Federal Estimated Tax Payments
If your income isn’t subject to tax withholding, you must make estimated tax payments to pay for your income tax. Federal estimated tax payments are made quarterly. Those who are earning self-employed income are the ones that mostly make estimated tax payments but are not limited to. Generally, you must make estimated tax payments for any income you’ve earned that isn’t subject to withholding.
A few of the income examples when you need to make estimated tax payments include interest, dividends and other distribution, and rents.
To make federal estimated tax payments, you need to estimate taxes first. This is done with the IRS Form 1040-ES. This is similar to the Form 1040 but only for estimating the taxes for that quarter. Form 1040-ES must be filed for every quarter to figure out the estimated federal tax payments you need to pay.
Assuming you’ve already filed a Form 1040-ES and know your results, we will skip right to paying estimated taxes.
Haven’t filed Form 1040-ES or don’t know how to file one? Read this article to get more insights into it.
Paying Estimated Taxes
The most convenient way to file and pay estimated taxes is by doing it online. You can just go ahead and pay taxes online through an IRS- approved payment processor with your debit or credit card or through Direct Pay with your bank account.
One thing you should know before choosing your payment method is you will pay processing fees when paying with a debit or credit card. This is because you aren’t paying the IRS, rather to the payment processor. The fees aren’t as awful as you might think though. On average, you pay about $2 for payments made with debit cards and 1.8% of the payment with credit cards.
Regardless of your payment of choice, you can pay taxes on the go with a mouse-click. Here is how to pay estimated taxes.
Debit Card or Credit Card
First—to pay taxes with your card—you need to choose a payment processor. All the available payment processors are listed on the IRS website.
In no particular order, here are the fees for each payment processor.
| Payment Processor | Credit Card Fee | Debit Card Fee |
| PayUSAtax | 1.96% Minimum Fee is $2.69 | $2.55 |
| OfficialPayments | 1.99% Minimum Fee is $2.50 | $2.00 for payments under $1,000 $3.95 for payments over $1,000 |
| Pay1040 | 1.87% Minimum Fee is $2.59 | $2.58 |
Choose the payment processor that you will pay the least amount of fee and make your estimated payments.
Bank Account
We suggest paying taxes through Direct Pay if your estimated tax payments are over $1,000 and you have enough funds in your bank account. Here is how to pay estimated taxes with bank account.
- Go to Direct Pay
- Select Estimated Taxes under Reason for Payment
- Select tax year and tax form that apply to your payment (2024 and Form 1040-ES)
- You will now fill out the verification form to verify who you are. After this is done, review everything and make your federal estimated tax payment.
After your payment is processed, you will be given a confirmation number. Keep this number to track your payment in the future to see whether or not it reached the Internal Revenue Service. Paying federal estimated taxes as easy as this.
