Looking for a fractional CFO who understands Texas usually has a particular worry. The business has grown past one address, and nobody has put the state's rules in one place. Steven Palmieri, a Tax CFO, offers an answer that is smaller than the worry. The federal work is the same anywhere. The Texas layer is a short list, and a short list can be planned.
A fractional CFO gives you part of a senior finance person's month. Hours at a time bring the judgment of someone who reads a lot of ledgers, and no full salary comes with it. What this site adds is the Texas list, kept current beside the federal one.
Five things make up most of what is particular to a Texas company. The franchise tax, which most entities pay or at least report on. Local sales tax, which depends on the address of each sale. Appraisal districts, one for every county where you own equipment. The Texas Workforce Commission, which wants a registration and a quarterly report once you have employees. And the Secretary of State, which keeps the record of who is registered to do business. Anything else usually belongs to a particular industry.
None of the five is hard by itself. The difficulty is that each one runs on its own calendar and its own office, and a growing company meets them one at a time.
The franchise report becomes a line on the close. Revenue is tracked against the threshold all year, and the margin choices are weighed in the fall, not the week before May 15. Sales tax is tagged by location in the books, so each return ties out and no one reconstructs it. Renditions come from an asset list kept by county. The payroll registration and its quarterly report sit on the calendar, and the payroll provider's feed lands in the books. The franchise tax page and the page on sales tax across Texas locations take the two biggest in turn.
Several choices change a little because the company is in Texas. Where to open the next location, because the local tax pieces and the appraisal district come with the address. How to pay the owner, because the entity and owner pay are weighed with the franchise tax beside the federal return. Which entity to be, though the legal side of that belongs to an attorney. When to buy equipment for a site, because it lands on a rendition. Each of these is a federal question first, and the Texas side is added to it.
Say a distributor ships from a warehouse in Houston and sells from a shop in Austin. At the close, the books show the two places separately. The sales tax return lists each address with its own rate. The asset list shows which forklifts sit in which county, and the payroll feed shows which crew worked where. The franchise line shows revenue of about $2,000,000 for the year so far, so the owner knows the company is under the 2026 line of $2,650,000 and is not far from it. All of these are round illustrations and do not describe a real company. The one-page summary takes minutes to read.
Our practice is in Dallas, and we work with owners across Texas by video, shared books and a calendar link. Because we are all Texans, the state's agencies, May report and clock are our own. A company with a location in Houston and another in Austin does not need two advisors. It needs one set of books with a tag for each place. The page about working across the Texaplex describes how that runs.
We would rather say this here. If investors, a lender or a bond company need audited statements, a licensed firm signs those, and we get the books ready for it. If your main question is a legal conversion or a merger, an attorney comes first, and we bring the numbers. And if you have one location, no employees and no franchise tax due, clean books may be all you need for now.
The date this page puts on your plan is May 15, the day the franchise report is due. Everything else on the Texas list can be worked backward from it, and the plan starts the countdown in the fall.
Tell us where you operate and we will list your Texas filings, on a free Second Look call. No paperwork and no payment.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.