based on factors like industry classification, adverse media (negative news) coverage, sanctions lists, and so on.
Yes, and TIN matching on the IRS website is free (though you have to create an account to use it). There are usually two issues with free TIN matching e-services, though. One is that it can be difficult to find out where third-party matching tools (i.e. those not provided by government agencies like the IRS) get their data from, so the information may not be reliable.
The other is the time it takes to get match results. Manually matching TINs to business names one at a time is horribly time-consuming and inefficient. And even with free tools that allow bulk TIN lookups (like the ones from the IRS), there are usually limits on how many combinations you can search at once, or the data takes a significant amount of time to be delivered.
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