How can I find out who is the owner of an LLC?
There might come a time when you need to find out exactly who owns an LLC corporation. Is it possible? Can you search and find out who is the owner of an LLC? The general answer seems to be that yes, you can search the Secretary of State business records for each of the 50 states to find out which state the LLC is formed in and who owns it. However, a lot of times the members of the LLC are not publicly disclosed. The short answer is to check the registration and see if they are listed.
Let’s pose the question to our community of Start a Business Hub experts and see what they think.
By searching the Secretary of State Business Records for all 50 states, one at a time. Then pull up the annual report, which usually requires that the LLC list a manager or member. Note that even though many states don’t require this info for setting up an LLC, it’s required for the annual report (except in 2 states, which don’t require annual reports to be filed).
Once you’ve found the manager or member, you can contact them at the address given, or go through the registered agent. A simple and painless (for me) way to force the members to reveal themselves is by filing in Small Claims Court, and having the registered agent served. The members will have to answer the complaint, and give their true names and addresses in doing so. At that point, you can just drop the small claims suit.
Lewis De Payne
Most states have an entity search function on the website of the Secretary of State or revenue agency for the state. I would start there and you might get lucky. Every state is different about what information they make public on state entities, but few states publish the ownership information any more due to privacy and identity theft concerns.
You will probably find out who the Registered Agent is for the LLC and that may or may not be one of the owners. More likely it will be an attorney or CPA for the business.
So end result is unless you are another government agency or have a court order to be told the ownership, you probably don’t find out who owns any particular LLC, but you might.
Wray Rives
In most cases, the members of an LLC, who own the LLC, are not publicly disclosed. The best you can do is look up the registration and if you are lucky, the members will be disclosed. If not, you have to contact the registered agent and they will or will not disclose the members at their discretion. You may be able to look up the members if there are other filings, such as for business licences or other permits or registrations.
Chang Han
If you are looking to find the details of an owner of an LLC, then you need to figure out which state they are incorporated in and then do a business entity search on the Secretary of State website to find their details – assuming they are publicly disclosed!
