Data
DC trade licences and company dissolutions
Last updated October 28, 2026
Next update November 2026
Anyone doing business in Washington, DC needs a licence from the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection, DLCP. That includes the Maryland builder who takes a job across the line. DLCP publishes its licences in an open table. It publishes its company register too, with the status of every entity formed or registered in DC.
We collected two slices of those files. The first is the active licences of three trades: general contractors and construction managers, home improvement contractors and auto repair shops. The second is the DC companies that dissolved after filing a report in 2023 or later. We read our database on 28 October 2026. It held 6,010 licence rows on 5,914 companies, and 3,578 dissolved entities on 3,575 companies. This page counts both, and then shows what our pipeline did with them.
The licence table has one thing the Delaware licence file lacks: the date each licence was first issued. So this page can say how long each holder has been licensed in DC.
Licences by activity and address
6,005 of the licences were in DLCP’s active table when we read it. Each row counts one licence number, by the state of the address on the licence.
| Activity | Licences | DC | Maryland | Virginia | Other states |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General Contractor/Construction Manager | 4,982 | 1,018 | 2,324 | 1,090 | 550 |
| Home Improvement Contractor | 945 | 154 | 537 | 208 | 46 |
| Consumer Goods (Auto Repair) | 78 | 78 | – | – | – |
| All three | 6,005 | 1,250 | 2,861 | 1,298 | 596 |
Four in five licences, 4,755 or 79.2%, belong to a business based outside DC. Maryland alone holds 2,861, or 47.6%. Virginia holds 1,298, DC 1,250. The other 596 are spread over 43 states, Pennsylvania first with 102. Every one of the 78 auto repair licences has a DC address, which makes sense for a shop: the customer drives in.
The holders are mostly companies formed somewhere else. 4,098 licences, 68.2%, belong to an entity the table types as foreign, formed outside DC. 3,863 of those have an address outside DC too.
How long the licences have been held
The table gives each licence an initial issue date. We counted the years from that date to the day of our read.
Alaska’s licence layer counts the same way for every kind of business; see Alaska business licences by age and trade.
| Activity | Under 2 | 2–4 | 5–9 | 10–19 | 20+ | 10+ share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General Contractor/Construction Manager | 1,572 | 1,446 | 1,192 | 771 | 1 | 15.5% |
| Home Improvement Contractor | 289 | 215 | 175 | 204 | 62 | 28.1% |
| Consumer Goods (Auto Repair) | 13 | 13 | 14 | 29 | 9 | 48.7% |
| All three | 1,874 | 1,674 | 1,381 | 1,004 | 72 | 17.9% |
Each row adds up to its count in the first table. Every licence carries an issue date. The oldest is from 1989, and 875 were first issued in 2026.
1,076 licences, 17.9%, were first issued ten or more years ago. The auto repair shops are the oldest group: half of them have held their licence 9.9 years or more. Home improvement contractors come next, with 62 licensed for 20 years or more.
The general contractor row needs a caution. Only three of its 4,982 licences show a first issue date before 2009. 57 show 2009 and 138 show 2010. The table doesn’t say why the dates start there. So read a general contractor’s age here as a floor, not as the age of the business.
By where the holder is based, the shares barely move.
| Address state | Licences | Under 5 yrs | 5–9 | 10+ | 10+ share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DC | 1,250 | 716 | 301 | 233 | 18.6% |
| Maryland | 2,861 | 1,654 | 689 | 518 | 18.1% |
| Virginia | 1,298 | 801 | 266 | 231 | 17.8% |
| Other states | 596 | 377 | 125 | 94 | 15.8% |
A DC licence is a small part of most of these businesses’ paperwork. A Maryland contractor licensed in DC for twelve years may have run jobs at home for longer. For contractor licences that other states publish with a first issue date, see our trade licence age table.
The licence period
Since 1 August 2025, DLCP says, a licence runs “from the date of issuance until the last day of the same month two or four years later”. The customer picks the term. Of the 6,005 licences, 4,349 run about two years from their current start date and 1,446 about four. 210 show another length. None had passed its end date at our read; 389 end later in 2026.
General and home improvement contractors must submit “two (2) pre-printed Contracts” with their application, DLCP says. So a DC contractor licence starts with a written contract form. The contracts a contractor signs on jobs are records too.
Dissolved DC companies
DLCP’s Corporations Division keeps the register of entities formed or registered in DC. Its table held 505,990 entities at our read, and 32,492 were domestic entities with the status Dissolved.
The table has no dissolution date. For two states that publish a dissolution date, see company dissolutions in Colorado and Connecticut. Here we took the dissolved domestic entities whose last report was filed on 1 January 2023 or later: 4,159 at our read. A recent report is the best sign the table gives that a company was still on file close to its end. DLCP’s FAQ says an entity “no longer conducting business in DC” must “submit articles of dissolution or similar filing”. We left out the 581 nonprofit corporations. That leaves 3,578 entities.
| Entity type | Dissolved | Under 2 yrs | 2–4 | 5–9 | 10–19 | 20+ | Dates out of order |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Limited liability companies | 3,014 | 1,049 | 913 | 567 | 378 | 93 | 14 |
| Business corporations | 486 | 70 | 81 | 62 | 82 | 186 | 5 |
| Partnerships, co-ops and trusts | 78 | 13 | 12 | 8 | 9 | 36 | 0 |
| All | 3,578 | 1,132 | 1,006 | 637 | 469 | 315 | 19 |
The years run from the entity’s effective date to its last report, the latest date the table shows it on file. 19 entities show a last report before their effective date, and we keep them out of the bands. Of the other 3,559, 784 or 22.0% had been on the register ten years or more by their last report. 315, or 8.9%, had passed twenty.
The corporations are much older than the LLCs. 186 of the 481 corporations with dates in order, 38.7%, had passed twenty years. Among the LLCs it was 93 of 3,000, or 3.1%. Most of the entities are young: 1,937 of the 3,578 were formed in 2020 or later.
| Year of the last report | Dissolved |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 1,204 |
| 2024 | 1,321 |
| 2025 | 720 |
| 2026, to 28 Oct | 333 |
| All | 3,578 |
The report is due every two years, by 1 April, according to DLCP’s FAQ. So a company with a 2025 or 2026 report was on the books very recently. When it dissolved, the table doesn’t say.
Most were DC-based. 2,849 entities, 79.6%, have a business address in DC. 276 are in Maryland, 155 in Virginia and 285 in 40 other states. 13 give an address outside the US.
What our pipeline did with the licences
Each licence was matched against the companies we already held, by name and place. The 6,010 rows sit on 6,006 licence numbers and 5,914 companies, because some companies hold more than one licence.
| Into the database | Companies |
|---|---|
| New companies | 3,993 |
| Matched to a company we held | 1,921 |
| All | 5,914 |
The new companies are 3,917 general and home improvement contractors and 76 auto repair shops. The 1,921 matched ones came in first from another public file, which gives each two independent records of its trade.
| First source of the matched company | Companies |
|---|---|
| Virginia, Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation | 1,708 |
| New York City, Department of Buildings | 77 |
| Florida, Department of Business and Professional Regulation | 37 |
| Iowa, contractor registrations | 27 |
| Texas, Department of Licensing and Regulation | 21 |
| New Jersey, Division of Consumer Affairs | 19 |
| Connecticut, Department of Consumer Protection | 14 |
| California, Contractors State License Board | 10 |
| Three other files | 8 |
| All | 1,921 |
The matched companies keep the trade their first record gave them: 1,562 general, 152 electrical, 100 plumbing, 70 roofing, 34 HVAC and 3 moving.
| Lane and status | New | Matched | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lane C, qualified | 3,986 | 1,888 | 5,874 |
| Lane C, held for a name check | 5 | 6 | 11 |
| Lane C, already contacted | – | 18 | 18 |
| 30 or more people on record, qualified | 1 | 5 | 6 |
| 30 or more people on record, contacted | – | 4 | 4 |
| Excluded | 1 | – | 1 |
| All | 3,993 | 1,921 | 5,914 |
Our pipeline puts every company in one lane, by headcount. Lane C is every company under 30 people or with no headcount on record, and Polyshares is its buyer. 5,903 companies, 99.8%, sit in lane C. The 11 held ones have a word in a name our risk check stops on, such as “bank” or “medical”; a person clears them or they stay out of outreach. Ten companies show 30 or more people in another record, so they belong to our programme for larger companies, not to this page’s buyer. At the read, 5 of the 5,914 had a website on record.
What our pipeline did with the dissolutions
The 3,578 entities sit on 3,575 companies. 3,572 were new to the database and 3 matched a company we held.
| Lane and status | Companies |
|---|---|
| Lane C, qualified | 3,414 |
| Lane C, held for a name check | 99 |
| Excluded, a site of a company that continues | 51 |
| Excluded, a school, university or staffing name | 10 |
| 30 or more people on record, held for a check | 1 |
| All | 3,575 |
The register has no headcount, so a dissolved company with no other record goes to lane C. 95.5% of them sit there as qualified. The 99 held ones have a word such as “health”, “financial” or “lab” in the name; sensitive records are not something we put in front of a buyer without a person looking first. One shows 37 people in a benefit plan filing and is held for a closure check. None of the 3,575 had a website on record at the read.
What a licence and a dissolution say about the record
A DC licence says a company paid its fee and may work in the District. A dissolution says a company filed to close in DC. Neither says what paperwork sits behind it.
What Polyshares looks at is the record itself. Its home page says “the length and texture of the record matter more than headcount or revenue.” It names construction among the sectors it takes, and says it takes “any company with real operating history, in any sector.” Its published terms say nothing either way about a company that has already closed. If yours has, ask before you count on it.
Polyshares publishes a few of its deals. One is a general contractor at $300,000 (indicative, not an offer), on a “perpetual exclusive license to the operational record,” “anonymized before delivery.” Another is a roofing company at $450,000 (indicative, not an offer). A published deal is one company’s price. It doesn’t predict anyone else’s.
In our reading, the records that count for a DC contractor are the bids and takeoffs, the signed contracts, change orders, permit and inspection results, punch lists and closeout files. Our page on job files and work orders walks through those. For an auto repair shop it’s the repair orders, the diagnosis notes and the parts records, the subject of our page for auto repair shops. Our explainer on what data buyers actually want from a trade business puts them in order.
Polyshares counts “spreadsheets, CRM history, support tickets” and “accounting and ERP exports” as operational data. On price it says: “Depth of operating history and how much visible reasoning the record contains move the number far more than raw volume does.” A licence date gives the depth a starting line. The files behind it give the reasoning.
How many years of yours can you still open? Our estimate takes two minutes and asks exactly that.
What the tables do not prove
A licence’s issue date is when DC first licensed that licence number. It isn’t when the business started, and a business may have worked in Maryland or Virginia for years before. For general contractors, as above, the dates barely reach back before 2009.
A dissolution with a recent report shows a company that was filing until recently. DLCP’s FAQ says an entity “must be in active status and good standing to file” articles of dissolution, so some of these last reports may have been filed to close the company. A dissolution doesn’t show when it stopped trading, how many people it had or whether it kept its records. The years from formation to last report are a floor on the company’s life, not its length.
Neither file carries a headcount. Our lane is the pipeline’s reading of the records we hold, not a buyer’s decision. Polyshares decides on its own review; it says it reads “a sample of the record” before it prices.
What is never included
This page holds counts only. It names no company and shows no licence number, file number, address or person.
In a licence of records, the customer’s own information stays out. Polyshares says its licence “does not cover what you hold on behalf of your own clients.” It also says identifying fields, customer names, emails and account numbers are “stripped by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any lab sees the record.” Our advice: payment card numbers, bank statements and payroll should never be in an export at all. How it’s safe walks through what leaves your systems, and when.
Methodology
The licence file. DLCP’s Basic Business License Table on the DC GIS open data service, the same data Open Data DC publishes as Basic Business Licenses. At our read it held 281,006 rows, and 203,170 of them had a status other than Active (count queries on the layer at 11:27 UTC). Our collector takes the licences with the status Active in three activities: General Contractor/Construction Manager, Home Improvement Contractor and Consumer Goods (Auto Repair). It keeps one row per customer number and skips a row with no name or with an address in Canada. Address state is the state in the premise address, else the billing address, else DC when the table marks the premise as in DC.
The register. DLCP’s Corporate Registration Table on the same DC GIS server. Our collector takes the entities with the status Dissolved, the locale Domestic and a last report filed on or after 1 January 2023, drops nonprofit corporations and keeps one row per file number. It does not take Revoked or Withdrawn entities. Address state is the state of the business address; an address with a country other than the US counts as abroad. The entity rows group the table’s entity types: the partnership row holds limited partnerships, limited liability partnerships, cooperative associations and one statutory trust.
When we read it. We read the host database read-only on 28 October 2026 between 11:10 and 11:15 UTC. Its rows were last refreshed from DC GIS at 10:09 UTC that morning. The activity, address and dates of each row come from the two layers, read through their open query API at 11:11 UTC and joined to the database on the customer number and the file number. Of the 6,006 licence numbers in the database, 6,005 were in that read; the last one was collected on 25 October and was no longer in the active list, so the activity, address and age tables count 6,005. All 3,578 file numbers were in the read. The totals of the register, 505,990 entities and 32,492 dissolved domestic ones, are count queries on the same layer at 11:14 UTC.
Years. Licence age is the days from the initial issue date to 28 October 2026, divided by 365.25. The dissolution age is the days from the effective date to the date of the last report filed, divided the same way. The bands are under 2, 2 to 4, 5 to 9, 10 to 19, and 20 or more. Shares are of each row’s total, rounded to one decimal. The licence period is the current start date to the end date, rounded to whole years.
Companies. A company is a row in our database. A licence or entity matched to a company we already held adds a source record to it and changes neither its trade nor its lane. Four licence numbers sit on two companies each, which is why 6,010 rows carry 6,006 numbers. No company holds both a DC licence and a DC dissolution. The lane and status are the pipeline’s own at the read, set by our qualification step.
Left out. The other activities of the licence table, and DC’s licences for electricians, plumbers and refrigeration mechanics, which we have not found as open data. In the register: active, revoked and withdrawn entities, nonprofits, and dissolved ones whose last report was filed before 2023.
Refresh. The tables are rebuilt monthly from a fresh download and a new read of the database. The next update is due 28 November 2026.
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Sources
- DC GIS, Basic Business License Table (FEEDS/DCRA FeatureServer/0; Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection), layer description and fields
- Open Data DC, Basic Business Licenses: the dataset page
- DC GIS, Corporate Registration Table (DCGIS_DATA/Business_Licensing_and_Grants_WebMercator FeatureServer/0; DLCP Corporations Division), layer description and fields
- DLCP, Business Licensing Division: who must be licensed, and the activities by category
- DLCP, Basic Business License Renewal Overview: two-year and four-year licence periods since 1 August 2025
- DLCP, Contract Details: the pre-printed contracts general and home improvement contractors submit
- DLCP, Corporations Division: Business Registration FAQs (the two-year report, articles of dissolution)
- Polyshares, home page: who qualifies, the length and texture of the record, anonymisation, what the licence does not cover (polyshares.com)
- Polyshares, case studies: the general contractor at $300,000 and the roofing company at $450,000 (polyshares.com)