Audit Letter From IRSFor Texas owners

Read The practice is in Dallas

We are in Dallas. The call is a video call. You hold the page up, or you have already sent a photo of the notice number and the date with the account numbers covered. You do not drive anywhere to be taken seriously. You do need a camera, and you do need the envelope opened before the call. We cannot read a fear. We can read a paragraph.

One close, one calendar link, the books shared, the return prepared from those books. The town the envelope was opened in does not change the month. If you are in Dallas or Fort Worth, the practice is in your region and the work is still on a screen, because that is how the file moves. If you are outside Dallas and Fort Worth, we are all Texans, and we serve you remotely. We do not keep an office in your town, and we will not talk as if we had walked your street that morning.

Wherever the kitchen table is in Texas, the month closes on the same rhythm. That is the point of a practice that is not pretending to have a spare room in every city. The work is the books, the payroll setup with a provider you choose, the statements, and the return, plus this reading when a page shows up.

Read The afternoon the sky changes

Every Texan knows the afternoon a blue norther makes you want a coat off the hook. The sky changes, and the day changes with it, whether you wanted the coat or not. Dallas gets that same sudden cold, and the coat comes off our hook the same afternoon. We will not pretend it rolled down your street while we watched from your porch. A response date is that same kind of turn. We put the printed date on the calendar the day the envelope is opened, in the same ink as the other dates you already run, so it is not a special emergency living on a sticky note that falls behind the counter.

Fear picks an earlier day. The printed day is the one a reply can meet. A date you only feel cannot be handed to anyone else. We put the date where both of us can see it, and the work toward it is the same month either way. If you have two dates, one from the state and one from the federal page, send both. They do not cancel each other.

Read Two counters in one week

Texas owners already get mail from two counters. The Comptroller sends the state's own pages, and the IRS sends another stack. A week that holds both feels like one emergency. It is two files. The notice number is how we tell them apart before anyone drafts a sentence they will have to live with. The Comptroller is the state's own counter, and that office can mail you the same week a federal page arrives. We feel that pile with you. We keep the two files apart on purpose.

A state margin notice and a federal page can share a Tuesday. They feel like one storm. They are two files, two dates, and often two different questions. One might be a missing report. The other might be a form that did not match a transcript. Answering them as if they were the same letter is how a reply goes to the wrong counter. Texans know that piled up feeling. We share it because we are all Texans and this is the work, and we still separate the piles. Send a sentence about each envelope, not a blended story.

Both offices still use mail for the pages that change what you owe. A text that wants a click is a different problem. If there is no page you can hold, do not give a number, a password, or a picture of your license to the message. When the paper is real, photograph the notice number and the date, and keep the original where you keep the title of the truck.

Read The spring list, then the file

Every Texan with a truck, a trailer, or a shop of tools knows the spring list of business property. The tools, the trucks, and the shop equipment you owned on January 1 and used to make money are reported to the appraisal district on a rendition. That report is due April 15. Put the request in writing and the appraisal district can carry the due day out to May 15. That extra month is Tax Code section 22.23. Filing late can add a penalty of 10 percent of the taxes on that property for the year. We keep the list current so April is a copy, not a hunt through the glove box, and the same habit builds the reply file for the federal letter.

That list is not a hearing. An examination is a room and a person who may speak. Most envelopes we read with owners are closer to the list than to the room. Knowing that does not make the page optional. It keeps you from hiring the wrong kind of help for a copy job. The rendition is often the first honest inventory of those same assets. Depreciation on the federal return tells a similar story when a truck or a build out was expensed, capitalized, or skipped. If the list and the return describe two different shops, the notice is how you find out. We would rather reconcile them in the books than in a hurry after the envelope.

If the letter in your hand is the appraisal notice itself, the protest writing is usually due on May 15, or 30 days after the notice, whichever is later. The day written on the appraisal notice is the day the protest has to meet. A lawsuit after the board's order is a conversation with a lawyer. It is not a conversation we hold for you.

Read The margin, and the report in May

Texas taxes a company's margin, not a wage the way some states do. We like that the choice is written down. Once a year a company pays Texas for the privilege of operating, and the name of that bill is the franchise tax. Forming the company is what creates the filing. One owner does not get you out of it. A person who never formed a company generally does not. The Comptroller treats it as a tax on the privilege of doing business in the state, for companies formed here and for companies doing business here.

The franchise report belongs on the calendar as the fifteenth of May. When the Comptroller's office is closed on that date, the filing waits until the next weekday the office accepts it. For the 2026 and 2027 report years, yearly revenue at or under 2,650,000 dollars means no franchise tax is owed and the long tax report is not filed. A short public information report, Form 05-102, or an ownership report, Form 05-167, is still filed unless the Comptroller already has the company on a skip list. Ignore Form 05-102 or Form 05-167 and the Comptroller can take away the company's right to keep operating in the state. The old no-tax-due report stopped for the 2024 report year and later. Under the threshold you do not file that retired form. You still file the information report.

On those same 2026 and 2027 report years, retail and wholesale are at 0.375 percent. Other businesses are at 0.75 percent. The simpler computation is 0.331 percent when yearly revenue is at or under 20 million dollars, and that choice gives up the margin deductions. On the long form, pay you deduct for this tax cannot go past 480,000 dollars. These figures belong to the 2026 and 2027 row. An older threshold does not belong on this year's report. Confirm the holiday shift on the Comptroller's own calendar before you treat a shifted day as the due date.

If the October books are still a guess, the margin is a guess too, and the next envelope gets louder. We close the months so the report is a copy of something the bank already agrees with. That is less romantic than a loophole and much more useful when a notice arrives later asking where the number came from. Texas owners already write two kinds of checks in a year. One is this margin tax. The other is whatever the federal page says. They are not the same check, and a week that asks for both is not one decision. We keep them in two piles so a yes on one page is not an accidental yes on the other.

Read Sales tax is the other state letter

Sales tax is a different file from the margin report and a different file from the IRS. The state piece is 6.25 percent. A city, a county, or a transit district can add up to 2 percent more. The most a buyer pays on one sale is 8.25 percent. The rate depends on the place of the sale, so the Comptroller's locator is the page to read that day. A rate remembered from last spring is how a deposit and a return drift apart. After a permit is approved, the letter from that office says whether you file monthly or quarterly. A monthly permit reports one month of sales on the twentieth of the following month, and April is the month people use as the example. When the twentieth falls on a day that office is closed, the report is due the next morning the office takes filings.

A letter about that report can arrive the same week as a federal matching page. They are not one storm. One file is the taxed sales, the marketplace sales, and the purchases a resale certificate covered. The other file is the return the IRS can already see. We keep the piles apart so a reply about sales tax does not get mailed to the federal notice, and a reply about a 1099 does not get mailed to the Comptroller.

Read The spring dates, then October

Texas owners already live by a cluster of spring dates. Business property rendition on April 15. The franchise report on May 15. The federal return and the first estimate often sit in that same kitchen stretch, and the federal calendar sometimes joins the list again in June, September, and January. We add the notice date to the list you already run, in the same ink. A late reply can turn a copy request into a balance. That is not a threat from us. It is why the first hour is copying the date correctly and saying who has to act before it.

The first cool week, when a coat finally comes off the hook, is when a lot of owners feel the year turning. We use that feeling. Not as a tourist note. As a reminder that the calendar still has room. By October a Texas company can still change what the margin report will say, because the books can still be closed on the year that is actually happening. A bonus that is actually paid, an asset placed in service, or an estimate that matches this year can still be decided before the file locks. A video call in that month is worth more than a heroic weekend in March. October planning does not pause a date that is already printed on a letter. Do both. Honor the date, build the file, and let October change what next year's page has to say.

Read A straight answer, and the line we do not cross

A Texan still deserves a straight answer on a frightening day. We can give the answer. We cannot give the appearance in a hearing, and we cannot give the appearance in an appeal. If what you wanted was the books, the payroll setup, the statements, and the return, that work continues either way. The hearing is the piece that leaves the building. Whoever speaks will ask for the closed months, the copies, and the cost records anyway. Building that stack is not the same as speaking.

Texas still lets someone without that credential keep a set of books, stand a payroll file up, prepare a return under a federal preparer number, and talk an owner through the year. The cover that says the figures were examined belongs at another firm. For a signature on examined figures, Texas points at the Occupations Code rather than at a custom of the trade. The three sections are 901.451, then 901.453, then 901.456. The people who hold the credential are listed by the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy. We are not on that list. The file can travel with you. The signature cannot.

Bring the federal notice, and bring the state page if one came the same week. Leave account numbers off the note. We will say what each page is asking, in ordinary words, and which date is the one that counts.