When are quarterly taxes due? Estimated tax dates for 2026 and 2027

Each installment pays the tax on income earned in its own period, and the periods are uneven: the second covers two months and the fourth covers four. The IRS sets them out this way itself.

Estimated tax is how you pay tax on income nothing is withheld from: self-employment and gig work, interest, dividends, rents and alimony, and other taxable income such as unemployment benefits or the taxable part of Social Security if you have not asked for withholding on them.

For 2026 you generally have to pay it if two things are true. You expect to owe at least $1,000 after subtracting your withholding and refundable credits. And your withholding and refundable credits will come to less than the smaller of 90% of the tax on your 2026 return, or 100% of the tax on your 2025 return, if that return covered all 12 months.

There is an exception. You do not have to pay estimated tax for 2026 if you were a U.S. citizen or resident alien for all of 2025 and had no tax liability for that full year, meaning your total tax was zero or you did not have to file. Nonresident aliens use a separate version of the form, Form 1040-ES (NR).

You avoid the underpayment penalty by paying, on time, at least the smaller of 90% of this year’s tax or 100% of last year’s. Last year’s figure is known in advance, which makes it the easier target when this year’s income is hard to predict.

If your adjusted gross income for 2025 was more than $150,000, or $75,000 if your filing status for 2026 is married filing separately, the 100% becomes 110%. That higher test does not apply if at least two-thirds of your gross income is from farming or fishing.

If your income comes unevenly, for example from a seasonal business or a large capital gain late in the year, the annualized income installment method can lower or remove the earlier payments. It is explained in chapter 2 of Publication 505, and if you use it you file Form 2210 with Schedule AI with your return, even if no penalty is owed.

If you also have a job, you may not need separate payments at all: asking your employer to withhold more on a new Form W-4 covers the same tax. Pension and annuity withholding is changed on Form W-4P.

Online, through your IRS Online Account or IRS Direct Pay, which takes the payment from a checking or savings account at no cost. Through the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System, also free once you have enrolled. By debit card, credit card or digital wallet through the IRS’s card processors, which charge a fee. Or by check or money order made payable to “United States Treasury”, mailed with the voucher for that installment.

Use your Social Security number if you have one, even if it does not authorize work; once you have been issued an SSN, stop using an ITIN. Payments have to be made in U.S. dollars, and the IRS does not accept digital assets.

A mailed payment counts as on time if it is postmarked by the due date, but the IRS now notes that the postmark date is the date the mail is processed at a postal facility, which may be later than the day you posted it.

You do not have to make the January 15, 2027 installment if you file your 2026 return by February 1, 2027 and pay the entire balance with it.

If at least two-thirds of your gross income for 2025 or 2026 is from farming or fishing, the rules are different. You can pay all of your estimated tax by January 15, 2027, or file your 2026 return by March 1, 2027 and pay the full tax, in which case no estimated payments are required to avoid a penalty. For you, the 90% test is 66⅔%.

If you pay too little or too late, the penalty is figured separately for each installment, for the number of days it stays unpaid, at the IRS underpayment interest rate. The IRS resets that rate every quarter; for October to December 2026 it is 7% a year.

You usually learn about it from a notice after you file. The IRS can reduce it if most of your withholding came early in the year rather than evenly, or if your income was uneven and you use Schedule AI. It can waive it after a casualty, a disaster or another unusual circumstance where charging it would not be fair, or if you retired after reaching age 62 or became disabled in the past two years and had reasonable cause. Outside those, it generally cannot be removed for reasonable cause.

Corporations pay estimated tax too. For a calendar-year corporation the installments are due April 15, June 15, September 15 and December 15.