There are many commercial services that offer a free FEIN (Federal Employer Identification Number) search by company name across multiple states simultaneously. All return different results and amount of detail. Free FEIN searches that also have a fee component are FEINSearch, freeERISA and KnowX. ReferenceUSA is entirely free.
The free portion of the service FEINSearch returns a list of companies with the corresponding city and state.
The results list of companies on KnowX also only shows city and state but the list is more expansive than the FEINSearch, possibly because of redundancy.
A search by name on freeERISA provides the FEIN, company address and phone number and the NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code number. Registration entitles you to 3 free searches. The freeERISA site elucidates the sources for the FEIN material, which is helpful for understanding the limitations of the database and why all FEINs aren’t listed.
ReferenceUSA, like all the other services, does not return Federal Employer Identification Numbers for all businesses. But the wealth of data in the database is akin to an abbreviated business credit report. This is just a small segment of a result. The ReferenceUSA database is available through online library sites.
FEIN’s can also be culled from corporation filings, Uniform Commercial Code documents, tax liens and real estate records.
Which is your favorite how-to-find-an-FEIN source?
for public record purposes I will like to be able to get FEIN for all kids of businesses