CPA New Braunfels Alternative.The return after the counties.

Closed months, then the return.

We do not write a return on top of a fog. If March is open, March gets closed or it gets named as open. The return is the sum of months you can stand behind. Estimates during the year come from those same months, so spring is not the first time you see the shape of the year.

Two counties make the sum slightly less simple, and only slightly. Comal and Guadalupe both add half a percent on top of the city's 1.5 and the state's 6.25. The combined total is 8.25 either way. The return still has to say which county received its piece. We keep that distinction all year so we are not sorting it out in April.

November in this town includes Wurstfest, ten days of music and food along the Comal. That spike belongs in November. It does not get averaged into October to make a chart look calm, and it does not get saved for a conversation in March. The return should be able to show the festival month as the festival month.

What we look for before we file.

We look for sales tax that was collected and not yet paid, for a hotel month that was zero and never filed, and for a franchise report that is coming due on 15 May. On the franchise report for 2026 and 2027, nothing is due below 2,650,000 dollars, and we use that line only once the year has been closed. Retail and wholesale, when the tax applies, pay 0.375 percent. A business that is not retail or wholesale pays 0.75 percent when franchise tax is due. We take the rate for the year being filed from the Comptroller page, rather than from memory of last May.

We also look for personal deposits that landed in the business account. Money that was never income should not become income because it sat in the wrong account for a month. We ask you what it was. We do not guess.

Reasonable pay for an owner who works in the business is a question the return can raise. We will talk about it with the closed year in front of us. We will not invent a figure on a website to make the page look precise.

The part that stays outside.

If a bank near the square asks for an audit, a review, or a compilation, that signature leaves this practice, and we say so before the return is even discussed. The return itself, the books under it, and the plan for what is still open in the year are the work we do.

Payroll setup can be part of getting ready for the return, so wages and filings have a home. The provider runs the paydays. We do not.

A year you recognize.

The test is simple. You should recognize the year when you read the return. The festival month should look like the festival month. The week the river closed should look uneven. The county lines should match the doors you actually open. If a number surprises you, we would rather stop and explain it than file past it.

Bring the last return you trusted and the months since. We will say what can be filed and what has to be cleaned up first.

Estimates once the months are real.

A quarterly estimate is only as good as the months under it. When those months are closed, the conversation in October is about what is still open to decide, not about reconstructing July from a card batch. We would rather talk about a hire, a truck, or a slow festival weekend while the year can still change.

If the months are not closed, we say the estimate would be a guess and we do not dress the guess up. Closing is the first step. The return is what the closed year adds up to, with each county on its own line.