The printer sits in the city. The work might not.
You have a stack that all says Houston. Some of it is a petroleum move on the ship channel. Some of it is a clinic vendor who never saw the water. The combined figure is in the facts below. The channel does not change that figure. It changes which pile the bill belongs in.
Houston is in Fort Bend County, Harris County, and Montgomery County. The census counted 2,304,580 people. Combined sales tax is 8.25%. City tax is 1%. Transit: Houston MTA 1%. Special districts on the row, not one citywide stack. At 1%: Harris-Ft Bend ESD 100, Ft Bend Co Asst Dist 1, Ft Bend Co Asst Dist 2, Ft Bend Co Asst Dist 4, Ft Bend Co Asst Dist 6, Ft Bend Co Asst Dist 9, Ft Bend Co ESD 2-A, Ft Bend Co ESD 5, Ft Bend Co ESD 7, Harris Co ESD 10, Harris Co ESD 46, Harris Co ESD 50, Harris Co ESD 60, Montgomery Co ESD 8, Montgomery Co ESD 14. At 0.5%: Harris Co ESD 6, Harris Co ESD 12. State tax 6.25% plus city tax and transit equals the combined 8.25%. No county sales tax is on those county files. April 15 rendition: the appraisal district for the property's county (Fort Bend County or Harris County or Montgomery County). Franchise report due May 15. A no-tax-due threshold exists. No state income tax. The permit sets the filing cadence. Channel crews use the construction guide.
Buffalo Bayou was the ditch the first promoters said a ship could climb. The Handbook of Texas then follows the dredging companies, Clinton down the waterway, and the Houston Ship Channel where refineries were set in from the open Gulf because the petroleum cargo wanted calm water. The Port of Houston, in that same account, moved petroleum and petroleum-related goods. A second Houston lives in the same entry: the Texas Medical Center, described there as a place of heart work and cancer work.
Your week is two pieces of paper, not the skyline. One names a barge, a tank, a crew, or a load that exists only because the channel is there. The other names a clinic vendor, a lab, or a supply closet inside that medical center. Both can carry a Houston letterhead. They are not one job.
Write channel or clinic on the face before anyone codes it. A blank face inherits whatever lane was coded yesterday. If the barge sheet is booked like gauze, the job cost vanishes and the tax pile inherits a story it did not earn. If the clinic voucher is booked like a cargo move, you will hunt a mate's receipt that was never in the folder. Leave the personal names covered. Leave the water or the ward readable.
Hold back money you have not earned. A prepayment for a berth next month is not this week's barge. A prepayment for a scan next month is not this week's clinic supply. Sort those later. This pass is only work that already happened.
A third page from a retail counter far from both the water and the ward stays out of this pair. Clinton, the old port town below the city in that history, is a place name you might see on an ancient file. It is not a reason to retitle a modern barge sheet as a different city. If the sheet says the channel and the city, it stays in the channel pile. If it says a ward, a lab, or a clinic dock, it stays in the clinic pile.
Write the word in the margin: channel or clinic. Stop there. The petroleum cargo and the heart-and-cancer campus are both Houston in the history, and they are still two margins. A prepayment for a berth you have not served, or for a scan you have not run, does not get a margin yet. Leave personal names out of the note. Leave the barge number or the clinic account visible so the margin has something to hang on.
If the messy pile is the channel job, start with the construction guide.
Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX
Other trades are on the industry list.
When you want those two bills marked, book a time and send them as they are. The mark is the first thing back, in time for the return already open. Nothing here is a Houston desk.
Sources: Handbook of Texas, Houston (https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/houston-tx).