Late Filing PenaltyFor Texas owners
The practice is in Dallas. A Texas owner meets us on a video call, and the notice in your hand is still named before anyone talks about the May report.
Read the May ruleThe practice sits in Dallas
The practice is in Dallas, and we serve Texas owners on a video call. Outside Dallas and Fort Worth the honest line is that we are all Texans. That is a different claim from keeping a chair in your town, and we will not pretend a visit we have not made. The notice is still the subject, whichever side of the state the kitchen table is on. You do not need a street. Call the phone printed under any page and you reach this Dallas practice, the same one, with no second office hiding behind the number.
The other pages on this site talk to an owner in any state, because a federal notice uses one hard phrase in every kitchen. The dates, the places, and the May franchise report for a Texas company are written on this page alone. A company formed in Texas should use the May dates in the sections under this one. If you landed here from another state, those other pages match your morning, and you can still read how a Texas report sits beside a federal notice without being folded into it.
We name the charge on the federal notice first. The May report is a second sheet, with its own late rule, and it does not rename Form 1040, Form 1065, or Form 1120-S. A video call can hold both sheets. It cannot honestly hold them as one total.
March, a rail line, and a partnership return
Bluebonnets along a Texas rail in March are a week every Texan knows, and a partnership return due then still needs its own charge. We share that week. We are all Texans in it, and we do not claim a town along that rail. The flowers are a season. The form is a filing. They can share a calendar without sharing a math problem.
A single bluebonnet in a Texas ditch is a small pride every Texan claims when March turns. We share that pride from Dallas. A return due then is still priced on the tax left unpaid, not on how busy the spring felt. The roadsides can look like a celebration. The base does not join the celebration, and a partial month still counts even when the week felt too full to file.
March bluebonnets and a partnership return can share a week. We are Texans, so that week belongs to us the way it belongs to you. Zero income tax does not retire Form 1065, even in a week when the roadsides look like a celebration. The partners may already have reported their shares. That fact does not file the partnership return. If the notice is a 1065, the personal math stays on its own line until the partnership charge is clear.
A charge that outlasts the harvest
Cotton comes off the stalk at Batesville while a payment charge can still be growing. We share that Texas season, and the notice does not pause for harvest. We do not claim Batesville. We feel the season as Texans, from Dallas, and the half percent keeps its own clock on your counter while the modules sit in the field.
The cotton gin at Priddy has stood since the town needed one. We share that piece of Texas history, and we do not claim the town. A payment charge can outlast a harvest the way that building outlasted the season that needed it. An old notice is not finished because the gin is quiet, and the filing charge can already have stopped while this slower charge is still adding months.
Relief still splits the way the federal pages describe it. An automatic path can apply when the prior three years were timely, and interest can remain. A reasonable cause request is one you make, or a firm that represents people makes. Relying on a preparer usually does not qualify. We will name which path the three years support. We will not send the request, and we will not appear at a hearing, in harvest season or any other.
A fall kitchen, two clocks, and a K-1
A pecan pie on a Texas table in the fall is a kitchen every Texan knows. Closed months under that year can still change the return. If the months are already closed, the return can still be aimed, and the form number is how the aiming starts. If the months are open, we close them before we let the return pretend they were finished. Pecan pie on the table is a season, and a season leaves the books untouched. The bank and the file are what finish a month.
Pecan season in Texas is when two clocks are easy to confuse, the filing clock and the payment clock. We are Texans in that season. We still refuse to add the two rates for a month the rule already combined. In a month when both charges run, the filing charge shrinks by the payment charge, so the shared month is already five percent. Adding them again is how a settled month gets recounted.
A fall kitchen in Texas, pecan pie on the table, is still a fine week to ask which charge the notice is using. We are Texans in that kitchen season. The year under the pie can still move if the months are closed. The questions do not get easier by waiting for the bold total to explain itself. Bring the form number. The figure can wait until the charge has a name.
A Texas kitchen in the fall can hold both papers and a pecan pie, and the pie will not tell you which sheet the notice priced. We know that table as Texans. The sort is still the form number, twice, on two lines. The company notice stays on one side of the table. The K-1 stays on the other. Interest, if the notice included it, is a third line, because the quarter sets that rate and then replaces it.
A Saturday the count does not take off
Every Texan knows a Saturday built around a smoker. The count of late forms does not care about that Saturday. Each form still draws one band for how late it was, and we can enjoy the Saturday without pretending the count took the day off. Ten late forms are ten charges. They do not collapse into one another, and they do not collapse into the personal tax of the person who was supposed to receive the form.
The bands themselves, and any smaller-business cap, stay on the IRS information-return page. We will not freeze a dollar that the page can change. What we will do is keep the count honest, and keep the vendor payments in the month they were paid so next year's forms have a file behind them. A Saturday off is a good Saturday. It is not a filing.
The dome, and a May report that is not the federal notice
Every Texan knows the capitol dome. The May franchise report carries a state late rule of its own, and we will not treat that charge as the federal notice. The capitol's May calendar is a Texas date. We will not let that date rename a federal S corporation notice. The state late rule and the federal instruction stay in separate paragraphs on purpose.
Every Texan knows the dome that sits over that May date. We know it as Texans. We do not claim an office under it. The federal notice in your hand keeps its own name, and the franchise report keeps its own. A stack of books on a table is only a stack of books. The Texas part of that picture, for us, is the drop in your stomach when the notice arrives before the month is closed. We know that worry. We read the charges the notice actually contains, and we do not pretend a hearing is included.
That state report shows up around mid-May, on the Comptroller's calendar rather than the IRS calendar. The calendar day is the fifteenth. A fifteenth that falls on a weekend or a holiday is not the day the Comptroller expects the report. The due day then becomes the next day those offices are open. A report that arrives late can draw a fifty dollar charge even when no tax is due. If the tax payment itself is late, the state adds five percent when the payment is one to thirty days late, and ten percent when it is later than that. Those shares are not the federal five percent of unpaid tax, and they are not the federal half percent on the balance.
Those are state figures from the Comptroller franchise page, and they are not the federal notice. We will not add them into one total to make the afternoon simpler. The margin math, and any dollar thresholds that move, stay on the Comptroller franchise page where the state maintains them. Interest on a late franchise payment starts on the sixty-first day. The percent for that interest stays on the Comptroller interest page, and it is not copied here.
What the 2026 and 2027 row actually prints
Report years 2026 and 2027 use one revenue line on that franchise page, 2,650,000 dollars. At or under the line, the franchise tax itself is not owed and the long tax report is not the filing. A short public information report, or an ownership report where that is the form the entity uses, is still expected unless the Comptroller has the company on its skip list. Being under the line does not, by itself, cancel the short report.
Skipping that short report can put the company's right to do business at risk even when no tax was due, including the right to sue or defend in a Texas court, and people who run the company can become personally answerable for certain debts. The Comptroller's public information page names the statute sections. This note does not turn them into steps. A registered-agent change is a Secretary of State filing, not a line on the May report.
On that same 2026 and 2027 row, retail and wholesale are taxed at 0.375 percent and other businesses at 0.75 percent. The deduction for what a company pays one person stops once that pay reaches 480,000 dollars. The no-margin shortcut, the EZ path, is 0.331 percent when revenue is 20 million dollars or less, and choosing it means giving up margin deductions. These figures are not the 2024 row. Open the franchise page and match the year before a threshold moves from this note onto your calendar.
A payment that arrives by the original day can push the report deeper into the year. The extensions page is where the share of tax that payment must cover is printed, and where a later November day is distinguished from an earlier August day for companies that pay electronically. This page does not freeze those shares or those clock times. Read them on the Comptroller page in the year you are filing. A final report, when the company leaves Texas or the nexus ends, has its own short clock on that same family of pages.
Margin is computed from closed books, not from a guess made to match a fear. Total revenue, cost of goods, compensation, and the flat subtraction are different paths, and a services company often has little cost of goods the statute will allow. Compensation counts wages and certain benefits. It does not count payments reported on a 1099. Apportionment follows Texas receipts. A combined group is a facts question from the books, not a slogan. A May franchise report is prepared only after the year's months have each been closed. We will not dress up a margin just so May looks cheaper than the books allow.
Who may sign, and who may not
If the notice wants an examined opinion, that signature belongs to a firm the Texas board has authorized. Read sections 901.451, 901.453, and 901.456 of the Texas Occupations Code on statutes.capitol.texas.gov when you want the statute's own words for a return, a monthly close, and the signatures that stay elsewhere. Texas still lets us prepare the return, keep each month, and hand over statements that contain numbers and nothing signed. A sales tax close is work we can prepare. The May franchise report is work we can prepare. An audit opinion is not. A penalty appeal is not.
Who signs an examined statement is a question for the Texas board, and the answer is a firm outside this practice. Disclosures carries the single credential sentence, and this page will not turn that sentence into a refrain. A hearing about the federal charge, and a protest about the franchise tax that needs a representative, both leave this practice. You hear that limit in the first conversation.
A sentence on this page was set next to the Comptroller page that already states the rule, the same way a federal sentence on the other pages is set next to the IRS page. Nothing on this page is copied out of a client's file. If the Comptroller changes a threshold, we replace the sentence that held the old figure. Say you are on the owners page when you call, and that replacement can start.
Source. Franchise due dates, the fifty dollar charge on a late report, and the five and ten percent shares on a late tax payment are on the Comptroller franchise page at https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/franchise/. The 2026 and 2027 revenue line, the 0.375 percent and 0.75 percent rates, the 480,000 dollar compensation cap, and the 0.331 percent EZ rate are on that same page. Federal failure to file, failure to pay, information-return charges, and quarterly interest were are the public pages on irs.gov. No dollar from a moving table is copied onto a federal page of this site.
Which notice is in your hand
The form number on the federal notice, and whether May was filed, are enough to start.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.