Wedding Event Planner Books CleanupFor Texas owners.

The office stays in Dallas.

The readers on this call are sitting in Dallas while your file is on the screen. A planner whose dates are in Dallas or Fort Worth can treat the video call as a call with a neighbor. Everyone else in Texas gets the same screen and the same three amounts. We are all Texans. We have not stood in the venue on your invitation, and there is no second office in your city. The May report and the sales-tax day are the same wherever in Texas the couple says the vows, so the city on the save-the-date does not invent a second calendar.

You already keep the file where you work. We meet on the video call, with the deposit, the open vendor bills, and the fee on a shared screen. Nothing on this page asks you to drive to Dallas to separate those three.

A letter can arrive before the date.

Picture a Tuesday in spring, with the wedding still on the calendar. The deposit is already in the account, the wedding date is still ahead, and a letter from the Comptroller is on the table anyway. The florist has not been paid. The fee in the contract is still waiting on that date. The letter wants an answer even so. We set the letter beside the three amounts before anyone writes back, so the reply names the deposit, the open vendor bills, and the fee, instead of treating the bank balance as one finished number.

A planner who only coordinates, and who never sells flowers or a meal under the planner's own name, can still receive a franchise letter. A planner who sold decor under that same name can receive a sales-tax letter in the same season. Those two letters are different work. We keep each letter on its own pile, even when both arrive in the week a winter deposit posted.

May, and the report that can still be due.

Once a year, Texas asks many companies for a privilege report simply because they are allowed to operate in the state. Limited liability companies and corporations generally file, and a one-owner company stays in that group when the company itself is the limited liability company. Someone who plans under their own name, with no company wrapped around the work, is usually outside this yearly report. A federal label that treats the company as disregarded does not erase the Texas filing. The fifteenth of May is the day that report leaves. Should that fifteenth land on a Saturday, a Sunday, or a day Texas treats as a holiday, the filing waits until the next day the banks are open. This page leaves that shifted weekday unwritten when the year is still ahead.

The dollar line where the tax itself drops away, and the rates that apply above that line, live on the Comptroller franchise page for the report year you are filing. A stale figure typed here would be worse than the link. In a year when no tax is due, Form 05-102 or Form 05-167 can still be the page that has to leave, unless the Comptroller skip list already names the company. Form 05-102 is the public information report. Form 05-167 is the ownership report, and the owner names on it stay off the public copy.

Form 05-102, the public copy, belongs to a financial institution, a professional association, a limited partnership, a limited liability company, or a corporation, when that entity was formed in Texas or has nexus here. Anything taxable that sits outside that cluster, and was still formed here or still has nexus, uses Form 05-167. A planning company paid to coordinate a date is not presumed to be a retailer. The retail test sits on that same Comptroller page, beside the rates. Tax filed as a group still leaves the information sheets separate. Birth of the company in Texas is one reason that company sends its sheet alone. Nexus here is another reason, even when the company was born in another state.

Leaving the short report unfiled is the quiet miss in a year that felt like a zero. The consequence is written on the Comptroller page, and we read that page with the file. This address does not recite a penalty percent, a franchise dollar, or a payment code.

Sales tax on the twentieth, when tax was collected.

When the planner collected Texas sales tax, the ordinary monthly report is due on the 20th of the following month. The letter that follows the permit is what says monthly, quarterly, or yearly. A quarterly filer obeys that letter rather than a habit. The letter's four touches fall at the start of spring, at midsummer, in the fall, and just after the year turns, and the sales page is where those four month names are printed. Should the twentieth itself land on a Saturday, a Sunday, or a state holiday, count the next day the banks are open, and leave a future year's weekday off this page. A month in which tax was collected is the month we open. The rate for the address where the buyer takes the goods stays on the Comptroller sales tax page. Open the rate locator on the day of the sale, because a figure typed here would be a guess about an address we have not looked up.

A seller of taxable goods in Texas needs a sales tax permit before those sales. Coordination by itself, with no taxable good and no taxable service sold under the planner's name, can stay outside that permit. The day flowers, decor, or a catered meal are sold in the planner's name, the permit question opens. If the business is later sold, the permit stays with the seller. We read the permit rules for the place where the goods change hands.

Goods, a meal, and the certificate.

Texas taxes a service when the service is named on the taxable-services list. Wedding planning and coordination are absent from that list. The list is publication 96-259. A meal is a different rule from coordination. Food a caterer cooks and plates can be a Texas taxable sale in a barn or a backyard, far from any dining room. The bakery exception in publication 94-117 is the item that leaves with nothing to eat it on, no plate and no fork. A cake that arrives with service falls outside that exception. We open the publication before the invoice row gets a label.

Flowers, decor, and other goods the planner sells are taxable sales in Texas. Delivery tied to the item joins the price the tax is figured on. A photographer's charge or an artist's charge can be treated as the sale of a finished good under publication 96-259, even when the invoice says professional fee. We apply that publication before the photo line is called coordination.

Goods bought only to sell onward can move on Form 01-339, the resale certificate, and that certificate stays in the file for four years. The rule is on the resale certificate page. A buyer's permit number is a weaker paper than the certificate. Goods the planner uses, instead of selling them to the couple, pull tax onto their cost. A certificate written for a retail shop is a different trade from a planner reselling a centerpiece.

A room in a Texas hotel.

A stay under 30 days in a Texas hotel, motel, bed and breakfast, or a house rented for the wedding can fall under hotel occupancy tax. The lodging place is the collector when that place is the one renting the room. A planner who pays the hotel does not become the collector by reprinting the room on a client invoice. There is no resale of rooms. The hotel tax stays on the price paid to the hotel. The hotel occupancy page is the page we open with the contract.

Meeting rooms and banquet rooms inside a hotel draw the state hotel tax. Local hotel tax is aimed at rooms people ordinarily sleep in. When the banquet bill splits the meal from the room, sales tax follows the meal and hotel tax follows the room. A lump-sum banquet bill that never makes that split takes state hotel tax on the lump. We separate the bill in the books before either return has to guess.

If the couple pays the full room rate and cancels inside 30 days of the stay, hotel tax can still be due on that full rate. A smaller cancellation fee, a slice of the room or a sliding amount under the room rate, sits outside hotel tax. We read the contract and the hotel page before the books pick a label. A house rented for a wedding stay shorter than 30 days can still count as a hotel for this tax.

A card fee on a taxable sale.

When the planner adds a card fee onto a taxable sale of goods, that fee joins the Texas sales price, even where the invoice gives the fee its own row. The amount a card processor holds back from the payout is the planner's own expense. That holdback leaves the reported sales price where it stood. The number that lands in the bank is the arrival after the processor. The sales report wants the price the couple was charged. On a Texas date those two numbers stay in two columns, next to the vendor bills that are still open.