CPA Georgetown AlternativeThe return after both duties
In the spring the year has payouts and city tax in the same months. The return can only tell the truth if those months were closed first.
Book the returnWhere the closed year shows up on the return
The return is not a second set of books. It is a reading of the year the books already closed. If a platform fee was never split out, the income is wrong. If the city hotel tax was booked as a cost of the stay in one month and as a tax in another, the year will not tie to the filings. We fix that in the close, month by month, and the return gets a quiet year.
Franchise tax sits beside the income tax return and it is not the same form. For the reports covering 2026 and 2027, revenue under 2,650,000 dollars can mean no franchise tax is owed, the report is still due on 15 May, and a retail or wholesale trade that does owe tax is charged 0.375 percent while any other trade is charged 0.75 percent. A host's revenue is often under the threshold and the report is still due. The franchise figures we hand you are taken from the year we already froze, and you are the one who sends the report.
What we refuse to estimate
We will not invent a depreciation life to make a cabin look better, and we will not leave a capital improvement inside repairs because the month was busy. The courthouse on the square is a useful picture for this. Everyone sees the stone. The books have to say what life is left and what the asset still carries. Your cabin is not the courthouse, and the same question still applies to a roof, a kitchen, and a lock that a platform required.
Inner Space Cavern sits just west of the interstate on the south side of town, a cool room under the heat. Every Texan who knows that cave knows the highway does not show what is underneath. The return is that lower room. The year looks ordinary until the closed books are opened and the payouts are taken apart.
Rendition belongs in this conversation because the appraisal district and the return are not strangers. Personal property used in the rental is reported to the Williamson Central Appraisal District by 15 April, or by 15 May with a written extension. Missing it can add 10 percent of the tax imposed. We pull the asset list from the same books the return uses, so the two stories match.
School tax and sales tax on the same property
Decisions before the year ends
December is the month we freeze. A retirement contribution, a planned repair, a truck that should have been in the books all year, these are decisions with dates. We would rather talk about them while November is still open than explain them to a notice in August. The freeze is not a mood. It is the last close, with the bank matched and the city tax either paid or recorded as still owed.
Steven Palmieri, Tax CFO and the Entrepreneur's CFO, is who the return is prepared with. The return does not care which side of the state you sleep on. It cares that the year was closed.
Frozen means a row of yes answers. The bank matches through the last day of December. Every payout in the year has been spread into gross, fees, and tax. City hotel tax is filed or recorded as still owed, one month at a time. Personal property on the rendition matches the asset accounts. A repair that was really a new roof has been moved to the asset. When one of those is still a maybe, the return waits.
Estimated payments, if you make them, are dated decisions. A public page will never carry a guessed payment amount just to look responsible. On a call we look at the closed quarters you actually have and say whether a payment belongs in the conversation before the next date, or whether the year is too open to guess. A figure typed into a form just to feel responsible is not a plan.
Lives on assets come up in December, not in April when the form is already impatient. A lock a platform required, a mattress cycle, a roof, each needs a life you can explain to a stranger. We will talk about the life. We will not pick a short one to manufacture a result. Stone on the square is not a number either, and the books still have to carry one for anything you own.
The spring then reads as a year rather than twelve arguments. Franchise tax uses that same closed revenue. For the 2026 and 2027 reports the no tax due line is 2,650,000 dollars, and a host under that line still files the report. We prepare the numbers from the freeze. You send the report on 15 May, the same morning a rendition extension would land if April was missed.
Ask about the year
Name the year. We will tell you if that year can be prepared from what is already closed.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.