Looking for sales tax across Texas locations kept straight? Steven Palmieri, a Tax CFO, opens this page with one fact. The state rate is the same everywhere, and the local pieces are not. A company with places of business in two or three cities is reporting more than one rate, and the books have to know which sale belongs to which.
The state's rate is 6.25 percent. Local jurisdictions may add up to 2 percent, so the most a sale can carry is 8.25 percent combined. Many Texas cities sit right at that ceiling, and they reach it by different routes. A city might take one percent, a transit authority another, a special district a share. The pieces differ by address, which is why the Comptroller publishes a rate locator and a table of jurisdictions.
Take the same $100 sale, rung up in two cities. Where Austin's local 2 percent splits evenly, the city takes a dollar and the transit authority takes a dollar. In Fort Worth, the city takes one percent, the transit authority takes half a percent, and a crime control district takes the other half. The customer pays $8.25 in both cities. The state gets $6.25 in both, and the recipients of the other two dollars differ. This is an illustration with round numbers. A company filing correctly knows which dollars go where, because the return asks.
For a seller with a place of business in Texas, local tax generally follows where the sale is consummated. The rules differ for deliveries and for sellers who have no place of business in the state. We do not state these rules from memory. When a company ships across city lines or sells online, the question is which location the sale belongs to, and the answer is settled once, written down and applied the same way each month.
Each Texas location generally needs its own sales tax permit. Returns are due the 20th of the month after the sales for monthly filers. Smaller sellers file quarterly and the smallest file once a year, with the dates and the schedule assigned by the Comptroller by size. The Comptroller assigns the schedule by size.
The simplest way to make a multi-location return tie out is to tag each sale by location when it is booked. Then the sales tax payable account can be split the same way. At the end of the month, we compare the tax collected for each place with what the return will claim. A mismatch shows up in the first week and not in a notice. For a company with a register or an online store feeding the books, the tags come with the feed, and we check them against the rate table each year.
Rates do change. Rates move. A software setup that predates January 1, 2026 would still be applying San Antonio's old Advanced Transportation District figure of 0.25 percent, not the 0.375 percent now in force, and under-collecting until someone noticed. A plan that holds each address against the Comptroller's table finds a change in January. The same habit helps when you open in a new city, as covered in fractional CFO Austin and the page on what a Texas CFO plans for.
The date this page puts on your plan is the 20th, the day sales tax returns are due. Payments above $1,000,000 must be started by 8 pm Central the business day before.
Check your locations' rates with us on a free Second Look call. No paperwork and no payment.
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