The Form CANCELLATION-MA Files dataset collects every EDGAR submission of form type CANCELLATION-MA — Commission-issued orders cancelling the registration of a named municipal advisor under Section 15B(c)(3) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. One record corresponds to one accession-numbered EDGAR submission, packaged as a metadata.json header and a single screen-reader-accessible PDF that is the cancellation order itself. Because the document is originated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rather than by a private-sector registrant, every submission enters EDGAR under the synthetic Commission CIK 9999999997, with the cancelled municipal advisor carried as the subject entity. The dataset begins in October 2021 and continues to the present, distributed as monthly ZIP containers organized as YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip.
Programmatically retrieve the full list of dataset archive files, download URLs and dataset metadata.
Dataset Index JSON API
Download the entire dataset as a single archive file.
Download Entire Dataset:
Download a single container file (e.g. monthly archive) from the dataset.
Download Single Container:
The dataset captures the full population of CANCELLATION-MA filings on EDGAR. Each record is a Commission release — a short, formal legal instrument that is release-numbered, dated, signed, and effective on a stated date — used to terminate the registration of a municipal advisor that is no longer in existence or has ceased doing business as a municipal advisor. The Commission, not the named advisor, originates the document; the advisor is the regulatory subject.
Records are delivered as monthly ZIP containers. Decompressing a container yields a top-level directory YYYY-MM/ whose children are per-filing accession folders, each named with the EDGAR accession number with dashes removed (for example 999999999725003780 for accession 9999999997-25-003780). Each folder contains exactly two artifacts: a metadata.json carrying the parsed EDGAR header, and the order PDF itself, named filename1.pdf and described by EDGAR as the "Screen Reader Accessible File." Image files from the original EDGAR submission are intentionally excluded; the canonical, human-readable artifact in the dataset is the PDF.
The record anatomy has been stable since inception in October 2021: the same monthly-ZIP container layout, the same metadata.json schema with the same set of header fields, and the same single-PDF document payload. Because cancellation events are rare and entirely Commission-driven, the dataset is small and grows slowly, with no change in required content, structural format, or file-format conventions across the period covered.
One record is a single EDGAR submission of form type CANCELLATION-MA. Physically, a record is one accession-numbered folder containing two artifacts: a metadata.json describing the EDGAR header for the submission, and a single PDF that is the cancellation order itself. The mapping is one-to-one across every dimension: one record per filing, one filing per cancellation event, one named municipal advisor per cancellation event.
CANCELLATION-MA is not a registrant-prepared disclosure form. It is a Commission release — an order issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cancelling the registration of a municipal advisor when the Commission finds, pursuant to Section 15B(c)(3) of the Exchange Act, that the registrant is no longer in existence or has ceased doing business as a municipal advisor. Because the Commission itself originates the document, the submissions enter EDGAR under the synthetic CIK 9999999997, the CIK EDGAR uses for Commission-issued documents rather than registrant-filed documents. The named municipal advisor — the subject of the order — is carried in the EDGAR header as a filer entity even though the submission is functionally an action taken against that entity. Each release is a short, formal legal instrument: release-numbered, dated, signed, and effective on a stated date.
Records are delivered inside monthly ZIP containers organized as YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip. Decompressing a container yields a top-level directory YYYY-MM/ whose children are per-filing accession folders. Each accession folder holds:
metadata.json — always present, a single JSON object carrying the parsed EDGAR header for the submission.filename1.pdf (the EDGAR sequence-1 document) and described by EDGAR as the "Screen Reader Accessible File."Image files from the original EDGAR submission are intentionally excluded from the dataset. The SGML complete-submission text wrapper is referenced in the metadata via URL but is not materialized on disk; the canonical, human-readable artifact in the dataset is the PDF.
metadata.json structureThe metadata file is a single JSON object that mirrors and normalizes the EDGAR submission header. The load-bearing fields for this form type are:
formType: always "CANCELLATION-MA".accessionNo: the dashed accession number (e.g., "9999999997-25-003780"). The leading 9999999997 CIK confirms a Commission-originated submission.filedAt: ISO-8601 timestamp with timezone offset (e.g., "2025-11-20T10:18:01-05:00") recording when the order was disseminated through EDGAR.description: free-text header string echoing the form type and the date-shaped tokens that also appear in items (e.g., "Form CANCELLATION-MA - - Item 20251120 Item 20251119").linkToFilingDetails: direct URL to the primary PDF on sec.gov.linkToTxt: URL to the EDGAR complete-submission .txt SGML wrapper.linkToHtml: URL to the EDGAR filing-index HTML page.linkToXbrl: empty string for this form type.id: an opaque MD5-shaped dataset-level identifier.documentFormatFiles: an array enumerating every document EDGAR exposes for the accession. The first entry has sequence: "1", type: "CANCELLATION-MA", description: "Screen Reader Accessible File", a documentUrl ending in filename1.pdf, and a byte-count size. A second entry, with whitespace-only sequence and type values, points at the SGML complete-submission .txt wrapper (description: "Complete submission text file"). The whitespace placeholders are how EDGAR indexes the wrapper file and are preserved verbatim.entities: a one-element array describing the municipal advisor that is the subject of the order. The entity object carries:
companyName — the legal name of the advisor with EDGAR's (Filer) role suffix appended.cik — the advisor's Central Index Key.irsNo — the advisor's IRS employer identification number, when present in the header.fileNo — the SEC file number, prefixed 867-, the EDGAR file-number series reserved for municipal advisors.stateOfIncorporation — two-letter state code.fiscalYearEnd — MMDD form (e.g., "1231").act — always "34", identifying the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as the governing statute under which Section 15B(c)(3) sits.filmNo — the EDGAR film number assigned to this submission.type — "CANCELLATION-MA".items: a list of strings encoding relevant dates as Item YYYYMMDD: tokens with empty trailing values. Two items are typical — one for the order date and one for the underlying determination date.seriesAndClassesContractsInformation: empty array; this construct does not apply to municipal-advisor cancellations.dataFiles: empty array for this form type.The PDF is the legal instrument and the only narrative content in the record. It is a short release — typically two US-Letter pages (MediaBox [0 0 612 792], catalog /N 2) — produced by the Commission as a tagged, screen-reader-accessible PDF (PDF 1.6, structurally tagged with StructTreeRoot and MarkInfo/Marked true, generated by Acrobat PDFMaker for Word). Embedded XMP metadata makes the document's identity explicit:
dc:title carries the full release title, formatted as "Order Cancelling Registration of Municipal Advisor, <Advisor Name>, Pursuant to Section 15B(c)(3) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934".dc:creator is "U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission".dc:subject and pdf:Keywords carry the Commission release number and date in the form "Release No. 34-XXXXXX ; Date: YYYY-MM-DD".xmp:CreateDate and xmp:ModifyDate record the document's authoring and dissemination timestamps.The body of each release follows a stable template, in order:
34- series), and the order date.The Exchange Act release number embedded in the PDF's keywords is the canonical identifier for the order itself and complements the EDGAR accession number, which identifies the submission.
Each record includes the parsed EDGAR header as metadata.json and the screen-reader-accessible PDF order as the document payload. The metadata captures the identity of the subject municipal advisor (name, CIK, file number, state of incorporation, IRS number, fiscal year end), the governing statute (act: "34"), the EDGAR dissemination timestamp, the date tokens encoded in items, and the URLs needed to retrieve the EDGAR filing index, the SGML complete-submission wrapper, and the primary PDF on sec.gov.
Image files from the original EDGAR submission are excluded by design. The dataset does not produce a derived plain-text extraction of the PDF body; the legal text lives inside the PDF and must be extracted from it if needed downstream. The complete-submission SGML .txt wrapper is described in documentFormatFiles and reachable through linkToTxt, but the canonical document on disk is the PDF.
Several points matter for downstream use:
9999999997 CIK in every accession marks these as Commission-issued orders, not advisor-prepared filings. The municipal advisor named in entities[0] is the subject of the order, not its author, even though EDGAR labels the entity with the (Filer) role suffix.867- prefix in entities[0].fileNo is the EDGAR series reserved for municipal advisors and is a reliable structural indicator for filtering.pdf:Keywords and dc:subject fields and in the body header of the order. Extracting the release number requires reading the PDF.metadata.json. The filedAt timestamp records dissemination through EDGAR and may differ from both the Commission's order date (printed in the PDF header) and the cancellation's effective date (in the ordering language).items tokens encode dates as YYYYMMDD codes with empty trailing values; they parallel, but do not replace, the dates printed in the PDF.sequence and type values in the second documentFormatFiles entry are EDGAR-native indexing artifacts for the SGML wrapper file and should be preserved verbatim when reprocessing the metadata.The filer is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, not the municipal advisor named in the order. Each CANCELLATION-MA submission is a Commission-issued order that EDGAR ingests under the synthetic SEC filer CIK 0009999999997, the placeholder identifier EDGAR uses for orders, releases, and other Commission-originated documents that lack a private-sector registrant filer.
The municipal advisor whose registration is being cancelled is the subject of the order. The advisor is named in the body of the release with its own CIK, but it does not sign, submit, or initiate the filing, and is often dissolved, defunct, or unresponsive at the time the order is issued.
Because the SEC is the only filer, the meaningful population is the set of subjects. Subjects are entities that previously registered as municipal advisors with the Commission on Form MA, the firm-level registration form created under Section 975 of Dodd-Frank. They include:
CANCELLATION-MA reaches only the firm-level Form MA registrant. Associated municipal advisor professionals registered on Form MA-I are not the subject of these orders.
Section 15B(c)(3) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 authorizes the Commission, by order, to cancel the registration of any municipal advisor it finds is no longer in existence or has ceased to do business as a municipal advisor. The trigger is event-driven and ad hoc — there is no calendar cadence and no anniversary obligation. In practice, an order is issued when one or more of the following are present:
Each order resolves an individual administrative determination about one advisor's status.
Substantive authority comes from Section 15B(c)(3) of the Exchange Act, within the municipal advisor regime created by Section 975 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Section 975 amended Section 15B to require persons engaged in municipal advisory activity to register with the Commission and to be subject to MSRB rules. The implementing rules (Rule 15Ba1-1 through 15Ba1-8) and the Form MA / MA-I / MA-W / MA-NR family operationalize the regime; the SEC's permanent registration rules were adopted in September 2013 and phased in through 2014.
Because the instrument is a Commission order rather than a registrant disclosure, each CANCELLATION-MA filing is also published as an Exchange Act release in the "34-" series.
There is no fixed schedule. Orders are issued only when the Commission completes its internal determination that a registrant meets the Section 15B(c)(3) standard, so volume is low and irregular. CANCELLATION-MA appears as a discrete EDGAR form type from October 2021 forward — a case-by-case docket, not a flow.
The most useful comparisons are to the rest of the Form MA family, to the analogous withdrawal mechanism for investment advisers, to enforcement-driven revocations, and to the parallel MSRB registration regime. Each overlaps on one or two axes and diverges on the rest.
Same registrant population and same Section 15B framework, opposite end of the lifecycle.
Maintains an active registration; CANCELLATION-MA ends it.
The closest functional analog and the form most often confused with CANCELLATION-MA. Both terminate SEC registration of a municipal advisor and remove the firm from the SEC roster, but every other axis diverges:
A complete picture of municipal advisor exits requires both datasets.
Firm-level vs. person-level. CANCELLATION-MA acts only on the registered entity; Form MA-I covers natural persons associated with that entity and has its own amendment and termination mechanics. Cancellation of the firm may functionally end associated persons' MA-I status but is not recorded through MA-I filings. Volume mismatch makes this a common source of scope errors.
Procedural attachment for jurisdictional service. No role in registration status changes. Mentioned only to rule out confusion with other MA-family filings. (Form MA-NR)
Different statute, different registrant population, different filer.
Useful only as a structural reference for how a voluntary-withdrawal mechanism functions; not a data substitute. (Form ADV-W)
Enforcement revocations under Section 15B(c)(2) and related provisions also end municipal advisor registration, but on different grounds and through a different channel.
Mapping all exit pathways requires MA-W (voluntary), CANCELLATION-MA (administrative), and enforcement releases (sanction).
Municipal advisors register separately with the MSRB via Form A-12. SEC cancellation does not itself effect MSRB deregistration, although MSRB jurisdiction depends on an active SEC registration. Form A-12 lives on MSRB systems, outside EDGAR, and is not part of any EDGAR dataset. It complements CANCELLATION-MA but cannot substitute for it.
EDGAR contains parallel termination mechanisms for other registrant types: Form 15 (Exchange Act reporting termination), Form X-17A-5 cessation filings (broker-dealers), and NRSRO withdrawal/cancellation events (credit rating agencies). Each shares the abstract function of ending a registered status but is governed by a separate statute, form type, filer, and evidentiary standard. Useful as structural analogs; not interchangeable as data.
CANCELLATION-MA is defined by the intersection of seven attributes:
MA-W covers the voluntary side of the same exit door; enforcement orders cover the disciplinary side; MA and Form MA-A cover the rest of the lifecycle; ADV-W and other registration-end forms cover analogous events for different populations; Form A-12 governs the parallel Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board regime. None substitutes for CANCELLATION-MA when the question is specifically about Commission-initiated administrative cancellations of municipal advisor registration, and CANCELLATION-MA alone is insufficient for studying the full set of municipal advisor exit pathways.
CANCELLATION-MA records are low-volume but gating: each one removes a municipal advisor from the SEC register under Section 15B(c)(3). Users split between those who need the structured metadata (accession, CIK, file number, effective date) for reconciliation and those who need the order PDF for legal basis and recitals.
Used to track competitor exits and the cited basis (no longer in existence vs. ceased MA business vs. enforcement-adjacent). They join CIK and effective date against internal peer lists and read the PDF recitals to inform their own continued-operations representations on Form MA-A. Output: peer-attrition logs and regulatory-watch summaries.
Procurement and finance staff at states, cities, school districts, and special-purpose authorities screen MA candidates pre-award and monitor incumbents mid-mandate. They key on firm name, CIK, and effective date to trigger contract review or replacement-search procedures if a current advisor is cancelled.
Verify MA counterparty status during the run-up to closing. If a cancellation lands mid-deal, counsel reads the PDF recitals to reassess opinions and reliance language, and uses the effective date to set the cutoff. Output: diligence memoranda, transcript exhibits, and revised legal opinions.
Broker-dealer compliance staff use the structured fields (CIK, file number, date) for batch reconciliation against counterparty masters, and the PDF to document removal from approved lists. Relevant to MSRB solicitation rules and any workflow that relied on an MA's registered status.
Internal users feed cancellations into population statistics, exam scoping, and risk-based selection. Effective dates and legal bases distinguish voluntary attrition from enforcement-adjacent exits. Output: exam universe definitions and policy memoranda on Section 975 implementation. (SEC examination and Trading and Markets)
Used to keep registered-MA headcount aligned with rule-coverage analyses and fee assessments. They join CIK and file number to registration records and use the time series for trend and rule-impact studies.
Ingest the metadata JSON programmatically to flip registration-status flags on entity records keyed by CIK and file number, propagating status changes to compliance and onboarding clients. Output: updated reference feeds and audit trails for status transitions.
Banks and dealers with MA clients or syndicate counterparties use the dataset for periodic batch refresh of registration status, citing the order PDF as adverse-event documentation when a relationship is exited.
Use the full historical series, joined with Form MA, MA-I, and MA-A data, to study post-Dodd-Frank attrition and concentration. Order PDFs are coded qualitatively for cancellation reason. Output: empirical papers and policy reviews.
When a former MA is named in a dispute, the order PDF and effective date establish when the firm left the regulated population and the SEC's stated basis. Output: chronologies, productions, and demonstrative exhibits.
Trade-press and policy analysts pull metadata for time-series counts of industry exits and read order PDFs for narrative detail on individual firms, especially those previously tied to enforcement coverage.
Practical workflows split between metadata-driven reconciliation against the 867- file-number population and PDF-driven extraction of recitals, release numbers, and effective dates.
Reference-data engineers at vendors and dealer compliance teams consume metadata.json from each monthly ZIP and key on entities[0].cik and entities[0].fileNo (the 867- series) to flip a registered-MA flag on internal counterparty masters. The filedAt timestamp anchors the change in the audit trail, while the PDF is retained as adverse-event documentation. Output: a daily or monthly diff feed of advisor status transitions propagated to onboarding and surveillance systems.
Bond, disclosure, and underwriter's counsel verifying MA counterparties during a closing window pull the order PDF via linkToFilingDetails, locate the cancellation effective date in the ordering paragraph (which is not exposed in metadata.json), and compare it to deal milestones. The Section 15B(c)(3) recital and the body-text finding (no longer in existence vs. ceased doing MA business) feed reliance-language and opinion-letter revisions and become transcript exhibits.
Researchers and SEC staff who need to tie a cancellation to other Commission output extract the Exchange Act release number from the PDF's XMP pdf:Keywords and dc:subject fields (formatted Release No. 34-XXXXXX ; Date: YYYY-MM-DD), since the release number is absent from the EDGAR header. Joining release numbers across CANCELLATION-MA, enforcement orders, and litigation releases reconstructs full exit pathways for a given advisor.
Academic researchers and SRO policy staff combine CANCELLATION-MA records with MA-W (voluntary withdrawals) and Section 15B(c)(2) enforcement revocations to produce a unified attrition dataset. CIK and fileNo from entities[0] are the join keys; the items date tokens and the filedAt timestamp drive the time axis. Output: post-Dodd-Frank attrition counts, survival analyses, and rule-impact studies that none of the three sources can support alone.
Compliance officers at active municipal advisors and procurement staff at state and local issuers maintain peer or vendor lists keyed by CIK. Each new monthly ZIP is unpacked, formType == "CANCELLATION-MA" records are filtered, and entities[0].companyName and cik are matched against the watchlist. A hit triggers contract review at issuers and informs continued-operations representations on the firm's next Form MA-A.
Litigation support teams and academic coders read the PDF body to classify each order by Commission finding (non-existence vs. cessation of MA business) and to capture the signature block and order date. Because the PDFs are tagged and screen-reader-accessible (PDF 1.6, MarkInfo/Marked true), text extraction is reliable without OCR, supporting structured coding of recitals across the full historical series back to October 2021.
The Form CANCELLATION-MA Files dataset is accessible through three endpoints: a JSON index for metadata discovery, a full archive download, and per-container downloads for incremental updates.
Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-cancellationma-files.json
This endpoint returns dataset-level metadata (name, description, earliest sample date, form types, container format, file types), the download URL for the full dataset, and a list of all monthly container files with their sizes, record counts, updated timestamps, and individual download URLs. The endpoint does not require an API key and can be polled to detect which containers were touched during the most recent refresh run.
1
{
2
"datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6a48-abbc-c6caad1595c8",
3
"datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-cancellationma-files.zip",
4
"name": "Form CANCELLATION-MA Files Dataset",
5
"description": "Form CANCELLATION-MA filings contain orders issued by the SEC cancelling the registration of municipal advisors pursuant to Section 15B(c)(3) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.",
6
"updatedAt": "2026-04-27T02:51:19.000Z",
7
"earliestSampleDate": "2014-07-01",
8
"totalRecords": 37,
9
"totalSize": 3742255,
10
"formTypes": ["CANCELLATION-MA"],
11
"containerFormat": "ZIP",
12
"fileTypes": ["PDF", "JSON"],
13
"containers": [
14
{
15
"downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-cancellationma-files/2026/2026-03.zip",
16
"key": "2026/2026-03.zip",
17
"size": 128430,
18
"records": 2,
19
"updatedAt": "2026-03-21T02:51:19.000Z"
20
}
21
]
22
}
Fetch the index with curl:
curl https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-cancellationma-files.json
Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-cancellationma-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
The full dataset is delivered as a single ZIP archive and is small enough to retrieve in one request. This endpoint requires an API key passed as the token query parameter.
curl -o form-cancellationma-files.zip "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-cancellationma-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY"
Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-cancellationma-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Each container holds the filings published in a single calendar month. Read the downloadUrl values from the containers array of the index JSON and request only the months you need. This endpoint requires an API key.
curl -o 2026-03.zip "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-cancellationma-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY"
Archive Layout
Once unzipped, each monthly container expands to a YYYY-MM/ directory with one subdirectory per filing, named after the accession number with dashes removed. Each filing folder contains a metadata.json describing the filing and the original PDF document(s):
1
2026-03/
2
000123456726000123/
3
metadata.json
4
filename1.pdf
5
000123456726000456/
6
metadata.json
7
filename1.pdf
Tracking Updates
To monitor incremental refreshes, poll the index JSON and compare the top-level updatedAt timestamp against the value seen in the previous run. When it changes, iterate over the containers array and re-download only those containers whose individual updatedAt is newer than your last sync.
The dataset covers EDGAR form type CANCELLATION-MA — Commission-issued orders cancelling the registration of a municipal advisor under Section 15B(c)(3) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Each order is also published as an Exchange Act release in the "34-" series.
One record is a single EDGAR submission cancelling the registration of one named municipal advisor. Physically, it is an accession-numbered folder containing a metadata.json parsed from the EDGAR header and a single screen-reader-accessible PDF (filename1.pdf) that is the cancellation order itself.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is the filer. Submissions enter EDGAR under the synthetic Commission CIK 9999999997, the placeholder identifier EDGAR uses for Commission-originated documents. The named municipal advisor is the regulatory subject of the order, not its author.
Form MA-W is a voluntary withdrawal filed by the municipal advisor itself. CANCELLATION-MA is the involuntary, Commission-issued counterpart used when the advisor has gone silent, dissolved, or stopped doing municipal advisory business without withdrawing. Both terminate SEC registration; a complete picture of municipal advisor exits requires both datasets.
There is no fixed schedule. Orders are issued only when the Commission completes its internal Section 15B(c)(3) determination, so volume is low and irregular. CANCELLATION-MA appears as a discrete EDGAR form type from October 2021 forward.
Records are delivered as monthly ZIP containers organized as YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip. Each container expands to a YYYY-MM/ directory with one subdirectory per filing. Each filing folder contains a metadata.json and the order PDF; image files from the original EDGAR submission are excluded by design.
The effective date appears in the body of the PDF in the ordering paragraph, not in metadata.json. The filedAt timestamp records dissemination through EDGAR and may differ from both the Commission's order date (printed in the PDF header) and the cancellation's effective date.