Arizona TPT
Arizona transaction privilege tax is where contractors quietly lose money, and it is the single most common thing we find wrong when we take over a contractor's books.
It is almost always the same three mistakes, and they compound quietly until an audit or a sale surfaces them.
Because that is what the last bookkeeper knew how to do. Subcontracting income to a taxable prime is treated differently, and coding it all one way overstates the liability on some jobs and understates it on others.
Either never taken at all, or taken on jobs that do not qualify. Both are expensive. One costs cash every month, the other builds an assessment.
Rates get applied based on where the office is rather than where the job site is. Gilbert, Chandler, Mesa and Queen Creek are not the same, and a contractor working across the East Valley is filing several different rates.
| Filing frequency | Estimated annual tax liability |
|---|---|
| Annual | Under $2,000 |
| Quarterly | $2,000 to $8,000 |
| Monthly | Over $8,000 |
| Seasonal | Eight months or fewer of activity |
TPT filing for one jurisdiction is included in every package we sell, not billed as an extra. Additional cities are $65 per month each. Most East Valley firms charge $50 to $100 a month for a single jurisdiction on top of your bookkeeping fee, and the only firm in the Phoenix metro actively marketing multi-jurisdiction TPT tracking operates out of Texas.
What is not included: the tax itself, penalties and interest caused by late client data, and nexus determination outside Arizona.
That is a fifteen minute conversation, not a project. Bring a recent TPT return and a job list and we can usually tell you on the call whether the classification is holding up.
We checked all 26 bookkeeping and accounting firms in the East Valley. Twenty-one of them will not tell you what they charge until you have sat through a discovery call.
Ours are on the site, with a column showing what is not included.
