Researching a company in Mexico, Chile and Colombia: the open registries

The first time I had to vet a supplier outside Argentina, I did what I would have done at home in Rosario: I asked for the tax number. It was the right instinct and the wrong map. In Chile the number was a RUT, in Mexico an RFC, in Colombia a NIT, and each one opened a different set of doors. Some of those doors are free and open to anyone. Others need an account, a local lawyer or a fee.

This guide covers the open ones, for one practical purpose: confirming that a business you are about to pay or sign with exists, is registered for tax and has not been flagged by the tax authority. It is about companies. Where these systems also touch individuals, I say so near the end.

If you have read my routine for checking a company before you pay it, the logic will feel familiar. Only the agency names change, and in Latin America there are a lot of them.

Three questions, whatever the country

Before reviews or websites, I try to answer three questions from official sources:

1. Is the tax registration real and active? Every company that invoices legally has a tax ID, and every tax agency in the region offers some way to confirm it.
2. Does the legal entity exist, and who can sign for it? That lives in a company registry, which may be national, split among states or run by chambers of commerce.
3. Has anything official been published about it? Official gazettes, court portals and lists kept by the tax authority fill that gap.

Mexico: the RFC, the SAT and the commercial registry

What the SAT will confirm

Mexico's tax agency is the SAT (Servicio de Administración Tributaria, Tax Administration Service), and its taxpayer ID is the RFC (Registro Federal de Contribuyentes, Federal Taxpayer Registry). A company's RFC has 12 characters: letters taken from its name, the date it was incorporated and a three-character code assigned by the SAT, called the homoclave. A person's RFC has 13 characters and is built from their name and date of birth, which is one good reason to treat it as personal data.

Two checks are worth doing with any Mexican supplier:

• Ask for the constancia de situación fiscal (tax status certificate). The company downloads it from the SAT, and it shows the registered name, the tax regime and the fiscal address. A supplier that hesitates to send it is telling you something.
• Verify an invoice. Mexican electronic invoices are called CFDI (Comprobante Fiscal Digital por Internet, digital tax receipt). The SAT's invoice verification page asks for the invoice's folio fiscal (the long unique code printed on it) plus the RFCs of the issuer and the recipient, and tells you whether the SAT has a record of that invoice. No account is needed.

The 69-B lists

Since 2014, article 69-B of the Código Fiscal de la Federación (Federal Tax Code) has allowed the SAT to publish taxpayers it believes issue invoices for operations that never happened: no staff, no assets, no real capacity to deliver what they bill, or simply nowhere to be found at their address. Accountants call them EFOS (empresas que facturan operaciones simuladas, companies that invoice simulated operations). The SAT publishes the lists on its website and in the Diario Oficial de la Federación, the federal gazette.

Each entry carries a status, and the status is what matters:

A definitivo entry should end the conversation. A client that deducted invoices from a listed issuer has to prove the goods or services were real, or correct its tax returns. Search the list by the company's RFC rather than its name, because trade names repeat and spellings vary.

SIGER and the Registro Público de Comercio

Incorporations, changes to bylaws and powers of attorney are recorded in the Registro Público de Comercio (Public Registry of Commerce). The Secretaría de Economía runs it together with state registry offices through a system called SIGER (Sistema Integral de Gestión Registral, integrated registry management system). Each company gets a folio mercantil electrónico, an electronic file that collects every act registered for it.

To search, you create a public user account on the SIGER portal and look the company up by name or folio number. What you get is a list of registered acts with dates. Certified copies are a separate request.

Two more Mexican sources round out the picture. The Secretaría de Economía's PSM (Publicaciones de Sociedades Mercantiles, commercial company publications), a free electronic system running since 2015, carries the notices that commercial law requires companies to publish, such as calls to shareholders' meetings and merger or liquidation notices. And Profeco, the federal consumer protection agency, runs a Buró Comercial (commercial bureau) that shows how many consumer complaints a business has received and how they ended.

Chile: one number that opens most doors

Chile is the easiest of the three, partly because one number does so much work. The RUT (Rol Único Tributario, single tax roll number) is assigned by the SII (Servicio de Impuestos Internos, Internal Revenue Service). For people, the RUT is the same number as the RUN (Rol Único Nacional, single national roll number) on their identity card. Every RUT ends with a check digit after a hyphen, which can be a number or the letter K. The personal side of the number, and why it deserves care, is on our page about privacy and public records in Chile.

For a Chilean company, the routine I relied on in Santiago went in this order:

1. SII, situación tributaria de terceros (tax status of third parties). On the SII's public page you enter the company's RUT and see its name, the date it started activities, whether those activities are still current, its economic activity codes and the kinds of tax documents it is authorized to issue. A company that is not authorized to issue facturas (invoices) should not be invoicing you.
2. The Registro de Empresas y Sociedades (Registry of Companies and Partnerships). Since 2013, Law 20.659 has let people form companies online, at no cost, through this registry run by the Ministry of Economy. For companies created there, the registry's site offers free downloads of the certificate of existence (certificado de vigencia), the bylaws and later amendments.
3. The Diario Oficial (official gazette). Companies formed the traditional way, through a notary, must register an extract of the deed in the Registro de Comercio (commercial registry) kept by the local Conservador de Bienes Raíces (registrar of property and commerce) and publish it in the gazette within a short legal deadline. The electronic edition carries those extracts in its companies and cooperatives section.
4. The courts. The Poder Judicial (judiciary) runs an Oficina Judicial Virtual (virtual court office) with a unified case search. Cases that are not reserved can be searched by case number, by the name of a party or, for a company, by its RUT. Family matters stay closed.

Legal forms hint at structure: S.A. (sociedad anónima, corporation), Ltda. (sociedad de responsabilidad limitada, limited liability company), SpA (sociedad por acciones, a flexible share company popular with startups) and E.I.R.L. (empresa individual de responsabilidad limitada, a one-owner company).

Colombia: the NIT, the DIAN and the chambers of commerce

Colombia is where the acronyms collide. Its tax registry is also called RUT, but here it stands for Registro Único Tributario (single tax registry), and it is run by the DIAN (Dirección de Impuestos y Aduanas Nacionales, the national tax and customs office). The number that comes out of registering is the NIT (Número de Identificación Tributaria, tax identification number). A company's NIT is usually nine digits plus a check digit. For a person who registers, it is usually their cédula (national ID card) number with a check digit added.

• The DIAN's RUT status check tells you whether a registration is active. You enter the NIT without the check digit.
• RUES (Registro Único Empresarial y Social, single business and social registry) is the shared front end for the commercial registries kept by Colombia's chambers of commerce, coordinated by their national confederation, Confecámaras. A free search on RUES by name or NIT shows which chamber holds the registration, the company's status, its economic activity, its registered establishments, its legal representatives and the date of its last renewal. Commercial registrations must be renewed every year, in the first three months, so a renewal date several years old means the company has stopped keeping up.
• The certificado de existencia y representación legal (certificate of existence and legal representation) is the document Colombian businesses swap before signing anything. The chamber of commerce issues it for a fee, and it shows who can bind the company and any limits on their powers. If the person signing your contract does not appear on it, ask why.
• Supersociedades (Superintendencia de Sociedades, the companies regulator) offers free access to financial statements from the companies that report to it, through a portal called SIIS. Many small firms do not report there, so absence is not a red flag on its own.

Side by side

Compared with a US filing (see reading a Secretary of State business filing), these registries say more about who holds power inside the company, and Chile's free registry gives you the bylaws themselves.

When the company is one person

All three countries let individuals do business under their own names: a persona física con actividad empresarial (individual with business activity) in Mexico, a persona natural (natural person) who has filed a start of activities with the SII in Chile, a persona natural comerciante (individual merchant) in Colombia. The registries treat them like businesses, so their tax IDs, often derived from their national ID number or, in Mexico, their date of birth, show up on the same screens as a corporation's.

That is where company research ends and personal data begins. Confirming that a plumber in Valparaíso is authorized to issue receipts is a reasonable check. Collecting that plumber's ID number, home address and family details is not research, and data protection law covers it in all three countries. Mexico has had a new federal law for the private sector since March 2025, overseen by the Secretaría Anticorrupción y Buen Gobierno (anti-corruption and good governance ministry) since the former data institute, the INAI, was dissolved. Chile's Law 19.628 is due to give way to Law 21.719 in December 2026. Colombia's Law 1581 of 2012 is enforced by the SIC (Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio, the industry and commerce regulator).

A few habits keep me on the right side of that line:

• Search by the company's tax ID, never by a person's name, when the portal allows it.
• Write down only what the decision needs: registration status, the representative's name as the registry shows it, the relevant dates.
• Delete the copies of ID cards that suppliers sometimes send "for verification" once the contract no longer needs them.

Red flags that cross borders

• The name on the invoice differs from the registered legal name (razón social) for that tax ID.
• The tax registration is active, but the activity codes have nothing to do with what you are buying.
• The legal representative in the registry is not the person negotiating with you, and nobody can produce a power of attorney.
• The company was formed a few weeks ago and wants a large advance.
• The bank account belongs to a different name, or sits in a different country, than the company on the contract.

If you also deal with Argentine firms, the same three questions work there with the CUIT and the Boletín Oficial, which I cover in researching a business in Argentina.

Before you pay a supplier in Mexico, Chile or Colombia

1. Get the tax ID in writing and check it with the SAT, the SII or the DIAN.
2. Pull the registry record: SIGER, the Registro de Empresas y Sociedades or the Diario Oficial, or RUES.
3. Confirm who can sign, from the registry entry or the chamber of commerce certificate.
4. In Mexico, run the RFC against the 69-B lists.
5. If the amount is large or anything fails to match, pay a local lawyer or notary for an hour of records work.