Quarterly Estimated Tax 2026: Dates, Amounts, Penalty

The 2026 Dates, Straight From Form 1040-ES

Form 1040-ES is the estimated tax package the IRS prints for individuals each year, and page 4 of the 2026 edition carries the schedule verbatim. You can pay the whole year’s estimated tax on the first date, or in four equal amounts on the four dates below.

Payment	Due date	Period it covers
1st	April 15, 2026	January 1 through March 31, and normally one quarter of the required annual payment
2nd	June 15, 2026	April 1 through May 31. This is June 15, not the July 15 that older articles still print
3rd	September 15, 2026	June 1 through August 31
4th	January 15, 2027	September 1 through December 31, waived if you file by February 1, 2027 and pay the balance with the return

None of those four dates falls on a weekend, so the Saturday, Sunday and legal holiday rule moves none of them. Publication 505 states the January waiver as “by January 31, 2027”, which is a Sunday, and Form 1040-ES prints the next business day: February 1, 2027. Same deadline, and the form is the one you would be filing.

One more date rule that people learn the hard way: Publication 505 and Form 1040-ES both say that if you mail a payment, the U.S. postmark date is the payment date. A check the IRS receives on April 20 is on time if the envelope was postmarked April 15.

What Each Payment Is Supposed To Be

The dates matter far less than the amount, and the amount comes off three lines of Worksheet 2-1, the 2026 Estimated Tax Worksheet in Publication 505.

1. Line 12a is 90% of the total tax you expect for 2026.
2. Line 12b is 100% of the tax shown on your 2025 return, or 110% if your 2025 adjusted gross income was over $150,000 ($75,000 if your 2026 filing status will be married filing separately). Your 2025 return has to cover all 12 months for this to apply.
3. Line 12c, the required annual payment, is the smaller of those two. That is what withholding and vouchers have to add up to between them.

Then withholding comes off. Line 14a is line 12c minus the federal income tax you expect to be withheld in 2026, and if the answer is zero or less you are finished: no estimated payments required. If it is positive, line 14b asks a second question, which is whether your expected total tax minus withholding is under $1,000. If it is, stop again. Only when both tests fail do you need vouchers, and line 15 divides line 14a by four.

A Worked Schedule, In Dollars

Here is the example the calculator opens with, so you can check your own arithmetic against it. A nurse expects $21,400 of total 2026 tax. Her 2025 return showed $16,800 with income under $150,000, and she expects $4,200 withheld from the W-2 hours she works between contracts.

• Line 12a: 90% of $21,400 is $19,260.
• Line 12b: 100% of last year is $16,800.
• Line 12c: the required annual payment is the smaller, $16,800.
• Line 14a: $16,800 minus $4,200 withheld leaves $12,600 to prepay in vouchers.
• Line 14b: $21,400 minus $4,200 is $17,200, which is well over $1,000, so the worksheet does not stop.
• Line 15: $12,600 divided by four is $3,150 on each of the four dates.

She then has a bad quarter and sends only $2,100 before January 15, 2027. Worksheet 2-12 says the January date is where the year has to be whole, so the number owed there is $12,600 minus $2,100, which is $10,500. That is the difference between a plan and a penalty.

Notice what this schedule does not do: it does not pay her whole tax bill. Prepaying $16,800 against a $21,400 year leaves $4,600 still owing with the 2026 return. That is normal and it is not a penalty, because the safe harbor was met. The mistake that costs money is treating the required annual payment as if it were the tax.

Your 2025 Tax Figure Is Not Just Line 24

Publication 505 defines the line 12b number precisely, and the difference matters if you had any of this activity in 2025. Start at Form 1040 line 24 and reduce it by:

• Unreported social security, Medicare or railroad retirement tax from Form 4137 or 8919, which lands on Schedule 2 lines 5 and 6;
• Amounts from Form 5329, Parts III through IX, where excess retirement and HSA contributions are charged;
• Certain other Schedule 2 amounts the instructions list.

Every one of those subtractions makes your safe harbor smaller, which is the direction you want: a smaller required annual payment is easier to meet. Enter the reduced figure as the 2025 number in the calculator above rather than the raw line 24.

Two Situations That Rewrite The Schedule

You started a 1099 contract in the middle of the year

The due dates are not a calendar you have to join at the top. Publication 505’s Table 2-1 keys them to the first period in which you have income that requires an estimated payment:

Payment-worthy income first arrives	First payment due	Later installments due
Before April 1, 2026	April 15, 2026	June 15, September 15, January 15
April 1 to May 31, 2026	June 15, 2026	September 15, January 15
June 1 to August 31, 2026	September 15, 2026	January 15, 2027
After August 31, 2026	January 15, 2027	None

A nurse who signs her first 1099 agreement in July has two payments to make for 2026, not four, and nothing was ever owed on the April or June dates.

Your income is lumpy, which contract work usually is

Equal quarters are the default, and the default assumes the year arrives evenly. Publication 505 says plainly that if you do not receive your income evenly throughout the year, your required payment for one or more periods may be less than the equal-installment figure. The remedy is the annualized income installment method, which refigures each period from the income you actually earned in it and is filed on Schedule AI of Form 2210. Form 1040-ES points at the same escape for someone whose income jumps after March 31. It needs records by period instead of a guess about the year, which is why almost nobody uses it, but a contract that ends in October and a gap until February is exactly the pattern it was written for.

The related trap on the same pages: if you figure your payments on the equal-quarter method and then refigure upward because income came in faster than planned, you can still be charged for the periods before the change. Worksheet 2-12 is what limits that damage, and the calculator above applies its cumulative 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% test to whatever you enter as already paid.

What A Missed Payment Actually Costs

The underpayment penalty is charged at the rate the IRS applies to underpaid tax generally, and that rate is published a quarter at a time. These are the 2026 numbers from the IRS quarterly interest rates page, on the line labeled “Underpayment (corporate and non-corporate)”.

Period	Underpayment rate	Status
January 1 to March 31, 2026	7%	published
April 1 to June 30, 2026	6%	published
July 1 to September 30, 2026	7%	published
October 1 to December 31, 2026	7%	published
January 1 to March 31, 2027	not announced yet	provisional

Two things follow from that table. The rate is not one number for the year: dollars that sat short across the spring accrued at 6%, and the same dollars in the summer cost 7%. And it is the days that drive the bill, which is why being a fortnight late and leaving it until the return are very different prices.

Two readings from that panel, and they are the two that change behavior. A $3,000 shortfall on the April 15 voucher that is still unpaid on December 31, 2026 sits out for 260 days and costs about $143. The same money corrected by the next due date is only 61 days at the 6% spring rate, about $30. And a $5,000 September shortfall left until the return runs 107 published days plus 105 days inside 2027, which is where the $203 estimate gets its uncertain half.

Read those as insurance premiums rather than as fines. The penalty is the price of not knowing your number in March, and the same uncertainty in a W-4 adjustment costs nothing, because withholding is credited against the required annual payment without any voucher at all.

The penalty is not the only consequence of a short payment, and it is not always the biggest. Publication 505 is explicit that you can be charged even if you are due a refund when you file, because the test is whether each installment arrived by its own date, not whether the year ends in your favor. Form 1040-ES adds the situations where no payment is required at all, including having no income subject to estimated tax in the first period, and says the penalty “may be waived under certain conditions”, with the details in the Form 2210 instructions. The 2026 edition of Form 2210 has not been released, so any page that quotes an exact 2026 penalty factor is guessing ahead of the IRS.

Travel Nurse Money And The Estimated Tax Question

Most travel nurses are W-2 employees, and a W-2 with enough withheld has no estimated tax problem at all: line 14a comes out zero and the four dates never apply to you. The people who need this page are the ones paid on a 1099, the ones who set up an LLC or an S corporation, and the ones whose housing or stipend arrangement turns out to be taxable income rather than a reimbursement. For a 1099 contractor the 2026 bill is self-employment tax plus income tax, and withholding is whatever you ask your payer to take out, which is usually nothing. Run the self-employment tax calculator for the 15.3% side of that figure, then bring the total tax number into the calculator above as line 11c.

A related point that bites in multi-state work: states run their own estimated tax schedules, and several of them do not use the federal dates. Nothing on this page is a state figure. Check your resident state’s revenue department for its own due dates before assuming the federal calendar covers you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the second payment due June 15 or July 15?

June 15, 2026 for calendar-year individuals, straight from Form 1040-ES. July 15 belongs to the 2020 and 2021 disaster extensions, and it still shows up in articles that were never updated.

What if I only make the April and January payments?

Then June 15 and September 15 are each their own underpayment period, and interest is charged on them separately. The penalty is figured for each payment period, so skipping the middle two does not fold them into the last one.

Can I just raise my W-4 withholding instead?

Yes, and for a nurse who works any W-2 hours it is usually the cheapest answer. Form 1040-ES puts it plainly: “If you also receive salaries and wages, you may be able to avoid having to make estimated tax payments on your other income by asking your employer to take more tax out of your earnings.” Publication 505 adds the part that makes this stronger than it sounds. Its worksheet instructions take your total expected 2026 withholding and credit 25% of it to the first period, 50% to the second, 75% to the third and 100% on January 15, so one-fourth of the annual figure is considered withheld on each due date no matter which pay period it actually came out of. A late-year raise in withholding therefore reaches back over all four periods, which a December voucher never does. The catch is that the credit is only as good as the withholding that actually lands by 31 December, and you have to file the Form W-4 for it.

Do I have to pay estimated tax in my first year as a contractor?

If your 2025 return showed no tax at all, then 100% of it is zero, the smaller-of test gives a required annual payment of zero, and no 2026 payment is required to avoid the penalty even if you owe a large balance in April 2027. That is arithmetic from line 12b rather than an IRS courtesy, and it does not survive a second year: once your 2025 return shows real tax, the safe harbor is live and the vouchers are what keeps the penalty off you.

Does meeting the safe harbor mean I have paid all my tax?

No. The required annual payment is a penalty test, not your bill. If the year came in higher than the estimate, the difference is simply paid with the return; if you overpaid the estimates, the extra comes back as a refund or rolls into next year as a credit.

When do the 2027 dates come out?

In the 2027 edition of Form 1040-ES, which the IRS publishes in the spring. Until then any 2027 calendar on the internet is an extrapolation, and the January 15 and April 15 pattern is the only part of it that is predictable.

Sources

• IRS Form 1040-ES (2026), Estimated Tax for 2026: The four 2026 due dates, the February 1, 2027 condition for skipping the January 15 payment, the General Rule with the $1,000 test and the smaller-of 90% or 100% comparison, the $150,000 and $75,000 higher-income thresholds, the postmark rule, the annualized income pointer and the first-period exception.
• IRS Publication 505 (2026), Tax Withholding and Estimated Tax: Worksheet 2-1 lines 11c through 15, the definition of the 2025 tax figure used on line 12b, Worksheet 2-12 and its 50%, 75% and 100% cumulative fractions, Table 2-1 for when your first income arrives, the January payment example, the Saturday-Sunday-holiday rule, and the statement that a penalty can apply even when you are due a refund.
• IRS Quarterly interest rates, 2026 table: The 2026 underpayment rate for corporate and non-corporate taxpayers: 7% for January to March, 6% for April to June, 7% for July to September and 7% for October to December, with no 2027 rate announced yet.
• IRS Form 2210, Underpayment of Estimated Tax by Individuals, Estates and Trusts: The form that actually figures the penalty, including Schedule AI for the annualized income installment method and the waiver requests. Its 2026 edition is not published yet, which is why the calculator here is labeled an estimate.

Next step: Put the four dates in your calendar as reminders on April 10, June 10, September 10 and January 10, then decide today whether a Form W-4 change is the easier answer.