CPA and Bookkeeping Rockwall AlternativeBefore March changes the year

The prior year is closed. Not tidied, closed. The bank agrees, the invoices that should be open are open, and the ones that were duplicates are voided. Sales tax for the year has been filed or the difference is a known number, not a feeling. That is the file a franchise report and an income tax return can share.

The franchise report for report years 2026 and 2027 uses a no tax due threshold of 2,650,000 dollars, with retail and wholesale at 0.375 percent and other businesses at 0.75 percent, due on 15 May. Those figures come from the Comptroller franchise page, read in September 2026. They are public. The table is statewide, and one shop by the water still has to be measured from its own closed year. What is yours is whether the closed year is above or below the line, and that answer is not available in March if December is still open.

Estimates are the other March conversation. If last year was the pattern and this year is already different, waiting until the return is filed to notice is how a penalty arrives. We look in March with the year closed behind us and the new year only two months old.

The prior year has to stand up without a story attached. Count the invoices that were voided because a second program had typed the same job. Count the deposits that were net of a fee the first program never saw. If those two counts are still a feeling, March is not done, and May will file a feeling. We would rather spend the month on that count than on a speech about how the town got its name. A year that exists only in a program nobody reconciled is a story, not a filing.

So the March work is unglamorous. Open the December reconciliation. Read every item older than sixty days. Confirm the sales tax payable account is the amount the next return will actually pay, not a leftover from a prior program. Then stop adding new excitement to the old year.

We will not roll an open month into the return because a deadline feels close. We will not invent a count of inventory. We will not move a personal card's charges into the company without you seeing the entry. A later signature, if a lender wants one, still has to be done by a firm allowed to sign it. Being ready for that request is not the same as signing it.

If your year is already closed and March is only a question about an estimate, say that. The call can be short. A short call that prevents a penalty is a complete use of the page.

Inventory counts, mileage you meant to keep, and the question of whether a truck is in the company or in your own name. March can still record a true count if you take it. March cannot invent a count you did not make. We will put a memo on the file that says the count is missing, and the return will live with that memo. A tidy number with no count behind it is the thing we will not type.

Bonus and equipment decisions have a little more room, and only while the cash and the paperwork can still happen in the open year. Once the year is shut in the file, we do not reopen it to improve the story. Reopening is for an error, and the error gets named.