The Outsourced Accounting ServicesFor Texas owners

We work with owners across Texas on a video call. We do not keep an office in your town. We do not pretend we had lunch on your square. The books are shared. The month still has a day.

If your shop is in Tyler, in El Paso, on the coast, or in the Panhandle, we are all Texans. The hour on the screen is the same hour. We picture the state. We do not describe your block as if we held a key to it.

Every Texan knows a first cool front, whenever it reaches their part of the state. The month does not care which side of that front you are on. It cares whether the bank agrees with the file.

When pay needs an account, we help you stand a payroll company up, and that company's own name stays on the account. We do not cut the checks. That company does not need to share your zip code with us for the books to record the reports.

If a job truly needs a person in the room, we will say so. Most months do not. A lender's visit and a count of inventory are yours to host. We will tell you what the file needs from that day.

Every Texan knows the white arch that carries Woodall Rodgers across the Trinity. We picture that span. We want the prior month tied before a Friday crowd walks it, while the drawer is still being counted.

Texans know the deck park over Woodall Rodgers, open from early morning until late. We want a weekday close finished while that park is still full of people who are not thinking about a bank feed.

Every Texan who has waited for a patio table at Oddfellows in Bishop Arts knows the morning starts before the shops do. We want last month agreed before a morning like that, with the list already settled.

Every Texan knows the second Saturday in October, when the state splits at the Cotton Bowl in Fair Park. We want September closed before that Saturday, and before the state sits down to watch the game.

A file that is six months behind does not get a speech about October. It gets a count, and then a plan. Nobody hears a promise of an ongoing close until that count is on the table.

Texas lays a privilege tax on a company formed here or doing business here. The Comptroller publishes the rules. We assemble the franchise report from a year that already ties, and the figures come from that year, not from a guess typed into a text.

The signature on what gets filed stays yours. We can prepare the pages. You still sign them. A franchise window belongs on the close calendar, beside the federal dates, so May does not arrive as a surprise.

Publication 98-806 is the Comptroller booklet that names who files. Corporations, limited liability companies including a one-owner company and a series company, partnerships, trusts, and the other entities that booklet lists are in the group. Stay unincorporated, with no entity at all, and this report is generally not yours. A one-owner limited liability company does not get that pass.

The 2026 row and the 2027 row share one cutoff. Come in at 2,650,000 dollars of yearly revenue or less and the privilege tax drops to nothing, with the long form left unfiled. You still send Form 05-102, the short public report, or Form 05-167, the ownership report, unless the Comptroller's own skip list already has the company. Years before those two used a different cutoff. Only the 2026 and 2027 row is named here.

The base is margin, and a qualifying company may take the shorter EZ path instead. Publication 98-806 writes the choices as a flat million dollars taken off the top, compensation taken out, the cost of the goods taken out, or seventy percent of revenue left standing.

Revenue on this report begins with the federal revenue amounts, then takes off the exclusions named in Tax Code section 171.1011. Inside that goods figure, count what it took to buy or make the goods and the real property the company sells as its ordinary work. A shop that only sells services often has nothing allowable in that cost, aside from the industry exceptions in section 171.1012.

The compensation count takes in W-2 wages and cash paid to officers, directors, owners, partners, and employees, and it takes in net distributive income paid to a natural person, all inside a per-person cap. Deductible benefits sit in that count too, including workers' compensation, health care, and retirement. Labor paid on a 1099 stays out, and so do the payroll taxes the employer itself pays. On the 2026 and 2027 row the cap on that deduction is 480,000 dollars.

Once margin is counted, Texas takes its share by gross receipts. A combined group picks one margin method and every member of that group uses it. Retail and wholesale both sit at three hundred seventy-five thousandths of a percent, 0.375. Any trade outside retail and wholesale is charged 0.75 percent. The shorter EZ rate, 0.331 percent, opens only when annualized total revenue is 20 million dollars or less, and taking it means the margin deductions are gone. The long form is the report you use once revenue is over the no-tax-due line and you are not on EZ, or whenever you will take a margin deduction.

Form 05-102 is the public report for five kinds of entity, once they were organized in Texas or they have nexus here: a corporation, a limited liability company, a limited partnership, a professional association, and a financial institution. A different taxable entity with Texas organization or Texas nexus uses Form 05-167 instead. The person who signs the public report is an officer or someone else the company has authorized. Ownership details written on Form 05-167 are kept confidential.

Inside a combined group, organization in Texas or nexus here means that member sends its own report. That short report shares the franchise report's due day, and that includes a year when revenue sits at or under 2,650,000 dollars and no tax is owed. The Comptroller leaves some entities off both forms: exempt entities, entities with no Texas organization and no Texas nexus, passive entities, and qualifying new veteran-owned businesses during their first five years.

Miss the short report and the company can lose the right to keep doing business. Read the forfeiture warning where the Comptroller points at 171.251, then 171.2515, then 171.252, then 171.255. What can be lost is the right to sue or to defend in a Texas court, and officers, directors, partners, members, or owners can be personally on the hook for certain debts. Sections 171.259 and 171.260 pull financial institutions out of that forfeiture.

A change of officers waits for the next annual report, unless the company files an amended report because of an error or a critical need. A new registered agent is filed at the Secretary of State, and these two reports do not carry that change. Whether to close the Texas company, or to end Texas nexus, stays your decision. The final report is due within 60 days after the company no longer has sufficient nexus, and a final-report extension runs 45 days past that original due date when the payment rules are met.

May 15 is the day the annual report has to be in. Should the 15th fall on Saturday, Sunday, or a holiday, filing moves to the business day after. Check that slide on the Comptroller extensions page in the year you file, rather than trusting a shifted date typed from memory.

Extra time opens when a payment or a Comptroller form arrives by the original due date. What you send is usually last year's tax in full, or nine tenths of the tax this year's report will show. A company whose first year of being subject was the prior year has no 100 percent prior-year option on that first annual report.

A company that is not on electronic funds transfer files the extension through Webfile or on Form 05-164, and the later due day is November 15. Pay by electronic funds transfer when the previous state fiscal year was 10,000 dollars or more. That path's first later due day is August 15, and a second block runs out to November 15.

At 500,000 dollars or more, the extra time is requested by a timely TEXNET payment under code 13080, and Form 05-164 is not filed on top of that payment. The extensions page states the clock time that makes a TEXNET payment timely. Read that clock on the live page in the year you pay. We do not reprint it here as if it could not move.

Each report that arrives after its due date carries a 50 dollar penalty. Pay the tax between one and thirty days after the due date and the penalty is 5 percent of the tax. After the thirtieth day the add-on rises to 10 percent of the tax. Interest does not begin until day 61 past the due date. The percent itself lives on the Comptroller interest page, and this page leaves that percent there.

When the long form is required, you pick the margin method. When revenue is at or under 20 million dollars you may pick EZ, and you live with what that pick gives up. The wages that go into compensation are the W-2 wages, and payments on a 1099 stay out of that deduction. The public report or the ownership report still needs your signature in a year when no tax is owed.

Extending is your call, and so is whether the extension payment aims at 90 percent of the current year or at the whole prior year when both paths are open. That due day sits on the same close calendar as the federal return. Any rate or due day written here is one we can point at on a public Comptroller page.

Texas itself charges 6.25 percent before any local add-on. Local tax from a city, a county, or a transit district can stack as much as 2 percent on that state rate. No single sale is taxed above 8.25 percent once the local add-on is included. The rate follows the place of the sale, so the address is looked up on the Comptroller rate locator that day. We do not memorize a city's rate.

The letter that arrives after the permit is approved is what names the rhythm, month by month or quarter by quarter. On a monthly rhythm the report goes in on the 20th of the month that follows. April's report, as the example, lands on May 20. A quarterly filer lands the report in April, then July, then October, then January. Once-a-year filers put the prior year on the report dated January 20.

A due day that falls on Saturday, Sunday, or a legal holiday moves to the next working day. Confirm that move on the Comptroller due-dates page before anyone treats a shifted day as final. Publication 94-105 and the sales page are the public backing for the 20th as the working rule.

Timely sales tax, reported and paid on time, lets a permitted seller hold back half of one percent. A prepayment stacks an additional 1.25 percent onto that half-percent. Late sales reports cost 50 dollars each. The penalty on the tax itself is 5 percent in the first thirty days and 10 percent after that. Interest on sales tax that is still unpaid begins on day 61, and the percent stays on the Comptroller interest page.

When TEXNET is required and the payment is over 1,000,000 dollars, start it by eight in the evening, Central Time, on the banking business day before the due day. At 1,000,000 dollars or under, that same TEXNET payment can wait until ten in the morning, Central Time, on the due day. Crossing the electronic-pay threshold is something the Comptroller tells you in a letter. In a year when the payment is that large, read the clock on the live file-and-pay page rather than from memory.

The resale and exemption certificate is Form 01-339. A taxable item bought for resale is free of the tax when the seller takes a properly completed certificate instead of the tax. That certificate is the evidence. Writing the permit number on the invoice does not stand in for the certificate. The seller holds the certificate for four years, the same retention the Comptroller asks for gross receipts.

Tax comes due later if the shop uses an item it bought for resale, and that use belongs on the taxable-purchases line. Hold the certificate back when you are unsure the item will be resold. A blanket certificate fits a customer who buys only for resale and says so on the form. The close keeps four piles apart: sales from your own site, marketplace sales, exempt sales that have a certificate on file, and items pulled out of stock for the shop's own use.

A remote seller whose Texas revenue across the prior twelve calendar months stays under 500,000 dollars sits inside the safe harbor the Comptroller FAQ describes. Sales the marketplace already taxed still add into that twelve-month total. Someone who lives in Texas and sells only through a marketplace still needs a permit. The single local use tax, currently 1.75 percent on Form 01-799, is a remote-seller option, and that percent is confirmed on the FAQ the day anyone relies on it. Records of marketplace sales stay for at least four years.

Each limit on this page is set next to the Texas statute it comes from. Occupations Code sections 901.451, 901.453, and 901.456, published on statutes.capitol.texas.gov, reserve a report that a third party may rely on. The franchise report and the sales-tax return are filings the close can prepare. A report a third party may rely on stays with the people those sections describe.

A close we hand back never smuggles that signature into the month. If a lender, a buyer, or a contract wants that promise, the call names it and stops. The same answer is the answer on a file in Dallas and on a file in any other Texas city.

If the tax fight needs a lawyer, that protest or that suit belongs to the lawyer. A fight with the IRS about the federal return that feeds total revenue is representation work for someone else. Our part, once that letter shows up, is the paper and a file that already ties.

This page prints no fee for the practice. Nothing on this page is a quote, and no client's year is hiding in the examples. You sign the choice. The file still has to close either way.