Quarterly estimated taxes for 2026: dates and how much
Who has to send estimated payments during 2026, the four due dates, the safe harbors that keep a penalty away, and a simple way to set the money aside.
Quick answers
- Do I have to pay quarterly estimated taxes?
- Generally yes when income reaches you with no tax withheld and you expect to owe a substantial amount at filing. Contractors, landlords, investors and retirees without withholding are the usual cases, and the cut-off is in the Form 1040-ES instructions.
- How much do I have to pay to avoid a penalty?
- Enough to clear one of three safe harbors: nearly all of the tax your 2026 return calculates, all of the tax shown on your 2025 return, or a higher share of that prior-year tax when the 2025 income was large. Clearing any one of them generally ends the question.
- What happens if I miss a quarterly payment?
- The underpayment is charged as interest for the time the money was late, and sending the whole year in January does not repair an earlier installment. Paying part of an installment on time costs less than paying all of it in April.
Estimated tax is how income that arrives without withholding gets paid during the year, in four installments instead of one bill at the end. The dates are fixed, and the amount does not have to be exact — it has to clear one of the safe harbors.
| First-quarter 2026 estimated payment due | April 15, 2026 | 2026 Form 1040-ES |
|---|---|---|
| Second-quarter 2026 estimated payment due | June 15, 2026 | 2026 Form 1040-ES |
| Third-quarter 2026 estimated payment due | September 15, 2026 | 2026 Form 1040-ES |
| Fourth-quarter 2026 estimated payment due | January 15, 2027 | 2026 Form 1040-ES |
Who pays
Anyone whose income shows up with no tax already taken out. In practice that is contractors and other self-employed people, landlords, investors holding dividends, interest or realized gains, people drawing from retirement accounts without withholding elected, and anyone whose household tax has outgrown the withholding on a paycheck — a second job, a spouse's business, a large bonus, a year with a big sale in it.
The test is what you expect to owe when the return is filed, after withholding and credits are counted. A small balance does not require installments; a substantial one generally does, and the exact cut-off is printed in the Form 1040-ES instructions for the year.
Being an employee somewhere does not settle the question either way. Withholding from wages counts toward the year's payments no matter which paycheck it came from, so a household with one W-2 and one Schedule C can often cover the whole thing through the W-4 instead of writing four checks.
The safe harbors
The penalty for paying late during the year is not a judgment about whether your estimate was good. It is a comparison against three thresholds, and clearing any one of them generally ends the question.
- Pay 90% of the total tax your 2026 return calculates. That is the whole tax before withholding and estimated payments are subtracted, not the balance left at the end. Accurate, but it asks you to know the year while you are still in it.
- Pay 100% of the tax shown on your 2025 return. That number is already known, which is what makes this the route most people use.
- If the adjusted gross income on that 2025 return was above $150,000 — half that figure if you file married filing separately — the prior-year route rises to 110% of the prior-year tax.
Two things the safe harbor does not do. It does not cap what you owe: if 2026 turns out bigger than 2025, the difference is still due with the return, and only the penalty was avoided. And it does not forgive a quarter you skipped — the penalty is figured period by period, so sending the full year's payments in January does not repair the earlier installments. Withholding is treated differently: it counts as paid evenly across the year regardless of when it was actually taken.
Self-employment tax is part of the number
An estimate that only covers income tax will fall short, because profit from self-employment carries a second tax that wages never showed you. It runs at 15.3% on 92.35% of net profit, and that multiplier stands in for the employer share an employee would not have been taxed on.
The Social Security half of it stops once your wages and self-employment earnings together reach $184,500 for the year; the Medicare half keeps running with no ceiling. Half of the self-employment tax then comes back as a deduction against income, which takes some of the sting out of the income-tax side.
So a rough installment is income tax at your bracket plus self-employment tax on the profit, divided across the remaining quarters. A preparer can do that properly from a projection; the point here is not to forget the second tax exists.
How to pay
Direct Pay on irs.gov moves money from a checking or savings account with no enrollment and no fee. EFTPS does the same, needs a registration that arrives by mail, and is worth setting up if you also run payroll. Your IRS online account will pay and also show what has already been credited, which is the fastest way to settle an argument about a missing payment.
Whichever you use, apply the payment to the right year and label it estimated tax. Payments posted to the wrong year are recoverable but slow. Keep the confirmation number for each one.
A simpler method that actually holds up
Most people who fall behind did not miscalculate; they spent the money. The fix is mechanical.
- Open a second checking or savings account and treat it as untouchable.
- Move a fixed share of every business deposit into it on the day the deposit lands.
- Pay each installment out of that account on the dates in the table above.
- After the return is filed, compare what you set aside to what you owed and adjust the share for next year.
A share that turns out to be too high leaves money sitting in your own account, which is a better problem than the alternative. Start with a rate your preparer suggests from last year's return rather than a number that sounds right.