CFO vs ControllerFor Texas owners.
The practice is in Dallas. The two jobs are the same wherever the books sit, and a Texas owner can do both on a video call.
Ask from Texas
A practice in Dallas, a call anywhere in the state
Steven Palmieri keeps the practice in Dallas. Owners elsewhere in Texas join on a video call with both screens on the books, and the close keeps one weekday every month. Nobody drives to a second storefront for the close. The shared screen is the visit. If you are in Houston, Austin, the Hill Country, along the Gulf, up in the Panhandle, or on a ranch road that does not show up in a city list, we are all Texans, and the weekday still holds.
Outside Dallas and Fort Worth the same order applies. Finish the month. Then make the call. A controller counts what already happened. A Tax CFO decides what the open months should do next. On a small company those are one person. Distance does not split them back into two departments. The screen shares the bank, the lists, and the decision in one afternoon.
A letter from the Comptroller has the same chill as any other official envelope. The quarter it names is often one the owner meant to reconcile and did not. On a Texas file that letter is a reason to build the month, not a reason to guess. The other pages of this site talk about an IRS notice in that same spirit. This page is where the state dates live, so the national pages can stay with the owner who is not in Texas.
Places a Texan already knows
When the State Fair opens at Fair Park, we enjoy the Hall of State the way you do, then wonder whether that busy season still closed its month. Inside the Hall of State the chandeliers and the gold seal are what you notice first. We notice them too, then wonder how many fair seasons actually closed their months before those lights came on. A proud building can still have an open year behind it. The fair is a feeling. The month is a file. We like both, and we do not let the feeling stand in for the file.
Lunch fills the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center and evening empties it. We picture that hall and ask whether the month finished before a report was promised. A room that holds a crowd in the afternoon and goes quiet at night is a useful picture of a Tuesday. The crowd is the work that arrived. The quiet is the hour when the bank and the books have to name the same cash. We would rather have that quiet than a promised report sitting on an open month.
Deep Ellum packs a Saturday into that short run of Elm Street, and we love the crush the way you do. We then ask whether one person closed the month and still had an hour to talk. Elm Street in Deep Ellum still holds a tattoo sign and a bakery on the same brick row, and we like that a short block can carry two kinds of work without pretending they are one shop. Do the quiet part of the month first. Let the louder call happen after the tie. A month likes that order too. Friday nights at the American Airlines Center still carry a pride Dallas has held since 2011, and we feel it with you. After the horn the books need an answer before Monday.
The first blue norther still surprises anyone who counted on more warm weeks. We feel that drop too. October is when an owner wage can still change the year. The lawn at Dealey Plaza stays green into the fall, with the white pergola and the old red courthouse behind it, and we still feel how open that grass is. A cold front can cross it while the calendar says the warm season. We feel that drop here. The books have the same surprise. The year looks open, and then it is not. October is the month we treat as that front, on purpose. Dealey Plaza sits on the west edge of the West End, the warehouse streets northwest of downtown, and we still feel the weight of that ground. A year of closed months should feel like that walk to you, one block at a time, without guessing what the last one hid.
Since 2012 the white arch of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge has taken Woodall Rodgers over the Trinity and into West Dallas. People are proud of that white arch, and they should be. Pride is not the same as speed. A question about these two jobs deserves an answer that has been checked against the month, not an answer that only sounds confident. Bishop Arts has a breakfast patio at Oddfellows that fills before the shops do. We borrow only the feeling of that quiet start, then come back to the words printed on the card. The patio hour is ordinary on purpose. A title is just the sign. We would rather be useful in the hour than grand on the sign.
Klyde Warren Park is the deck over Woodall Rodgers, open from six in the morning until eleven at night. A freeway runs under a lawn, and for a minute the noise drops. A finished month does that for an owner. The Tuesday gets quieter because the difference has a name. We like that feeling, and we do not pretend it arrives before the tie. The downtown towers beside Klyde Warren Park are a view worth keeping. The park itself is a deck over Woodall Rodgers, and it stays open from early morning until late. We think of a finished month the same way. The noise of the open items goes under the deck. What is left is a place you can walk. That is the feeling we are aiming at, not a performance of busy. Picture a Texas owner who opens a note on a Tuesday. The lender wants a finished month and a decision in the same note. The places above are how the week feels. The note is the work.
The dates a controller keeps
Click to see the dates ›Tap to see the dates ›
On a Texas sales-tax permit the state piece is 6.25 percent, and a city or transit piece can stack on top of it by as much as 2 percent more, with the stack never passing 8.25 percent. After a month of sales, the controller half has until the 20th of the next month to hand the return in. The four quarterly hand-ins land on April's 20th, July's 20th, October's 20th, and January's 20th. Even a quiet month keeps its return while the permit stays open. The controller half puts that 20th on the same list as the bank tie, and the file is ready before the date or the date turns into the emergency.
The franchise report is the franchise tax, a privilege tax on the right to do business in the state. Report years 2026 and 2027 owe nothing on this privilege tax when annualized total revenue is 2,650,000 dollars or less. The compensation deduction on that report is limited to 480,000 dollars. The rate most entities see is 0.75 percent. A qualifying retail or wholesale business sees 0.375 percent. The EZ computation is 0.331 percent when annualized total revenue is 20 million dollars or less. Report years 2024 and 2025 used a no-tax-due line of 2,470,000 dollars, and that older line does not get copied into a 2026 file.
The No Tax Due Report was discontinued for reports covering 2024 and later. An entity that still has to say who it is files Form 05-102, the Public Information Report, or Form 05-167, the Ownership Information Report, unless it is on the skip list. Mark May 15 on the controller calendar, and if that day is a Saturday, a Sunday, or a holiday the report moves to the next day the offices are open. Someone who files as a sole owner, with no entity around the shop, is generally left off that report. A company with one owner that is still a limited liability company generally still files it. May sits on the controller calendar the way the 20th does. The CFO half uses the closed months before May to decide a wage or an estimate, while the year those months describe is still open. A Comptroller letter about a missed 20th or a thin May file is the state version of the notice the other pages describe. We would rather build the file than admire the letter.
The signature the statute keeps
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Occupations Code 901.451, 901.453, and 901.456 are the sections that keep an examined report, a lesser assurance report, and a compilation with the firms allowed to sign them. The statute wrote that room on purpose. The reserved signatures stay with those firms. This practice hands across the finished months and stops. Filing a return, talking an owner through a decision, and handing over statements with no report attached still fit on this side of the line. The plain sentence about the signature lives once, on the disclosures page. This page does not copy that sentence as a second slogan.
A Texas owner who was pointed at a signed cover still gets the same morning as any other owner. We read the sentence the lender wrote. Statements from closed months can be prepared here. A signature the statute reserves gets a referral in the first conversation. The months we hand across make that other firm's work shorter and truer. The title on the card does not change the section numbers.
Photographs that used to open these pages
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The Hall of State exterior is a Wikimedia Commons photograph by RadicalBender, used under Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0. The Hall of State interior is a separate Commons photograph by Michael Barera from the 2019 fair, used under CC BY-SA 4.0. The red drum, the drum against the sky, and the hanging lights are Commons photographs of the Winspear Opera House by Andreas Praefcke, used under CC BY 3.0. Klyde Warren Park is two different Commons photographs by Joe Mabel, the towers on the deck and the fountain with children, both under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Joe Mabel also made the brick warehouse on Elm Street, the Elm Street shops with the bakery sign, and the south entrance of the American Airlines Center, each a different file under CC BY-SA 3.0. The glass front of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center is a Commons photograph by Frj under CC BY-SA 4.0. The downtown towers are a Commons photograph by Eric Statzer under CC BY-SA 4.0. The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge at night is a Commons photograph by Marco Becerra under CC BY 2.0. The Bishop Arts patio is a Commons photograph by Renelibrary under CC BY-SA 4.0. The lawn and white pergola at Dealey Plaza are a Commons photograph by Fredlyfish4 under CC BY-SA 3.0. Each of those files was used on one page only, and those pages now carry a photograph of the work instead.
Carol M. Highsmith photographed the pink granite Texas State Capitol in Austin, dome and all, and that public-domain frame from the Library of Congress collection is the one picture on this page. A white window, sunflowers, rain on glass, a glass bowl, and a snowy pine branch were quiet Pixabay photographs under the Pixabay Content License. They are not the pictures on the national pages now. The credits page names the files that replaced them. The places named above stay here, because they are Texas, and the work they were standing next to stays on the page where the owner landed.
Name the Texas half
A sentence about the month, the Comptroller letter, or the May report is enough to start.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.