Bookkeeping Cleanup Help for Texas owners

North Bishop Avenue where it meets Davis Street is the Oak Cliff walk we still take on a slow afternoon, the shops and galleries people mean by Bishop Arts. The question we carry back from that walk is the question we put to a file, which stack is only waiting for a name and which month is still open.

A company based past Dallas and Fort Worth gets that same question on the video call. Distance changes the drive and leaves the oldest open month where it was. The practice is in Dallas. The number on this page rings that practice, and it does not ring a walk up counter in your town.

From November through March a fast cold front can drop the North Texas temperature under a dark sky, the front people call a blue norther, and Dallas meets that front more often than Houston does. Matched months on the federal return do not ask which side of that sky the company occupies.

On a cleanup the state piece of a taxable sale, 6.25 percent, comes off before a city or a county or a transit agency or a special purpose district adds a local piece of up to 2 percent, and the whole stack has to stay at or under a combined 8.25 percent. The total for one address is read from the Comptroller rate locator on the day that return is built, so this cleanup page states the ceiling and leaves the city total for that lookup, which you can start from the Comptroller sales tax page.

A filer on a monthly rhythm owes the return on the 20th of the month after the period, a filer on a quarterly rhythm owes it April 20 or July 20 or October 20 or January 20, and a filer on a yearly rhythm owes it January 20. The 2026 sales and use chart already folds a weekend or a legal holiday into the following business day, which is why June shows the 22nd, September the 21st, and December the 21st, while every other month on that chart remains on the 20th. A later year is checked on the Comptroller due dates page before any of those three shifts is treated as permanent.

Getting the return and the payment in on time lets the seller keep half a percent of the tax that was both reported and paid by the day, a prepayment adds a further 1.25 percent on top of that, a report that misses the day costs $50, an amount 1 to 30 days late costs a further 5 percent, an amount later than that costs 10 percent, and interest begins on day 61 at the percent then showing on the Comptroller interest page, which we leave there instead of copying a rate that can move.

Tax that rode in with a sale has to come back out on its own line before the deposit is treated as profit, because the processor deposit is the batch after a fee, a refund, or a chargeback. Dallas Area Rapid Transit has taken a 1 percent sales tax since the first day of 1984, and on a Dallas cleanup that penny is the reminder we use while the oldest open month is where the tax line gets pulled back out.

Texas franchise tax is the privilege tax on doing business here as a company. After the months the report needs are matched, we look up that report year's row instead of borrowing an older threshold. On the rows for 2026 and 2027, revenue at or under $2,650,000 owes none of the tax and skips the tax report itself, while Form 05-102, the public information report, or Form 05-167, the ownership information report, is still prepared unless the Comptroller skip list already has the company. The rows for 2024 and 2025 used $2,470,000 and a compensation cap of $450,000, and those figures stay inside those years, so the workpapers take that year's row from the Comptroller franchise page only after the months underneath it have been matched.

When the matched revenue is retail or wholesale, the long form rate we apply is 0.375 percent, and a service company that is neither of those is computed at 0.75 percent. The compensation cap on the 2026 and 2027 rows is $480,000. An owner at or under $20 million of revenue may choose the EZ computation at 0.331 percent and, in that choice, give up the margin deductions. Otherwise the long form follows one path, 70 percent of revenue, or revenue after cost of goods sold, or revenue after compensation, or revenue after $1,000,000, and 1099 labor stays outside the compensation path while W-2 wages can enter it.

Showing up with the franchise report after the due day draws a $50 penalty of its own. The Comptroller filing page, citing the Tax Code, warns that skipping the short information report can take away the right to sue or defend in a Texas court, so a tax line of zero is still a reason to prepare Form 05-102 or Form 05-167. Someone who never formed a company, and who works under their own name, generally skips this report, while a limited liability company with a single owner still has to file it.

If the matched year will not be ready by May 15, the extension is a payment choice. Paying all of last year's franchise tax, or 90 percent of what this report will show, is what makes that choice timely when both are allowed. Companies that are off electronic funds transfer send the payment through Webfile or Form 05-164 and then have until November 15. A company that paid $10,000 or more during the prior state fiscal year pays electronically, points the first extension at August 15, and may take a second one out to November 15. At $500,000 or more the request is a TEXNET payment under code 13080 with no Form 05-164 beside it, and the clock that makes the payment count is read on the Comptroller extensions page rather than typed here from memory.

There is no Texas tax on personal income, so the federal return is still the return that has to agree with the months we matched, and the Texas report is prepared from those same months. Payday stays on the provider login the owner already holds, and the work from this address is getting that payroll company set up so the franchise math can read a register we did not rerun. A lender who asks for an audit, a review, or a compilation is sent to a firm that can sign that report, and what we engage is the matched months underneath the figures.

An SMU watcher has been counting companies that move a charter out of Delaware and into Texas over cost and over the shape of the business law. The new charter still owes a franchise report, and it does not close the oldest open month by arriving.

During 2026 the Dallas Central Appraisal District opened more than 250,000 property tax protests, and the hearings ran into September. A protest is not filed from this page. What we will say is when those hearings and the open months land on the same stretch of the year.

Since 1934 the Texas and Oklahoma game has usually been the second Saturday of October at the Cotton Bowl in Fair Park, in the middle of the fair, and that Saturday is one this city still turns out for. October here is also when an estimate gets sized from a month already matched, and the sales tax date stays on its own square while the fair is underway.

By the first quarter of 2026 the number of establishments in Dallas County had fallen 1.3 percent while employment rose, so fewer registered businesses are carrying the work. A shop that is still here needs its oldest open month matched before anyone describes what that thinner year did. The picture on this page shows the Texas State Capitol in Austin, granite and dome, and it names the state whose dates these are. The calls stay in Dallas.