State estimated taxes

Nine states want nothing from your earned income. The rest want quarterly payments on their own schedule, and that schedule often does not match the federal one.

The nine that want nothing

Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming levy no income tax on earned income. If you live in one, your state estimated payment is zero and there is nothing further to do.

Two footnotes worth knowing rather than discovering later. New Hampshire taxed interest and dividends until recently but never earned income. Washington taxes capital gains above a threshold — that is not self-employment income, so it does not touch your 1099 profit, but it can touch the sale of a business.

Everywhere else

This is where honest advice runs out and specifics begin, because there is no single answer. What is generally true:

The dates usually match, and sometimes do not. Most states with estimated payments follow the federal April, June, September and January pattern. Several do not. A handful want only two payments. Checking your own state’s revenue department is a ten-minute job that people skip for years.

The thresholds differ. The federal rule kicks in at $1,000 of expected tax. irs.gov State thresholds vary widely and are often lower, which means you can owe state estimated payments while owing nothing federally.

Safe harbors differ too. Many states have a prior-year safe harbor like the federal one, but the percentage and the income threshold that raises it are set independently. Do not assume your federal safe harbor calculation transfers.

A state credit for taxes paid elsewhere. If you work across state lines, most states credit tax paid to another state — but you generally have to file in both to claim it. This is the single most common way freelancers who moved mid-year get it wrong.

Why this site does not compute your state figure

The short version: fifty jurisdictions, each with its own brackets, standard deduction, treatment of self-employment tax and treatment of the QBI deduction. Modelling that badly is worse than not modelling it, because a wrong state figure looks exactly like a right one.

So the calculators return an exact zero for the nine states above and a federal-only figure with a visible notice everywhere else. States are added one at a time, each with its own cited source and verification date, in the same way every other figure here is handled.

What to do meanwhile

Work out the federal number with the calculator, then look up two things at your state’s revenue department: the payment dates, and the threshold at which estimated payments become required. Those two facts are enough to avoid the penalty, and both are usually on the first page of the site.

If you have income in more than one state, that is the point where a preparer stops being optional.