A registration check confirms selected legal facts, not honesty, solvency or authority to offer a regulated service. Identify the contracting entity, check its official record, and perform separate checks relevant to the transaction.
Connect the invoice to the legal entity
Ask for the full legal name, jurisdiction and corporation or business number. Compare them with the official record and save a dated reference. If the trading name differs, ask which entity uses it before signing or paying.
Read status details, not just an active label. Public records reflect filings and may lag a recent change. For a material transaction, ask what official document the recipient or professional adviser requires.
Verify each claim separately
For a GST/HST claim, use the CRA confirmation service with the information it requests. For a licensed trade, check the responsible regulator. For a charitable receipt, check the CRA List of charities. These answer different questions.
A useful review note states the entity matched, sources consulted, dates and unresolved discrepancies. Avoid labelling a business fraud-free because a registry returned a result.
Define the question before collecting documents
Write the claim you need to confirm in a sentence: who is signing, whether the supplier is registered for GST/HST, or whether an organization appears on the CRA List of charities. Assign a source to each question. One successful check should not silently become the answer to the others.
For GST/HST, prepare the first nine digits of the account number, the supplier’s name and the transaction date. If the invoice name produces no result, CRA advises contacting the supplier for the exact name it provided to CRA. Do not substitute an unrelated company with a similar name.
Separate the result from the unresolved point
Organize your review into confirmed, inconsistent and not checked. For a charity claim, the CRA list supplies charity registration status and public information; federal not-for-profit incorporation alone does not establish that tax status. If an important identifier disagrees across documents, record the disagreement and request an explanation before treating the records as the same entity.
Example
Illustrative scenario: a supplier changes its invoice name
Imagine that a quotation and invoice show different legal names but use the same logo. Ask which entity is the contracting supplier and obtain its registry identifier. Check that entity, then perform the tax-account check using the required invoice information. Your final note can say that the registry matched while the name change still needs explanation; it should not conceal that gap behind a general “verified” badge.
| Question | Relevant source |
|---|---|
| Legal corporate record | Issuing corporate registry |
| GST/HST registration for a transaction | CRA GST/HST Registry |
| Registered charity status | CRA List of charities |
Check sales-tax registration separately
An identifier or corporation status does not confirm tax registration.
Sources and review
Content updated October 30, 2026. Source checked October 30, 2026. Examples illustrate the process; they do not describe a real corporation.