The Texas Franchise Report exists for the fortnight before 15 May, and for the morning somebody runs a status check on your entity and it comes back forfeited. This is a guide, not a government website, and it has no affiliation with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
Nearly everyone arrives looking for one form, and that is the root of most of the trouble on this subject. The Comptroller index actually describes three separate jobs. There is the tax itself, which only bites when revenue is over the threshold for that report year. There is the annual report. And there is a Public Information Report, or an Ownership Report, which an entity at or below the threshold still has to file even though it owes nothing.
If what you want is the date, plus a straight answer about whether you are in the group that owes any tax at all, you are asking exactly the right two questions and most people find the answer is better than they feared.
The figures below were read from Comptroller franchise index. Affiliation with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts is absent from this page.
Read on the Comptroller franchise index, comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/franchise/, on 29 September 2026. 15 May is the day named for the yearly filing, and a weekend or holiday pushes that day forward to the following business day. For report years 2026 and 2027, tax begins above 2,650,000 dollars. Retail or wholesale is listed at 0.375 percent, every other activity at 0.75 percent, compensation is capped at a 480,000 dollar deduction, and the EZ rate of 0.331 percent is listed beside a 20 million dollar revenue band. For report years 2024 and 2025 the tax-begins figure is 2,470,000 dollars and the compensation cap is 450,000 dollars. Filing after the due date costs 50 dollars on the report. Paying in the first 30 days after the due date adds 5 percent of the tax. Paying after that window adds 10 percent. Unpaid tax starts accruing interest on day 61. Even when tax is zero, the index still wants a Public Information Report or an Ownership Report. Those lines were copied from the franchise index and nowhere else.
Disregarded, partnership, S election, C corporation. Each of those points at a different federal form, and the revenue figure on your Texas report is copied straight off whichever one is yours. So the election has to be named before the copying starts, or the Texas number inherits somebody else's mistake.
This page cannot tell you which election your company has, and would be guessing if it tried. The return already on file knows.
They get muddled constantly, so here they are apart. A report filed after the due date draws 50 dollars on that report, whatever the tax is. Tax paid between one and thirty days late adds 5 percent, and after thirty days it adds 10 percent. Interest on past-due tax starts running on day sixty one. None of that is a promise that any of it can be taken off again, and you should be wary of anyone who promises that.
The index names two notices in its 2026 news block. Form 05-211, a notice of intent to forfeit the right to transact business, tied to a missed 2026 filing. Form 05-213, a notice of forfeiture of registration, tied to a missed 2025 filing. The repair the page itself prints is to file and pay what that notice names. If the entity is at or below the threshold, the page says to file the Public Information Report or the Ownership Report.
A bank, a buyer or a title company has looked at your Comptroller status and seen a forfeited right to transact business, and now whatever was on the table is waiting. Work in this order and it goes faster. Read the notice first, then find the filing that is missing, then decide whether the reinstatement itself needs a Texas attorney on it. What this desk will not do is put a date on how long a reinstatement takes, or give you the legal answer, because neither would be ours to give.
The index points at common-owner material without printing a complete test on the page we read, so this guide will not restate one as though it were settled. Two LLCs with a single owner behind them might file together and might file separately, and the honest answer needs both sets of books in front of somebody. It is not a thing anyone can tell from the names on the certificates.
| The tax, if revenue is over the year's threshold | Computed from the federal return |
|---|---|
| The annual report | Due 15 May, or the next business day |
| Public Information Report or Ownership Reportmarked | Still filed when no tax is due |
| Your entity's revenue | Left blank. It comes from your return |
Reading the index, naming your filing, computing the margin off the federal return and preparing that return are all work anybody may do, and they are the work here. Signing a report on your financial statements, an audit or a review or a compilation, is not, because Texas keeps that for licensed firms and there is no CPA license behind this guide.
It comes up when a bank wants a signed set rather than a filed report, and when it does you will be told straight away and pointed at a firm that can sign one. The full list of what this desk leaves alone is on the disclosures page.
Pull the three jobs apart and May stops feeling like a second tax system bolted onto the first. The report is copying a federal return that already exists. One person, working from books that already agree with the bank, can prepare both without anything being rebuilt.
Most entities under the threshold owe no franchise tax at all and still file the information report, and that is the quiet, ordinary version of this. Somebody carries the May date for you. The federal return and the Texas report stay in the same pair of hands, because a wrong figure on the first one turns into a wrong figure on the second and nobody notices until a status check.
Owing nothing and filing nothing are different. The Comptroller index says an entity at or below the no-tax-due threshold still files a Public Information Report or an Ownership Report. The threshold for report years 2026 and 2027 was 2,650,000 dollars on 29 September 2026.
The report carries the tax computation when one is due. The Public Information Report, or the Ownership Report, is the filing the index still requires when no tax is due. Missing that second filing is what the forfeiture notices are about.
The index describes Form 05-211 as a notice of intent to forfeit the right to transact business, and Form 05-213 as a notice that registration was forfeited for an earlier year. A bank or a buyer can see that status. This page does not promise how fast a reinstatement happens.
The index links to a request for an extension. This page does not describe what that request moves, because those instructions were not the text read on 29 September 2026. The due date of the report itself, absent an extension, is 15 May.
From the federal form the election points at. Name that election before anyone copies a revenue line onto the Texas report.
A counterparty that checks status will see the forfeiture. Whether a particular contract can be signed is a legal question for a Texas attorney. This desk will help identify the missing filing. It will not give that legal answer.
Closing operations and ending the Comptroller account are different steps. The index says an out-of-state entity that ends its Texas nexus files a final report and pays any amount due within 60 days of ceasing to have nexus. A Texas entity uses the close-or-reinstate path on the same site, which this page will not invent past that sentence.
WebFile is the Comptroller's own filing door, linked from the franchise index. A missing letter is sorted from the entity record on that account, not from a number guessed on a third-party site.
The index points at common-owner information and does not print a complete test on the page that was read. Both sets of books are the way to ask the question. The names alone are not enough.
The index prints an EZ rate of 0.331 percent beside a revenue band of 20 million dollars, for the report years listed above. Which computation is smaller depends on margin the instructions allow. A blank entity gets no comparison here.
The same desk does both, and the seat has a name worth knowing. A Tax CFO is the controller and CFO seat for an owner run business with the tax work inside it, so the books, the return and the plan come from one desk and the October number is decided before the year ends. Breadth is the books, the federal return, the May report and the plan on one desk, which is the report above with its margin already computed. Height is the read from the top of the finance pyramid, where the year is decided before the May date arrives.
I came for the May date. What I want is the right filing for this entity, prepared from the same federal return, with the information report not forgotten.
Twenty minutes in April names the filing. The report is a file and a federal return you already have, so the work does not need a lobby.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.