Texas Nonprofit Compliance Guide: Key Requirements and Filing Deadlines

What the Texas guide covers

The verified Texas guide (/states/texas/) documents Certificate of Formation filing under the Business Organizations Code, the unusual request-driven Secretary of State periodic report, franchise-tax and sales-tax exemption applications to the Comptroller, the narrow specialty-solicitation registrations that exist alongside the "no general registration" baseline, and charitable raffle and bingo rules.

Texas is structured around the idea that most charities need no ongoing state charitable-registration filing at all — a genuinely distinctive position among the seven states published so far — while still imposing specific, separately triggered duties for particular activities (raffles, bingo, law-enforcement-affiliated solicitation, veterans solicitation).

Major state agencies involved

The Texas Secretary of State’s Business & Public Filings Division handles the Certificate of Formation and the periodic report. The Comptroller of Public Accounts administers franchise-tax and sales-tax exemption. The Office of the Attorney General runs charitable-trust oversight and the specialty solicitation registrations (LETSA, public-safety, veterans). The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (as of September 1, 2025) licenses charitable bingo, and the Texas Workforce Commission runs unemployment tax.

Genuinely Texas-specific findings

Formation uses Form 202 (Certificate of Formation) at a standard $25 fee, with a 2.7% convenience surcharge for credit-card payment; the filing becomes effective on acceptance unless a permitted delayed effective date is stated, no later than 90 days after signing (Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code §§ 3.001, 3.003, 3.005, 22.001, 22.101).

Texas has no annual or biennial Secretary of State report requirement for nonprofits at all — the SOS may request Form 802 no more often than once every four years, triggered by its own notice to the registered office, with a 30-day filing window after notice and a 120-day cure period before forfeiture becomes termination (Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code §§ 22.357-22.364).

The Attorney General states directly that most charities or nonprofit organizations are not required to register with the state — a genuine baseline, not an unregulated gap, since specialty statutes cover law-enforcement-affiliated telephone solicitation, public-safety solicitation, and veterans solicitation with their own registration fees ($50 to $500) and bonds.

Franchise-tax exemption is a Comptroller application separate from formation and from federal recognition: a 501(c)(3) generally applies with Form AP-204 plus its IRS determination letter, while organizations fitting Texas’s own independent charitable, religious, or educational categories can use category-specific forms (AP-205, AP-207, AP-209) even while federal recognition is pending (Tex. Tax Code §§ 171.062-171.063).

Sales-tax exemption on purchases likewise requires its own Comptroller approval and a Form 01-339 certificate given to each seller before the exempt purchase — exemption covers only purchases tied to the organization’s exempt purpose, and alcohol purchases generally do not qualify (Tex. Tax Code § 151.310).

The Charitable Raffle Enabling Act allows up to four raffles per calendar year without a state raffle permit, but only for a qualifying organization that has existed at least three years (ten years for a qualified religious society); cash prizes are prohibited outright, purchased prizes are capped at $75,000 ($250,000 for a purchased residential dwelling), and the organization must possess the prize or post a county-clerk bond before the drawing (Tex. Occ. Code Chapter 2002).

Unemployment-tax (Texas Workforce Commission) liability attaches at four or more employees in 20 different weeks in a year; a new liable employer generally registers within 10 days, and a reimbursement election generally uses Form C-6A within 45 days of the liability notice.

Deadlines, fees, and thresholds to keep straight

The Form 802 periodic report has no fixed calendar date at all — its only deadline is 30 days after the SOS actually sends notice, which can happen at most once every four years.

The raffle statute’s three-year organizational-age requirement and the four-raffle annual cap are eligibility gates that exist before any prize-related rule matters — an otherwise-compliant raffle by a too-new organization is still unauthorized.

Distinctions organizations frequently confuse

"No general charitable-solicitation registration" does not mean fundraising is unregulated in Texas — raffles, bingo, professional-fundraiser arrangements, and the specialty telephone/public-safety/veterans statutes each impose their own separate duties.

Franchise-tax exemption and sales-tax exemption are two separate Comptroller approvals with two separate application forms; approval for one does not establish the other.

What remains under verification

Only four facts in the Texas guide are currently labeled Verification in Progress: the exact statewide audit/review threshold (no single official source was found establishing one universal figure), the specialty-solicitation reporting calendar, the newspaper-publication requirement, and the charitable-bingo licensing transition to TDLR since September 1, 2025, whose fee schedule was still routing to legacy pages at the time of research.

The core formation, franchise-tax, sales-tax, and raffle rules above are source-verified — Texas currently has the highest source-verified share of the seven published guides.