NAICS Code (TDPSA Applicability)
The federal industry classification code that determines whether a business is small under Small Business Administration size standards, and therefore whether the TDPSA applies to it at all. Section 541.002(a)(3) exempts a small business as the SBA defines one. SBA size standards are published by NAICS code, some in average annual receipts and some in employee counts.
Most privacy statutes tell you whether they apply by counting customers or revenue. Texas sends you to a federal size standards table. Under Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 541.002(a)(3), Chapter 541 applies only to a person that is not a small business as defined by the United States Small Business Administration. No other threshold appears anywhere in the chapter.
How a code decides coverage
The SBA does not use a single definition of small. It publishes size standards by industry, keyed to North American Industry Classification System codes, at 13 C.F.R. § 121.201, and the standards are expressed either in number of employees or in average annual receipts depending on the industry. Manufacturing and wholesale codes generally use employee counts. Service, retail and construction codes generally use receipts. Receipts are calculated under 13 C.F.R. § 121.104 and employees are counted under 13 C.F.R. § 121.106, each on an averaging convention rather than a single-year snapshot. The underlying statutory definition of a small business concern sits at 15 U.S.C. § 632.
Two Texas companies with identical financial statements can therefore get opposite answers. A software publisher and a general contractor sit under different codes carrying different standards. The classification is not a formality, and picking a code because it looked right on a government form six years ago is how a business ends up wrong about whether a privacy statute governs it.
Choosing the code, then checking affiliation
Use the code that describes the primary business activity, measured by the largest share of receipts or employees, rather than the code producing the friendliest answer. Companies with genuinely mixed operations sometimes have a defensible argument for more than one code. Write the analysis down when you do it, not later under a civil investigative demand issued under Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 541.153.
Then check affiliation, because it is where the analysis usually breaks. SBA rules at 13 C.F.R. § 121.103 treat concerns as affiliates when one controls or has the power to control the other, or a third party controls or has the power to control both, and the power to control is enough whether or not it is exercised. Under 13 C.F.R. § 121.103(a)(6) the SBA counts the receipts, employees or other measure of size of the concern whose size is at issue together with all of its domestic and foreign affiliates. A small Texas operating entity owned by a large parent is not a small business.
The carve-out is partial and it is dated
A business that clears the small business test still cannot sell sensitive personal data without prior consumer consent. Section 541.002(a)(3) preserves § 541.107 by its own terms, and § 541.107(b) makes a violator liable for the penalty under § 541.155. So the exemption is from the chapter's machinery, not from every duty in it.
Treat the conclusion as perishable. The SBA revises size standards by industry on a rolling schedule and adjusts receipts-based standards for inflation, and a growing company crosses the line without any event that would ordinarily trigger a legal review. Revisit the determination annually, keep the worksheet showing the code, the standard, the measurement period and the affiliate roll-up, and note that the small business route is an exemption a business has to prove rather than a default it can assume.