CPA Allen Alternative. Two different things land on 15 May.

Same day, different agencies

15 May is a crowded square on a calendar in Allen, and crowded is how things get merged by accident. The franchise report is a state filing. A protest of a real property value is a local appraisal fight. A business personal property rendition that began life on 15 April can also land on 15 May if you asked in writing for the extension. Three pieces of paper can share a morning. Each one has its own form, its own login, and its own consequence. We keep three notes.

Across report years 2026 and 2027, franchise tax stays off until revenue clears 2,650,000 dollars. Retail and wholesale use 0.375 percent. Other businesses use 0.75 percent. Being under the threshold is not the same sentence as having nothing to file. We read the Comptroller instructions for the year in front of us and we follow those, using the closed books rather than a rounded memory of revenue. Revenue that still includes sales tax collected will lie about the threshold. That is one more reason the local names have to come off income before May.

The protest is about value, not about sales tax

The Collin Central Appraisal District sets the value. The county tax office bills it. A protest is your chance to say the value is wrong, with evidence, inside the window. The city rate of 41.54 cents per 100 dollars and the school rate do their math after the value exists. Arguing the rate when you meant the value wastes the window. We help you assemble cost records, income, and a plain account of what the property is. We do not stand in for the district, and we do not promise a number.

A home's 5 percent city homestead exemption is a third topic that people fold into the same sigh. It is an exemption with its own application calendar, not a protest and not a franchise report. If you live in the home, ask whether the exemption is on the account. If the property is a rental held by the company, do not expect the homestead rules to follow you there. The call ends with one of those three labeled as the one that belongs to you.

The 20th still happens in May

May's franchise morning does not move April's sales tax off the 20th, and it does not move May's own sales tax off the following 20th. Hotel tax, if you have rooms, keeps its 20th as well. We have watched a careful franchise filing sit next to a skipped local return because the day felt spent. Spent is not filed. The close calendar in our working papers shows both, in ink that does not care which one you find more interesting.

If a protest and a franchise report are both yours, put them in two folders before the week begins. The appraisal district wants evidence about value. The Comptroller wants the revenue the closed books support, measured against a no tax due line of 2,650,000 dollars for report years 2026 and 2027. Mixing the folders is how a good argument about a building gets stapled to the wrong form.

There is no Comptroller walk in counter in Allen or elsewhere in Collin County if the franchise filing makes you want a human in a window. The Comptroller points people to its office on the northwest side of Dallas, its office on the southwest side of Dallas, or the virtual field office. We work the filing from the books on a video call. A drive across the county will not finish the filing. Numbers that tie are what the notice is asking for.