Pinion Blog
My Year as an SPV Administrator
Everything running our friends-and-family SPV took in 2026, with the hours and the dollars: the partnership return, a Texas franchise report I didn't know existed, three capital calls, four quarterly updates, and the $50 mistake that was mine.
Last month I wrote up how we formed our SPV and what we use to run it. The question that came back this time was about effort: how much work is it, really? So here is the whole of 2026 to date, with the hours and the dollars, including the part where the State of Texas got mad at me. I don’t think there will be another capital call this year, but there will be quarterly reports coming in November.
Same context as before: one SPV, two friends, a single investment, nobody takes carry, and I'm the one who signs the documents and keeps the records.
The partnership tax return
An LLC with more than one member files a partnership return, and the return produces a K-1 for each member. We use H&R Block. It is efficient, and it is reasonable: $250 this year, plus an accidental $50 fee that was 100% my fault.
My job before they can do theirs is to get every bank transaction for the year into a single spreadsheet, code each one (an expense, a member's contribution, capital sent to the investment) and mark which member each contribution came from. Done by hand, that took me about an hour. I built Pinion to automate most of it, so it is now a little faster than that. Full disclosure, as always: Pinion is my company.
Then I made a mistake. The K-1 our SPV receives from the investment has to go in with our own return, and I didn't send it along. H&R Block probably should have noticed, but they didn't, and when it turned up there was a $50 fee to refile. I paid that one personally. It was my fault, and I'm not going to bill my friends for my own fuck up.
Distributing the members' K-1s took about ten minutes. I built a document portal into Pinion for exactly this, so each member sees his own K-1, and if they need a copy later they can get it themselves instead of asking me.
All in, including categorizing the expenses and the refile, the return took about three hours. Done right, I think it is under an hour in future years.
The Texas franchise tax report
I had forgotten this existed until the state told me. Texas expects an annual franchise tax filing from every LLC, even one with nothing to pay, and ours has nothing to pay. We used to file this annually at the company I ran, but I forgot. The letter from the Comptroller was short and not warm, and amounted to: where is your report?
Filing a $0 report is not hard. It took me two hours anyway, because I had more than one Texas.gov login and had to work out which one I'd used to file the original formation paperwork. That is a one-time tax on my own disorganization. Next year it should take well under an hour, now that I know it's coming and which account to use.
If you form in Texas, put the franchise report on the calendar the day the LLC is approved. It is due in May, and the state will not remind you until you are late.
Capital calls
Our investment called capital three times this year. Each one took me about thirty minutes.
The sequence is the same every time. The notice arrives from the investment. I forward the paperwork to the members with their share and a deadline, and then, inevitably, I resend the wiring instructions to someone who has had them before (ahem). Pinion splits the call pro-rata and emails each member a notice with their amount, so the thirty minutes is mostly the waiting and the reminding, not the arithmetic.
The money moves through a checking account the SPV has at J.P. Morgan, which comes free with the Private Bank. If I were starting over I would probably open the account at Mercury instead. JPMC has been great, but Mercury's API is simply easier to talk to, and I'm the one importing the statements.
One small thing that has worked well: I collect the members' share of the tax-preparation fee with the next capital call after the fee is incurred, rather than chasing people for their piece of $250 in April. It rides along with money they were already sending.
We are now about 90% called, so this part of the job is winding down.
Quarterly updates
Once a quarter the investment sends an update. I bundle it up and pass it along to the members, with a few lines of my own when I notice something worth pointing out. Five to ten minutes a quarter. The updates also live in the member portal in Pinion's Friendly SPV, so anyone who wants to re-read last quarter's doesn't have to ask me for it.
The year, added up
Hours
- Partnership return, including my refile: about 3 hours
- Texas franchise report, including the login archaeology: about 2 hours
- Three capital calls: about 1.5 hours
- Quarterly updates: about half an hour for the year
Call it seven hours for the year.
Dollars
- Tax preparation: $250, shared by the members
- Refile fee: $50, paid by me
A good share of those seven hours was me paying for things I didn't know or didn't check: the franchise report I hadn't heard of, and the K-1 I forgot to attach. The honest run rate for a vehicle this simple, once you know the calendar, looks like three or four hours a year: an hour on the return, well under an hour on the state report, half an hour per capital call while they last, and a few minutes a quarter on updates.
That is the real answer to "how much work is it." Not much, if you stay current and keep the records as you go. Most of the pain in this job is the pain of being behind, which is why I built the Friendly SPV side of Pinion in the first place: so the spreadsheet step on tax day is an export, not an afternoon.
As before, none of this is legal or tax advice. It is what one small SPV in Texas took in 2026, and what I would do differently, which this year is mostly "open the mail from the Comptroller faster."