 Internal Revenue Service IRS tax news. For those who make estimated federal tax payments, the first quarter deadline is Monday, April 18th. There's an IRS YouTube video about this. You can click the link here to find it. It's called Estimated Tax Payments. IR 2022-77, April 6, 2022, Washington. The Internal Revenue Service today reminds those who make estimated tax payments such as self-employed individuals, retirees, investors, businesses, corporations, and others that the payments for the first quarter of 2022 is due Monday, April 18th. So a quick recap on the process of the payments here. The IRS likes to get paid basically as we earn the money. So if we're talking about tax year 2022 now, not tax year 2021, we're talking the estimated tax payments for the first quarter of 2022. The IRS doesn't want you to be waiting until April 15th of 2023 to make the payments. When you file the tax return for tax year 2022 because they want their money as you go. And you might be saying, well, if I'm in one of these areas, like if I'm a C corporation, a self-employed individual, I may not know how much I owe. That's the problem. And even if I try to pay as I go on a quarterly basis, it's complex to figure the taxes due to the fact of the progressive tax system and all the other kind of things involved in the taxes. It's not an easy calculation. So you have to make estimates in that case. If you are employed, obviously that happens already when you file the, when you get your W-2 or when you get your paycheck, they already took out the withholding. So if you're an employee, the government forces the employer to withhold money, which they're going to determine by the W-4 that you're filling out and you're hopefully paying them throughout the year. In that instance, you might want to double check to make sure that your withholdings are enough by looking at the prior year and see if you owed money for 2021 and then using possibly an estimator tool. And then if you're switching to something, especially that's when most people get caught off guard or when you move into retirement, for example, and you're used to getting a W-2 income, you're used to the withholdings being withheld on your behalf, the employer being forced to do the withholdings, and now you have to make estimated tax payments. That's when people get behind and it's often kind of a shock and many people are switching up their employments these days from basically W-2, possibly picking up gig work or something like that or possibly moving to being self-employed in some areas. And as you do that, you want to make sure that you are aware of the estimated tax payments because if you don't make those, the taxes pile up, not only that interest and penalties pile up and even if your business is doing good, it can be kind of disheartening to get behind on the taxes. So the 2022 form 1040ES estimated tax for individuals, there's a link to that here, can help taxpayers estimate their first quarter tax payment. Income taxes are a pay as you go process. That's what we've been talking about here. It's a pay as you go process, but I don't know how much to pay because it's too complex until I actually figure out the tax return and I'm still confused. Once I do that, that's too bad. You got to make an estimate and pay as you go. And that's the process. So this means by law, taxes must be paid as income is earned or received during the year. Most people pay their taxes through withholding from paychecks, pensions, payments, social security benefits or certain other government payments including unemployment compensation. Most often, those who are self-employed or in the gig economy need to make estimated tax payments. That's when you got to actually physically write a check or make an electronic transfer which is a little less painful, I mean more painful than the withholdings because the withholdings are taking your money but they do it in such a sneaky way. It's like a sneaky blood sucker that you're like, I didn't know they took my blood and then as opposed to you having to jab the needle in your own vein and watch your blood being drained from you and your colors going out of your skin as you do it. In any case, similarly, investors, retirees and others often need to make the payments because a substantial portion of their income is not subject to withholding. Other income generally not subject to withholding includes interest, dividends, capital gains, alimony and rental income. Paying quarterly estimated taxes will usually lessen and may even eliminate any penalties. Exceptions to the penalty and special rules applied to some groups of taxpayers such as farmers and fishers, casualty and disaster victims, those who recently became disabled, recent retirees and those who receive income unevenly during the year. That last one, you might come up with that one, you might be saying, hey, my income is not evenly spread over the year which is the assumption that the IRS will typically make because again, remember that they want their payments as you earn the money and their assumption then because when you verify the fact that you paid them with the actual tax filing in the following year, the general assumption is your earnings are even and if they're not, then you can look into that exception, how you could pay in that way. So C form 2210, underpayment and estimated taxes by individuals, estates and trusts and its instructions for more information. There's a link to it here, how to pay estimated taxes, how do you do it then? It's not that hard. You give the IRS their money. It used to be harder because they actually, it used to be actually kind of hard to pay the IRS. It seems like they almost purposely didn't accept the check and then charged you penalties and interest for the fact that they didn't accept the check but the payment process is pretty easy at this point. So form 1040ES estimated taxes for individuals includes instructions to help taxpayers figure their estimated taxes. That's the hardest part, figuring the estimated taxes. It's pretty much impossible if you're like a business owner but you gotta try and then do what you can do. So they can also visit irs.gov forward slash payments. There's a link to that here to pay electronically. The best way to make a payment is through IRS online account. So you can go onto your online account and I think more and more that account's gonna be coming more useful. They're no longer requiring facial recognition or something like that. So I think the government tried to stop, ruling the world through facial recognition or something for at least a little bit. So I think you can sign up to that account and get some information there and make your payments through it. So their taxpayers, their taxpayers can see their payment history, any pending payments and other useful tax information. Taxpayers can make an estimated tax payment by using IRS direct pay, debit card, credit card or digital wallet. There's links to those options or the Treasury Department's Electronic Federal Tax Payments System, the good old EFTPS. There's a link to that here. If paying by check taxpayers should be sure to make the check payable to quote the United States Treasury. Publication 505, tax withholding and estimated taxes, there's a link to that, has additional details including worksheets and examples that can be especially helpful for those who have dividend or capital gain income or alternative minimum tax or self-employment tax or have other special situations. irs.gov assistance 24-7, yeah right, yeah on their website, not really calling or anything. Anyways, 24-7 assistance they have here. So the tax help is available 24-7 on irs.gov, on their website irs.gov, irs.gov, that's my new thing, it's irs.gov for victory over tax research and questions that you could find on their website. So the irs.gov website offers a variety of online tools that help taxpayer answer common tax questions. For example, taxpayers can search the interactive tax assistance, tax topics and frequently asked questions to get answers to common questions. The irs.gov is continuing to expand ways to communicate to taxpayers who prefer to get information in their languages. The irs.gov has posted translated tax resources and 20 other languages on irs.gov. Don't be fooled, it won't help, it's all in legalese IRS jargon, no matter what language they put the jargon in, it's still legal language and confusing. But it might help. So in any case, for more information about that, you could see we speak your language. No you don't, you speak IRS language, like law, language, legalese, anyways. You could check it out and see if you can get some information on that. And there'll be a link to that here, there'll be a link to this in the description.