This is not legal advice, and this site asserts nothing about what you are obliged to publish. We are not qualified to tell you, we do not know your circumstances, and a website that guessed at this would be doing you harm while appearing to help. What follows is a map of the question and a route to primary sources. It is not an answer.
Scope. This post does not state what any law or authority requires of anybody, in any jurisdiction. That is a standing editorial boundary rather than a gap: the answer depends on your legal form, your sector, where you are and who you sell to, we are not qualified to give it, and a general page that guessed would be worse than a page that declined. What follows names the categories to ask about and describes how to find the body whose published material governs your situation — that body, and an adviser qualified where you are, are where your answer actually lives.
What this is, and who it is for
You are building or fixing a small business website, and somebody has told you it must display certain details. Possibly your accountant, possibly a forum, possibly a checklist you found. You want to know which details, and whether it applies to you.
The honest answer is that it depends on your legal form, your sector and where you are, and that we cannot resolve any of those for you.
That sounds like a non-answer, and it is the most useful thing we can offer. The alternative, which is what most pages on this subject do, is to state one country's rules confidently and let you assume they are yours. That happens constantly. A rule that applies to a particular kind of company in a particular jurisdiction gets repeated as a universal fact about websites, then gets copied onto the next site, and then it is everywhere and unattributed. It may well be correct where it came from. Whether it reaches you is exactly the thing nobody checked.
So this post does two things. It describes the categories of detail that come up in these discussions, so you know what to ask about. And it describes how to find the body whose published material would settle each of them for your legal form, your sector and your location.
Why this post names sources instead of giving answers
Three reasons, and the third is the important one.
We are not qualified. Nobody here is a lawyer in your jurisdiction, and a confident answer from an unqualified source is worse than no answer, because you would stop looking.
The answer varies more than people expect. Not only between countries. Between legal forms in the same country, between sectors, between selling to consumers and selling to businesses, and between selling locally and selling across a border. A single fact about your business can change the answer entirely.
A wrong answer here is expensive in a way a wrong answer elsewhere is not. If we are wrong about opening hours, someone is inconvenienced. If we were wrong about this, someone could publish their home address on the internet because a website told them they had to, or omit something that mattered because a website told them they did not. Neither is recoverable.
That is the same standard we hold ourselves to on every claim about a third party: checked and dated, or quoted and attributed. There is no third category. A jurisdiction-specific requirement is neither of those things for us, so it is not something we state, and that is why this post points at bodies rather than at rules.
The categories of detail that commonly come up
These are the categories that appear in discussions of business identity on websites. Listing a category is not a statement that it applies to you, or that any authority requires it. It is a list of things to ask about.
- The legal name of the entity, which may differ from the trading name customers know you by.
- The legal form, meaning whether the business is an individual trading under their own name, a partnership, a company, or something else.
- A registration number, where the entity is registered with a national or regional registry.
- A geographic address, and where relevant which of your addresses that means. The three terms that catch people out are set out at which address is which.
- A contact route, and sometimes specific requirements about what kind.
- Tax registration identifiers, where the business is registered for a transaction tax.
- Sector authorisations, meaning a licence, registration or authorisation number for a regulated activity, and the name of the body that issued it.
- Professional body membership, where a profession is governed by one.
- Terms of sale, including information about cancellation, returns and complaints, particularly where selling at a distance to consumers.
- Data protection information, meaning what you do with personal data and under what basis.
Two observations that are ours rather than anyone's law. Most of these are short. And several of them are things a cautious buyer looks for anyway when deciding whether a small business is real, which means publishing them can serve you independently of whether anything requires it.
Why the answer depends on your legal form, your sector and where you are
Four variables, each of which can change the answer on its own.
Legal form. A registered company and an individual trading under their own name are different things to a registry, and the identity information attached to each differs. Assuming that advice written for one applies to the other is a common and understandable error.
Sector. Regulated activities carry their own disclosure regimes on top of anything general. Finance, health, food, property, law, transport and many others each have their own supervisory bodies with their own rules about what must be stated. If you are in one of these, the general answer is unlikely to be your answer.
Jurisdiction. Rules are national or regional and there is no global standard. This is the variable most often flattened in online advice.
Who you sell to, and where they are. Selling to consumers is commonly treated differently from selling to businesses, and selling across a border can bring another jurisdiction's rules into play. A small operator with customers in two countries may face a question with two answers.
The practical consequence: when you find advice on this subject, the first thing to establish is which combination of those four it was written for. If the page does not say, it is not usable, however confident it sounds.
How to find the body whose answer counts
There is no single authority for this, which is why there is no single answer. There is a reliable way to work out whose published material governs your situation, and it runs through facts about your own business rather than through a search engine.
Start from your legal form, and from whoever holds the record of it. If the business was registered somewhere, that body issued a number and sent a confirmation, and the body named on that confirmation is your first primary source. Its own site is where its published material sits, which is a different thing from an article about it. If nothing was registered anywhere, that is itself informative, because it changes which of the categories above can attach to you at all.
Then your sector. If the activity is supervised, there is a body that supervises it, and its material sits on top of anything general. The body that issued your licence, registration or authorisation — or the body you would have to approach if you needed one — publishes for its own sector, and that is the material closest to your position.
Then who you sell to. Where you sell to consumers, the relevant authority is usually a different one from the registry that holds your entity: a consumer-protection or trading-practices body, national or regional. It publishes separately, and people routinely consult the registry and stop there.
Then personal data. Where a jurisdiction supervises the handling of personal data, there is a body that does the supervising, and it commonly publishes material aimed at small organisations. That is the one to approach about what you publish concerning people, including yourself.
Then read what you find like a source, rather than like an answer. Search for the body rather than the topic. The name of an authority alongside "guidance" or "small business" reaches its own material; the topic on its own reaches an ocean of unattributed articles written about somewhere else. On any page you land on, look for who published it, when, which jurisdiction it is written for, and which legal form. A page missing any of those four cannot be used for this, however confident it sounds.
Two things this route gives you that an answer from us would not. It ends at a source with a name and a date attached, which is something you can put in front of an accountant or an adviser. And it stays correct when the underlying material changes, because it points at the thing that changes rather than at somebody's copy of it.
What this post does not establish
Stated plainly, because a post like this is judged on what it admits.
We do not state any jurisdiction-specific requirement. The section above points at bodies for that reason, and points at nothing else.
We do not state whether any of these categories applies to sole traders and individuals in the same way as to registered entities, anywhere. That distinction is one of the places where general advice most often goes wrong.
We do not state anything about regulated sectors, in any jurisdiction. If you are in one, the general position is unlikely to be your position and a general source is unlikely to help you.
We do not state anything about cross-border selling, which can bring a second jurisdiction's material into the question and therefore a second body.
We do not state whether any authority anywhere requires a physical address to be displayed on a website, or in what circumstances. That is the most consequential question a reader arrives with, because of the section that follows, and it is precisely the question we will not guess at.
The privacy tension for home-run businesses
A great many small businesses run out of the place someone lives. If any rule does require an address to be published, and the only address is a home, there is a genuine conflict between a legal question and a personal safety one. It is not solved by a website telling you what to do.
What we can say without asserting anything about your obligations.
We will never publish a residential address, at any time, at any request, including where a home is the registered or trading address of a business. That is our rule about our own conduct and it does not bend. It is set out at local and physical.
Do not publish your home address on your own site because an unattributed page told you to. Establish first whether anything actually requires it in your jurisdiction, for your legal form and sector. That is a question for a primary source or a qualified adviser, not for a blog post, including this one.
Understand the vocabulary before you act. Registered address, trading address and service address are three different things and are routinely confused, which is where a lot of unnecessary home-address publication comes from. Which address is which sets out the terms.
Know the options that exist, and separate them from the question of whether any of them satisfies a requirement. What never goes on a contact page describes the common arrangements, names no provider, and is explicit that whether any arrangement is acceptable for a given purpose is exactly the thing to verify with a primary source.
If you are in this position and cannot resolve it, that is a real bind rather than a failure of research on your part, and the person to take it to is qualified in your jurisdiction. We would rather say that than produce a workaround dressed as advice.
What we ask for, and what we publish
Since we publish about businesses, our own position should be visible.
What we ask for when considering an entry is small: what the business is, a route by which a stranger can reach it, and enough for us to confirm it is trading. Our requirements are almost certainly less than any legal requirement that may apply to you, and clearing our bar tells you nothing about whether you have met an obligation elsewhere. The seven-item floor is about being legible to a stranger, and no more.
What we publish is less than what we hold. We never publish a residential address, a personal mobile, a personal email or the names of household members. We do not publish anything we have not verified on a date, and we show the date so you can judge it yourself.
What we will not do is assess anyone's compliance. We do not check it, we do not comment on it, and the absence of a detail from a business's website is not something we would treat as a finding. We are not equipped to make that judgement and it would be irresponsible to imply otherwise.
If you have a question about how we handle any of this, common questions covers the usual ones, and the rest of this section is at shopfront basics.
In Plain English
Somebody has probably told you your website must display certain business details. They may be right. Whether they are right about you depends on your legal form, your sector, where you are and who you sell to, and we cannot resolve any of that.
Most online advice on this subject states one country's rules as though they were universal. Some of it is accurate where it came from. Almost none of it says where it came from, which makes it unusable.
So this post gives you the categories to ask about and describes how to find the body whose published material governs your legal form, your sector and your location. Nothing here is a statement of law, and it is not written to become one.
One thing we will state without hedging, because it is about our conduct rather than your obligations: we will never publish a residential address, and we would not want you to publish yours because an unattributed page said you had to. Check that with a primary source first.
Check the source ledger at our source ledger.