CPA Dallas Alternative.Sales tax, franchise, and property keep their days.
Changing who keeps the books does not move the sales tax day, the franchise day, or the property day. We watch them with Steven Palmieri, a Tax CFO, while the year is still open.
See the deadlines
The dates below belong to the state and to DCAD. We did not invent them, and a date on this page is not a pledge that a filing goes in before the books are ready.
The 20th, every month
Ring up a sale here and the ticket reads 8.25 percent. The pieces are a state piece of 6.25, a city piece of 1, and a DART piece of 1 that has sat at that local share since 1984. Nothing on the ticket is a county add-on. The report for that sale is due the following month, on the 20th.
That is why the books for a month cannot wait until the return in the spring. The 20th arrives twelve times. A shop that feeds the State Fair crowd for those 24 days at Fair Park still files the same 20th as a quiet showroom in the Design District. The deposits look different. The date does not.
If you changed help in the middle of a month, the report for that month still has one due date. The person who files it needs the month closed, or at least needs to know which deposits are in and which bills are still uncoded. If the month is still open when the sales-tax day arrives, the report has to be corrected later, and we would rather close the month first.
April and May
April 15 is the day the business property report is due to DCAD. Send DCAD a written request and the April 15 list can wait until the middle of May. Section 22.23 of the Tax Code is what allows the wait. The report is the list of business property the appraisal district uses. The numbers should come from the asset records in the books. A reminder in March is useful. Rebuilding the asset list the week the report is due is how a number gets invented, and the list should already live in the books.
Under Tax Code section 41.44 the protest is due on the later of two clocks. One clock is May 15. The other starts when the appraisal notice is delivered and runs 30 days. Mark the notice when it arrives. The 30 days run from delivery, not from the day someone meant to open the mail.
May 15 is the franchise filing day for the 2026 report year, and again for the 2027 report year. It is a state tax. No city here imposes a franchise tax of its own. Nothing is owed under 2.65 million dollars, and a report can still be required when no tax is owed. Retailers and wholesalers pay 0.375 percent on this report. Every other business pays 0.75 percent. File it at the rate for that report year, and keep it with the federal return that covers the same months.
Where those dates are not kept
Monday and Wednesday the counter window runs nine to four. Friday morning the window is eight until noon. The phone lines stay open longer than the counter window. This practice has no counter, prints no street, and will not send you there instead of closing the month. If a notice tells you to appear, read that notice before you go. A written request is what moves the property list, and a closed month is what makes the sales report true. The counter cannot do either of those for you.
DART's member cities share that same 1 percent transit tax, Dallas among them. A business that delivers into a different city needs the rate for the place the sale is sourced, which is a separate question from the rate on this page. Bring the cities you actually sell into. Do not assume the 8.25 percent rate in this city follows the truck.
Put the 20th, April 15, and May 15 on one calendar with us. We will say which dates the months already on the books can carry, and which dates still need a month finished first. The May franchise report does not ask who kept the books in July. If a notice names an extra local rate, bring that notice. This write-up never makes up an added local rate. The disclosures page is where the limit on signed audits is written.
Tell us the deadline
Name the date. We will say whether those months are far enough along to carry it.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.