CPA San AntonioThe return waits for a closed year

A theatre that shares a building with three hundred events

The Lila Cockrell Theatre sits in the convention center on the river, and that center hosts more than 300 events a year. People in the city know the block as the place a weekend gets loud and then goes quiet again on Monday. We are Texans, and a full calendar like that is a point of pride. We also know what a crowded month does to a due date. The show still happens. The page is still due. Someone has to own the order, or both of them suffer.

April has belonged to Fiesta here since 1891. The parades and the parties fill the same weeks a property rendition is due for most owners. Tax Code section 22.23 lets a written request move most renditions out to 15 May. The rendition form ought to repeat assets that closed books already list. Building the list during Fiesta week, from memory and a glove box, is how a simple page becomes a mess. We want that list boring, because boring means it was kept.

The order we will actually follow

First the months. Each one matched to the bank, with sales tax collected set apart from revenue and with payroll reports posted. A year is twelve of those, not a pile of bank downloads. If December is open, we do not start a return and hope the close can catch up. The close comes first, even when that means the return starts later than you wanted.

Second, the Texas franchise page, due 15 May. Report years 2026 and 2027 use a no-tax-due line of 2,650,000 dollars on the Comptroller's franchise instructions. A company under that line still files the page. On that form, retail and wholesale use a margin rate of 0.375 percent. Every other filer uses 0.75 percent. The rate has to be the one published for the year you are filing, read from the franchise pages, not a rate carried in memory from an older year.

The May page wants revenue, margin, and compensation from a year the bank has already agreed with. If we build it from an open December, the federal file that follows will inherit the same hole. Two wrong forms that match each other are not a comfort. They are a repair waiting for a letter.

Third, the federal return. It comes after the May page exists, so the two years are the same year. Wages tie to the payroll reports we posted. Sales tie to the months, not to a guess about the 20th. Owner pay is the number already on the statements. Nothing on the federal file is a surprise the books have not already shown you.

October, while a choice can still move the year

After the prior year is filed, the useful conversation is not in April. It is in October, while the current year can still change. Estimates get set from months that are already closed, so the next April is a payment and not a revelation. A retirement contribution is a shape we can still discuss. This page does not print a dollar promise about it, because a promise like that depends on your year, not on a sentence we wrote for everyone.

If October slips, November can still do some of the work. December mostly cannot. By December the purchases are made and the payroll is nearly done. We will still close the month. We will not pretend a decision is open when the year has already spent the money.

The worry owners describe is a letter they have not opened, or a balance they do not want to say out loud. The relief is a May page and a federal file that match a year you already saw, month by month. Getting that quiet match is why the sequence exists. Speed, without the order, is how the letter gets written.

What this page will not fold in

The city sales tax stack, the school levy, and the property tax on a building have their own page, because they are levies a receipt and a deed meet. This page is the sequence. Mixing them into one speech is how an owner adds 8.25 percent to a property rate and believes the sum is meaningful. It is not a meaningful sum. The pages stay separate so the ideas stay separate.

An assurance signature is not in this sequence at all. If a lender wants an audit, a review, or a compilation, that work leaves this practice. The disclosures page says so in the sentences the statute supports. The return we prepare is not that signature, and we will not blur the two to make a proposal sound larger.

Bring the last closed month and the May page if you have one. We will say whether the federal file can start, or whether a month in the middle of the year still has to be finished. The call is on video. The books can be on the screen. The order does not change because the conversation is remote.

Pages that go further.