Texas Form 01-117 Sales and Use Tax Return: Line-by-Line Filing Guide

To fill out Texas Form 01-117, the Sales and Use Tax Return short form, confirm you qualify to use it, enter your total sales, taxable sales, and taxable purchases, apply your combined tax rate, subtract the timely-filing discount if you’re on time, and file by the 20th of the month after your reporting period ends. The form is issued by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts for single-location businesses with straightforward tax obligations, and it runs shorter than the long form (01-114) because it strips out lines most small filers don’t need.¹

First, Confirm You Can Use the Short Form

Form 01-117 is only for businesses that meet all six of these conditions:

You operate from a single Texas location.
You report local taxes only to the city, county, transit authority, or special purpose district where that location sits.
You do not prepay your state and local sales tax.
You have no credits to claim on the return, including bad debt credits.
You have no customs broker refunds to report.
You are not an out-of-state remote seller or an online marketplace provider.

Miss any one of those and you need Form 01-114 instead. If you have credits for overpaid tax or customs broker refunds, file the long form together with Form 01-148, the Credits and Customs Broker Schedule. Businesses with out-of-state use tax obligations and no Texas location also use the long form.¹

What to Have In Front of You

Before you start entering numbers, pull together:

Your 11-digit Texas taxpayer number, printed on your sales tax permit and beginning with 1 or 3. You can verify it through the Comptroller’s Taxpayer Search.²
Total sales for the period: every sale, service, lease, and rental of tangible personal property, before tax.
Taxable sales: the portion of total sales that is actually subject to tax after you remove exempt transactions like resale purchases and sales to tax-exempt customers.
Records of any taxable purchases you made for your own use without paying Texas sales or use tax, including inventory items you pulled off the shelf or gave away.
Your combined tax rate. Texas charges a 6.25 percent state rate, and local jurisdictions can add up to 2 percent, for a maximum combined rate of 8.25 percent. The Comptroller pre-prints your rate on the form based on your registered location.³

Download the current version of the form from the Comptroller’s sales tax forms page so you’re not working from an outdated layout.⁴

Line by Line Through the Form

The header asks for your business name, taxpayer number, and the reporting period. Make the name match the Comptroller’s records exactly. A mismatch causes processing delays.

Item 1: Total Texas Sales

Enter every sale, service, lease, and rental of tangible personal property made from your Texas location, plus sales made into Texas from out of state, in whole dollars. Do not include the tax you collected. If you had no sales, enter zero. You still have to file.¹

Item 2: Taxable Sales

Take Item 1 and strip out the sales that aren’t taxable. Goods sold for resale, sales to tax-exempt organizations, and most non-prepared food items come out here. If you refunded a customer or discovered you collected tax on a sale in error, subtract that too. Whole dollars.

Item 3: Taxable Purchases

This is where use tax gets reported, and it’s the line most filers get wrong. Enter the cost of anything taxable that you bought for your own use without paying Texas sales or use tax at the time of purchase. The classic example: you order supplies from an out-of-state vendor’s website and no Texas tax appears on the invoice. You owe the tax, and you self-report it here. Pulling inventory off the shelf for your own business or personal use, giving merchandise away, and buying something under a resale or exemption certificate then using it in a taxable way all trigger the same reporting. Items held exclusively for resale do not count. The rate you’ll apply is the same combined rate as your sales tax.¹

Item 4: Total Amount Subject to Tax

Add Item 2 and Item 3. Do not include Item 1. Item 1 is informational and does not feed into the tax calculation.¹

Item 5: Tax Due

Multiply Item 4 by the combined tax rate printed on your form. If the pre-printed rate looks wrong because your city recently adopted a new local tax, call the Comptroller before you file.

Item 6: Timely Filing Discount

If your return and payment reach the Comptroller by the due date, multiply Item 5 by 0.005 and enter that as your discount. Subtract it from the tax due to get the amount you actually owe.³ Businesses that prepay tax can claim an additional 1.25 percent discount, but prepayers can’t use the short form in the first place.⁵

Item 9: Penalty and Interest If You’re Late

If the return is going in past the deadline, calculate penalty on Item 9:

1 to 30 days late: 5 percent of the tax due.
31 to 60 days late: 10 percent of the tax due.
More than 60 days late: 10 percent of the tax due plus interest at the rate published by the Comptroller.
After a Notice of Tax/Fee Due: an additional 10 percent, bringing the total penalty to 20 percent.

The Comptroller also assesses a flat $50 late filing fee every time a return arrives after the due date, even if you owe nothing.⁶

When and Where to File

Returns are due on the 20th of the month after each reporting period ends. If the 20th falls on a weekend or legal holiday, the deadline moves to the next business day. Quarterly filers submit in January, April, July, and October.⁷

Most filers use WebFile through the Comptroller’s eSystems portal. Register, log in, and enter the same figures you’d put on the paper form. WebFile submissions must be in by 11:59 p.m. Central Time on the due date. Electronic filing is mandatory if you paid $50,000 or more in sales or use tax during the previous state fiscal year, and businesses required to file electronically who send in paper returns face an extra 5 percent penalty.⁸

If you’re not required to e-file, you can print and mail the completed form. The envelope must be postmarked by the due date. Mail goes to the address printed on the form, or to the Comptroller at P.O. Box 13528, Capitol Station, Austin, Texas 78711-3528.

Zero-sales periods still require a return. Enter zero on the relevant lines and file. If you have nothing to report, you can file by phone instead of using WebFile or mailing paper.⁸

Fixing a Mistake After You File

Submit an amended return through WebFile. The system pulls up your original data so you only change what needs correcting. One limit: if the amendment produces a credit balance, meaning the Comptroller owes you money, WebFile won’t accept it. Credit-balance amendments go on paper, to a different address than regular filings:

Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts
Refund Verifications
111 East 17th Street
Austin, Texas 78774⁹

Keep Your Records

Hold on to copies of every filed return along with the sales records, invoices, and purchase receipts behind the numbers. The Comptroller can audit sales tax accounts, and you’ll need those documents to back up what you reported. Four years after the tax became due is the standard statute of limitations for Texas tax assessments, so that’s the minimum retention period.

1
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Texas Sales and Use Tax Return – Short Form
2
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Taxpayer Search
3
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Sales and Use Tax
4
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Texas Sales and Use Tax Forms
5
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Texas Sales and Use Tax Frequently Asked Questions
6
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Penalties for Past Due Taxes
7
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Due Dates for Taxes, Fees and Information Reports
8
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. File and Pay
9
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Main Menu