2009 Iowa Code
Title 12 - Business Entities
Subtitle 2 - Business and Professional Corporations and Companies
CHAPTER 490 - BUSINESS CORPORATIONS
490.1501 - AUTHORITY TO TRANSACT BUSINESS REQUIRED.

        490.1501  AUTHORITY TO TRANSACT BUSINESS REQUIRED.
         1.  A foreign corporation shall not transact business in this
      state until it obtains a certificate of authority from the secretary
      of state.
         2.  The following activities, among others, do not constitute
      transacting business within the meaning of subsection 1:
         a.  Maintaining, defending, or settling any proceeding.
         b.  Holding meetings of the board of directors or shareholders
      or carrying on other activities concerning internal corporate
      affairs.
         c.  Maintaining bank accounts.
         d.  Maintaining offices or agencies for the transfer,
      exchange, and registration of the corporation's own securities or
      maintaining trustees or depositories with respect to those
      securities.
         e.  Selling through independent contractors.
         f.  Soliciting or obtaining orders, whether by mail or through
      employees or agents or otherwise, if the orders require acceptance
      outside this state before they become contracts.
         g.  Creating or acquiring indebtedness, mortgages, and
      security interests in real or personal property.
         h.  Securing or collecting debts or enforcing mortgages and
      security interests in property securing the debts.
         i.  Owning, without more, real or personal property.
         j.  Conducting an isolated transaction that is completed
      within thirty days and that is not one in the course of repeated
      transactions of a like nature.
         k.  Transacting business in interstate commerce.
         3.  The list of activities in subsection 2 is not exhaustive.  

         89 Acts, ch 288, §161