The taxes a business meets
CPA El Paso Alternative on the taxes a business in El Paso meets.
Four pieces sit under one receipt, a report is due in May, and a property bill arrives in October. This page says which office printed each number.
Ask about a line
Four numbers on one receipt.
Start with the sales stack, because it is the number a customer sees every day. At an address inside the city the Comptroller locator shows 6.25 percent for the state, 1 percent for the city, 0.5 percent for the county, and 0.5 percent for the transit department. The total is 8.25 percent. We read that split from the Comptroller city table and from the rate locator, and we treat the locator as good for the quarter it names, not as a number to memorize.
The city local code on that table is 2071013. The county code is 4071004. The transit code is 3071889. Writing those codes into the books is not decoration. When a notice arrives, the first question is which of the four boxes was short. A single box labeled tax cannot answer it.
The county half percent is a property-tax relief levy, and El Paso County chose to collect it. The transit half took effect on 1 April 1988 and applies inside the city. A shop just outside the city line can owe the county piece and not the transit piece. The address decides. We do not guess from the zip code on a business card.
May, October, and the room tax.
Filers in El Paso hit the same weekend shift everyone else does. If 15 May is a Saturday, a Sunday, or a holiday, the franchise report waits until the next weekday the office is open. Once revenue stays under 2,650,000 dollars, report years 2026 and 2027 file that report and owe zero. Retail and wholesale use 0.375 percent. Other businesses use 0.75 percent. There is also an EZ computation with its own revenue line and a rate of 0.331 percent. We read which computation the entity is actually on. We do not pick the friendlier rate because it sounds smaller.
Property bills from the consolidated tax office go out in October and are due by 31 January. A bill still open on the first morning of February is already late. The office collects for many separate units, so one bill can cover more than the city. The business property list, the rendition, is due 15 April for most property, and a written request can move that date to 15 May. The list is easier to draft from a month that is already closed.
The state hotel tax is 6 percent of a room that costs 15 dollars or more a day, and local hotel tax applies once a room hits 2 dollars a day. Chapter 351 is the 7 percent occupancy piece this city has reported, and chapter 334 is the separate 2 percent piece on the same Comptroller hotel file. Those two are different chapters. We do not add them to the sales stack, and we do not treat a room tax as if it were the receipt tax from the first section.
A weekend the whole state can picture.
Chalk the Block takes over the downtown arts district for three free days and draws a crowd large enough that a local reader can feel it without a brochure. A weekend when the streets belong to people with chalk in their hands is a pleasure we recognize from our own side of the state. Chalk on the pavement does not change the day those four pieces are due. The four pieces are still due on the same calendar, and a pretty street does not fix a box that was posted to the wrong jurisdiction.
A monthly filer sends the sales report on the 20th, and the 2026 chart moves that day when it lands on a weekend. June moves to the 22nd, September to the 21st, and December to the 21st. Those three shifts are the whole story for that year. A shop that files on the printed 20th in those months is late, and a late file is a different problem from a wrong box. We keep the calendar beside the four pieces so the close is finished before the report is due, not the week after a notice arrives.
Owners in El Paso meet the practice on a shared screen, not in a room we keep. The file stays on their side. The close day stays put whether the chalk is still on the sidewalk or not. If a month is open, we say so before we talk about the May report. An open month cannot support a rate, a rendition, or a return.
Bring the line that looked wrong.
Name the piece you think was short. We will say whether the month under it can even be read yet.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.