Information Center: Your Go-To Resource for All Things Compliance

It’s exciting to take on a new challenge and expand your horizons. But it’s a rare person who can get excited about handling the government paperwork that comes along with those ambitious plans—the licenses you need to launch a line of services, the steps required to enter a new state, the flurry of filings required to rebrand under a new name. In fact, with more than 150,000 licensing agencies in the U.S., it can be hard to know where to begin.

Fortunately, we have the perfect starting point: the Harbor Compliance Information Center.

Our Information Center is a 4,000-plus-page library of compliance content that has been featured by the Library of Congress, the Small Business Administration, SCORE, Charity Navigator, and other national organizations. If you’re just getting started with a venture and you’re not sure what requirements might apply, you’ll find high-level guides to acquaint you with the concepts and summarize the processes. If you have a specific activity or jurisdiction in mind and want step-by-step instructions for getting licensed and registered, you’ll find those details broken down for every U.S. state.

And it’s all organized to take you to the information you need quickly. Need the number of the secretary of state in Minnesota? It’s two clicks from our home page. Want to know how long it takes to qualify to do business in Nevada? Two clicks. Wondering how much it costs to form a nonprofit in California? Two clicks.

This quick tour walks you through the main content areas featured in the Information Center. We hope it will inspire you to explore on your own, and to bookmark, share, and download the content that is most relevant to you.

Web Guides: Step-by-Step Guidance

If you’re looking for a high-level overview of requirements, our web guides are a great place to start your regulatory research. Our most popular guides cover Nonprofit Startups, Fundraising Compliance, and Business Compliance. The guides include interactive maps and links to deeper pages with details like filing instructions, deadlines, fees, government contact information, and direct links to application forms, all broken down by state. Just click through to the specifics you need and you’re ready to move forward.

White Papers, Webinars, and Guides: Content to Save and Share

This section of the Information Center covers specific topics in a variety of formats suitable for downloading, bookmarking, and sharing. Subjects include annual reports, engineering licensing, fundraising registrations, grant seeking, and tax exemptions. Download a white paper, share a guide with a colleague, sign up for an email series, or register to attend a webinar—whichever suits you best!

Secretary of State Filings: Corporate Filing Central

Our secretary of state resources cover filings for every phase in an organization’s lifecycle, from formation to expansion to dissolution. You’ll find resources for forming entities, filing annual reports, foreign qualification, appointing or changing a registered agent, researching and reserving a name, restructuring or dissolving entities, and retrieving documents such as apostilles and certificates of good standing. Each page leads to deeper content for every state.

Business Licenses: General and Industry-Specific Guides

Our licensing center covers general business licenses as well as specific requirements for architecture, energy, engineering, construction, pharmaceuticals, employment, insurance, transportation, and other industries. You’ll find details for each jurisdiction so you can quickly dial into specifics for your business.

Tax Registrations and Exemptions: Forms and Instructions

In this section, you’ll find instructions and resources for the gamut of tax registrations and exemptions, including payroll, sales and use, corporate income and privilege, and more. Find out where registration is required and how to file.

Resources by State: a Regulatory Profile of Every State

When you need to research requirements in a particular state, this section of our Information Center is a powerful searching tool. Each page includes exhaustive resources, including a list of jurisdictions, for each state. If you haven’t toured one of our state pages, you should take a look. Just visit the Information Center and scroll down the page to the “Resources by State” section.

References: Search Tools and More

Finally, our Information Center provides a group of powerful tools to make your compliance research easier, including:

Our Government Agency Search tool with links to 1,248 agencies
Our Business Entity Search tool, which lets you search for an available business name or locate an existing business
50-state directories of secretaries of state and departments of revenue
A breakdown of entity formation fees and expedite options by state
A detailed breakdown of corporate governance requirements for nonprofits and businesses
A 50-state chart of company suffix requirements by entity type and state

So whenever you’re facing a new requirement, a new jurisdiction, or a thorny regulatory question, we hope you’ll find our Information Center helpful. And if you reach the point where you just want to skip the paperwork and move forward with your plans, we can make that happen. Just contact us or call 1-888-995-5895. It’s what we do best!