Franchise Tax Public Information ReportKeep the public names current

Most owners arrive thinking there is one public sheet for every company. There are two, and a few entities file neither. A corporation, an LLC, a limited partnership, a professional association, or a financial institution files form 05-102 when Texas organized it or it has nexus here. That is the card a stranger can open. A taxable entity outside that list, still in the same Texas or nexus frame, files form 05-167 instead. The ownership lines on 05-167 stay confidential. The Comptroller site does not display them.

Some entities are outside both cards. No Texas organization and no nexus means neither card. An entity the Comptroller treats as exempt from the franchise tax is outside both. A qualifying new veteran owned business is outside both during its first five years, and the tests for that status are on the date page, not guessed from a website note. A passive entity is also outside both cards, with a different sheet if it is registered. We do not sort you into those exceptions from a sentence in a form.

Entity type chooses the card. An ownership percentage on the form does not. A federal tax election does not either. An LLC that belongs on the 05-102 list files 05-102 whether or not it elected to be taxed another way for the federal return. The election still matters for that federal return, so the letter can come along, and it stays in a separate pile from this name card.

Officer and director information on the Comptroller site comes from the latest public report the Secretary of State has processed. The reports are forwarded there, and an electronic copy comes back for the taxable entity search. What a stranger sees is that processed copy, not the draft sitting in a folder and not the note sent from this site.

The form also asks for a principal office in the United States, the place records are kept, and a principal place of business. We do not print any of those addresses here. We do not print a mailing box or a fax line. The form asks for each officer, director, manager, member, or general partner who is serving on the day the report is completed, and it asks for a title. That completion date is the list we want, not the list from the year someone last remembered to look.

A buyer who opens the search is reading names and titles. A member managed LLC is asked on the form to list members, and that instruction is not a published ownership percentage. We will not tell you a buyer can see those percentages. We will tell you the name they can see, and whether it is still the person who would answer the phone.

The ordinary miss is a person who left and is still the name a stranger would read. Picture a member who sold in March and is still the only name on the card in the fall. The balance was never the public line. The stale name is. We do not give removal advice on this page. We ask who serves on the day the report is completed.

A change of officer or director after you file waits for the next annual card. The Comptroller does not demand those mid year changes before that next filing. A person who was named, and who was not an officer or director on the filing date, may send a sworn statement. An error can also be an amended public report. We will say which of those fits once we can see the card that was actually processed. No mailbox is printed here for a sworn statement or an amended card. The working conversation is the form on this site or the hour you book.

Registered agent is a different errand. A change of agent is filed with the Secretary of State. It cannot be written onto the public report or the ownership report. Bring the agent's name if you have it, and leave every street out of the note. If the only problem is the agent, we will say so before anyone pretends the name card can fix it.

Owners exhale when the tax is zero and then assume the name card exhaled with it. It did not. The information report is still due when the entity skips the franchise tax report because annualized total revenue is at or under the no tax due line. Beginning with reports originally due on or after the first day of 2024, there is no longer a separate no tax due report, and the information report remains.

The open table on the franchise tax page lists 2.65 million and does not name a report year on that table. Webfile help lists 2.47 million for reports due in 2024 and in 2025. We read the year on your notice before we pick a number. Circle the fifteenth of May for both the annual report and the public card, and move that circle to the next business day when the fifteenth falls on a weekend or a holiday. One group return does not move that day for a member that still has its own card.

Each member of a combined group that is organized in Texas or has nexus files its own public report or its own ownership report. The no tax due line looks at the group's annualized total revenue, not at each member alone. A quiet member inside a group that cleared the line is not the same fact as a group that did not. Bring the group story in one note so we do not treat a single entity as the whole picture.

Section 171.0003 is the franchise meaning of a passive entity, and it stands apart from any federal meaning of the same word. We do not decide passivity from a note, and we do not run an income percentage test on this page. A passive entity does not file the public report or the ownership report. For reports from 2024 on, a passive entity that is registered, or required to be registered, with the Secretary of State or the Comptroller still files a long form or an EZ computation, signs it, and blackens the passive circle. An unregistered partnership or trust that qualifies, and is not required to register, does not register and does not file.

A qualifying new veteran owned business is outside the franchise tax and outside both information reports for the initial five year period. For reports due before 2024 the Comptroller page names form 05-163. The tests are specific. The entity was formed or organized in Texas on or after the first day of 2016 and before the first day of 2020, or on or after the first day of 2022. Ownership is entirely natural persons. Each owner is an honorably discharged veteran of the United States Armed Services, and each has a letter of verification from the Texas Veterans Commission. The Comptroller verifies those facts. If the qualification is lost during the five years, the entity must notify the Comptroller and becomes subject to the tax. The page cites section 171.0005 and rule 3.574. We will not stamp a business as qualified inside a note on this site.

Form 05-102 is signed by an officer, a director, or another authorized person. Form 05-167 is signed by a partner, a member, an owner, or another authorized person. A bookkeeper is not on either signer line. If the person who keeps the books is also an officer, the officer title is what the signature line is using, not the bookkeeping.

What we prepare is the list and the franchise report that belongs with a year already closed. Reconciled books from that closed month are what the return is prepared from. We do not publish the card on a government site for you, and we do not speak as the office that accepts it. The past gets cleaned up by replacing the stale name with the people who still serve. The present gets managed by having the completion date list before May. The year ahead gets a return that can point at a month that was actually closed.

If a bank, a buyer, or a contract wants a signed opinion on the statements, that opinion is a different job and it is not done here. You hear which job is which before any name is committed to a form. The useful next step for the name card is still the current list, filed because the year itself is in order.