CPA for LLC For Texas owners.
Dallas is the city where this practice opens a company file, and that opening is a shared screen. Both papers can travel to Dallas on a screen while the company keeps its own floor. Owners whose floor is past Dallas and Fort Worth stay in this read. We are all Texans.
The certificate and the short name
One paper is the certificate from the Texas Secretary of State. It gives the company a legal name and a file number. None of the federal choices is printed on that certificate. People say a short name out loud and keep the long name on the filing. Elm Street is the old name under Deep Ellum, and the music still runs east from the freeway. A nickname and a street can both be true. Elm Street was there before the nickname. The company name can be there before a single reconciled month. We treat the short name and the certificate the way we treat the certificate and the letter. Both can be true, and neither one replaces the other.
North Oak Cliff holds Bishop Arts, a short run of shops and galleries. Texans recognize a street where two names share one door. We recognize it too, and the bank still has to say whose name the deposit used. A restaurant on a street like Bishop Arts and a consulting company in a spare bedroom can share the same broken equity account. The repair is the accounts. The awning can wait. A busy Saturday on a street like Bishop Arts feels like proof the company is working. The Monday question is narrower. Did the cash reach the company account.
These Texas notes come from the Comptroller pages and from the Secretary of State file, read beside the federal instructions. Software helps the draft. A person checks the page before it goes up.
The May report the company still files
The company still exists for Texas franchise purposes even when the federal return is only a schedule on the owner's form. Single-member companies file the franchise report. A sole proprietorship with no company does not, and that difference is why the certificate matters even when the federal form looks personal. Ignoring the company on the federal income form still leaves a Texas information report due in May. Form 7004 can move a federal entity return to a later morning. The May franchise report keeps the date the Comptroller already printed.
Comptroller material for 2026 and 2027 sets 2,650,000 dollars as the franchise line where no tax is due. Goods sellers sit on the 0.375 percent margin rate. Everyone else sits on 0.75 percent. The annual report is due on 15 May, and a weekend or a holiday pushes it to the next business day. Those three figures are read off the Comptroller's own franchise page, not from memory. Sitting under the line does not erase the filing. The 2026 and 2027 reports still have to be filed when revenue sits under 2,650,000 dollars, and that line is the Comptroller's no-tax-due mark.
Margin can be figured more than one way, including a compensation path and a cost-of-goods path, and the company uses the one the form allows that fits. We do not publish a tax you will owe. The public figures are the shape of the report, not a bill for your address. A company that had no federal income of its own can still owe the report. That surprise is common for a single-owner company whose profit already landed on the owner's return. The May folder exists so the surprise has a date. A single-owner company is still a taxable entity for Texas franchise tax. The profit may already be on the personal return. The May report is still the company's.
For the 2026 and 2027 franchise report we repeat the Comptroller's no-tax-due line, the goods rate, the other rate, and the 15 May due date, and we name that office in the same breath. The franchise threshold, the two rates, and the 15 May date stay tied to the Comptroller page for the report years named with them. When that page moves, this page moves with it. No sentence here tells you a tax bill.
Notices, storms, and the day that stays
The letter owners dread is usually a franchise notice or a sales-tax notice, not a mystery. The franchise report is due in May for a Texas company. Sales tax, if the company collects it, follows its own calendar. A franchise notice and a sales-tax notice ask for different things, and mixing them makes both look harder than they are. If a notice is already on the table, bring it to the call. We read the date and the agency. If the next step is a hearing, we gather the records and name who can speak. We do not take the chair.
April and May are when most tornadoes reach Dallas. Every Texan knows that spring window. We feel those fronts too, and the report is still due when the sky clears. The spring storm window and the May report share a calendar, which is why the report gets lost. We put the report in the same folder as the federal return, with the public threshold and the two rates written beside the Comptroller's page, and with your own tax left off this website. A storm does not push the franchise due date. Warm Gulf air over cold air turns the highways to ice a couple of times each winter. Every Texan has waited that out. Ice on the road does not move the close off the day we already picked.
The May franchise report sits just after the personal deadline and gets forgotten for that reason. May is the franchise report, easy to treat as next year's problem. The order of work is the bank, then the personal payments parked as distributions, then a month that ties, then the federal return on the life the missing letter implies, then the May franchise report because the company exists in Texas. We prepare that report with the year.
The same water, the same counter, two deposits
Since 1918, El Fenix has served a Wednesday enchilada. The room is in Dallas. A Wednesday special that old is a Texas habit people recognize without a guidebook. We recognize it too, and we still ask whether that plate reached the bank as a sale. White Rock Creek meets the Trinity only after White Rock Lake has stored it. Every Texan can picture a morning loop there. We picture the same water, and we ask whether the boat rental's deposits match the rides.
The Mavericks play in Victory Park, and 2011 is still the year people point at. A game night fills the restaurants. Tickets and tabs are two deposits the next morning. Pumpkin Village goes up at the Dallas Arboretum once fall arrives. Texans know that walk, as a child or with one. The walk is pure joy. The cider booth still owes the bank a deposit that matches the cups. The visit is joy. The booth still has a deposit to match on Monday, and the joy does not do that matching.
December is when the oldest marathon in Texas, the Dallas Marathon, usually loops White Rock Lake. A finish line in cold air is a Texas memory. The bank still wants a close after the runners go home. A December race around White Rock Lake does not close a year, and neither does the feeling of having survived the busy season. We put the close on a calendar date and keep it there.
People still look up Trees, the Bomb Factory, and Club Dada when they want a Deep Ellum show. The room and the band are different facts. Trees, the Bomb Factory, and Club Dada are three rooms, and a person can love the street without pretending the room is the show. A new bank account is the room. The show is the month that ties. The giant eyeball in front of the Joule is a sculpture called Eye. People walking by treat the eyeball as a sidewalk gag. We treat it as a reminder that two people can look at one object and give it two names. The giant eye outside the Joule is the same kind of moment.
This practice in Dallas is Steven Palmieri's, and the titles on it are Tax CFO and the Entrepreneur's CFO. Owners anywhere in Texas meet us on a video call, with the same close on the day we name. You share the file. We share the screen. The close date is a date on the calendar, not a mood. The papers on this page are the company picture. Another state's skyline would be the wrong picture here.