This is just a quick reminder that second quarter income tax payments are due today. I almost forgot about this myself, but remembered at the last minute and have just written the state and federal checks.
If you’re wondering what this is all about, estimated tax payments most commonly apply to the self-employed and/or those with significant investment earnings. In short, if you have a decent amount of income that isn’t subject to income tax withholding, then you might get hit with an underpayment penalty at the end of the year unless you make quarterly estimated payments.
You can also trigger an underpayment penalty by paying your estimated taxes late, though in most cases this will end up being a very small amount. In fact, if you only miss by a day or two, the IRS probably won’t even notice.
That sounds very handy, I’ll have to set it up.
Oh, it’s pretty helpful. I do the estimated taxes worksheet in January or February and set up all four payments to withdraw from a designated savings account the day before they’re due. Then we just budget to auto-transfer money to that account every other week so that there’s enough there on the due dates. My state also has a website that I can set up advance quarterly payments too.
Courtney: Nope, I set up an EFTPS account awhile back, but have never gotten around to using it. I should, but I haven’t.
A couple of other people and I mentioned EFTPS.gov on Get Rich Slowly a few days ago – any reason why you don’t use it?