How do I pay my estimated income tax?
Congratulations on starting your own business. Invest in a tax software package right away; I can't recommend a specific one but there is enough information out there to point you in the right direction: share with us which one you ended up using and why (maybe a separate question?) You do need to make your FICA taxes but you can write off the SE part of it. Keep all your filings as a PDF, a printout and a softcopy in the native format of the tax software package: it really helps the next tax season. When you begin your business, most of the expenses are going to be straightforward (it was for me) and while I had the option of doing it by hand, I used software to do it myself. At the beginning, it might actually seem harder to use the tax software package, but it will pay off in the end. Build relationships with a few tax advisors and attorneys: you will need to buy liability insurance soon if you are in any kind of serious (non hobby) business and accounting for these are no trivial tasks. If you have not filed yet, I recommend you do this: File an extension, overpay your estimated taxes (you can always collect a refund later) and file your return once you have had a CPA look over it. Do not skimp on a CPA: it's just the cost of running your business and you don't want to waste your time reading the IRS manuals when you could be growing your own business. Best of luck and come back to tell us what you did!
"(Insert the usual disclaimer that I'm not any sort of tax professional; I'm just a random guy on the Internet who occasionally looks through IRS instructions for fun. Then again, what you're doing here is asking random people on the Internet for help, so here goes.) The gigantic book of ""How to File Your Income Taxes"" from the IRS is called Publication 17. That's generally where I start to figure out where to report what. The section on Royalties has this to say: Royalties from copyrights, patents, and oil, gas, and mineral properties are taxable as ordinary income. In most cases, you report royalties in Part I of Schedule E (Form 1040). However, if you hold an operating oil, gas, or mineral interest or are in business as a self-employed writer, inventor, artist, etc., report your income and expenses on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040).  It sounds like you are receiving royalties from a copyright, and not as a self-employed writer. That means that you would report the income on Schedule E, Part I. I've not used Schedule E before, but looking at the instructions for it, you enter this as ""Royalty Property"". For royalty property, enter code “6” on line 1b and leave lines 1a and 2 blank for that property. So, in Line 1b, part A, enter code 6. (It looks like you'll only use section A here as you only have one royalty property.) Then in column A, Line 4, enter the royalties you have received. The instructions confirm that this should be the amount that you received listed on the 1099-MISC. Report on line 4 royalties from oil, gas, or mineral properties (not including operating interests); copyrights; and patents. Use a separate column (A, B, or C) for each royalty property. If you received $10 or more in royalties during 2016, the payer should send you a Form 1099-MISC or similar statement by January 31, 2017, showing the amount you received. Report this amount on line 4.  I don't think that there's any relevant Expenses deductions you could take on the subsequent lines (though like I said, I've not used this form before), but if you had some specific expenses involved in producing this income it might be worth looking into further. On Line 21 you'd subtract the 0 expenses (or subtract any expenses you do manage to list) and put the total. It looks like there are more totals to accumulate on lines 23 and 24, which presumably would be equally easy as you only have the one property. Put the total again on line 26, which says to enter it on the main Form 1040 on line 17 and it thus gets included in your income." Yes you need to pay taxes in India. Show this as other income and pay tax according to your tax bracket. Note you need to pay the taxes quarterly if the net tax payable is more than 10,000. You will not necessarily incur a penalty.  You can potentially use the Annualized Income Installment method, which allows you to compute the tax due for each quarter based on income actually earned up to that point in the year.  See Publication 505, in particular Worksheet 2-9.  Form 2210 is also relevant as that is the form you will use when actually calculating whether you owe a penalty after the year is over. On my reading of Form 2210, if you had literally zero income during the first quarter, you won't be expected to make an estimated tax payment for that quarter (as long as you properly follow the Annualized Income Installment method for future quarters).  However, you should go through the calculations yourself to see what the situation is with your actual numbers. "There are a couple of things that are missing from your estimate. In addition to your standard deduction, you also have a personal exemption of $4050.  So ""D"" in your calculation should be $6300 + $4050 = $10,350. As a self-employed individual, you need to pay both the employee and employer side of the Social Security and Medicare taxes.  Instead of 6.2% + 1.45%, you need to pay (6.2% + 1.45%) * 2 = 15.3% self-employment tax. In addition, there are some problems with your calculation. Q1i (Quarter 1 estimated income) should be your adjusted annual income divided by 4, not 3 (A/4). Likewise, you should estimate your quarterly tax by estimating your income for the whole year, then dividing by 4.  So Aft (Annual estimated federal tax) should be: Quarterly estimated federal tax would be: Qft = Aft / 4 Annual estimated self-employment tax is: Ase = 15.3% * A with the quarterly self-employment tax being one-fourth of that: Qse = Ase / 4 Self employment tax gets added on to your federal income tax.  So when you send in your quarterly payment using Form 1040-ES, you should send in Qft + Qse. The Form 1040-ES instructions (PDF) comes with the ""2016 Estimated Tax Worksheet"" that walks you through these calculations." "You don't actually have to make four equal payments on US federal taxes; you can pay different amounts each quarter.  To avoid penalties, you must have paid ""enough"" at the end of each quarter.  If you pay too much in an early quarter, the surplus counts towards the amount due in later quarters.  If you have paid too little as of the end of a quarter, that deficit counts against you for interest and penalties until it is made up in later quarters (or at year-end settlement). How much is ""enough""?  There are a number of ways of figuring it.  You can see the list of exceptions to the penalty in the IRS documentation.  Using unequal payments may require more complicated calculation methods to avoid or reduce penalties at year-end.  If you have the stomach for it, you may want to study the Annualized Income Installment Method to see how uneven income might affect the penalty." You're interpreting this correctly. Furthermore, if your total tax liability is less than $1000, you can not pay estimates at all, just pay at the tax day. See this safe harbor rule in the IRS publication 17: General rule.    In most cases, you must pay estimated tax for 2016 if   both of the following apply. You expect to owe at least $1,000 in tax for 2016, after subtracting your withholding and refundable credits. You expect your withholding plus your refundable credits to be less than the smaller of: 90% of the tax to be shown on your 2016 tax return, or 100% of the tax shown on your 2015 tax return (but see Special rules for farmers, fishermen, and higher income taxpayers , later).   Your 2015 tax return must cover all 12 months. Your annual contributions are capped at the maximum of $5500 or your taxable income (wages, salary, tips, self employment income, alimony).  You pay taxes by the regular calculations on Form 1040 on your earned income.  In this scenario, you earn the income, pay taxes on the amount you earn, and put money in the Roth IRA.    The alternative, a Traditional IRA, up to certain income levels, allows you to put the amount you contribute on line 32 of Form 1040, which subtracts the Traditional IRA contribution amount from your Adjusted Gross Income (line 37) before tax is calculated on line 44.  In this scenario, you earn the income, put the money in the Traditional IRA, reduce your taxable income, and pay taxes on the reduced amount. What you need to do is to reduce the withholding from your wages, or pay a smaller amount in your quarterly payments of estimated tax (if you are self-employed). To reduce withholding from wages, fill out a new W4 form  (available from your employer's HR department). There is a worksheet in the form that will help you figure out what to write on the various lines.  As a single person, you are entitled to claim an exemption for yourself, and if you have not been claiming that exemption, doing so will reduce your withholding, and presumably your tax refund. "Chris, Joe's table helps.  but think this way:  there are two ways you can pay the taxes for your side-gig:  either you can send a check quarterly to the Feds, OR, you can overwithhold at your real job to cover taxes at your sidegig.  I'd do this in ""arrears"" -- after you get your first paycheck from sidegig, then adjust your real job's withholding. Except (and Joe neglected this), you're still responsible for Social Security / Medicare Tax from your sidegig.  I suspect your income at real-job is high enough that you stop paying Social Security Tax, so at least at this time of year you won't be subject to 15.4% Social Security Tax.  However, that's NOT true for the 2.9% Medicare Tax.  Remember that because you're an independent contractor being payed without withholding, YOU are responsible not only for the Medicare (and Social Security) taxes you'd be responsible for if a regular employee, but you're also responsible for what your employer's share as well." My understanding (I've never filed one myself) is that the 1040ES is intended to allow you to file quarterly and report unpredictable income, and to pay estimated taxes on that income.   I was in the same sort of boat for 2016 -- I had a big unexpected income source in 2015, and this took away my Safe Harbor for 2016.  I adjusted my w-2 to zero exemptions (eventually) and will be getting a refund of about 1% of our income. So lets say you make 10000 in STG in March, and another 15000 in STG in April.  File a quarterly 1040-ES between March 31 and April 15.  Report the income, and pay some tax.  You should be able to calculate the STCG Tax for 10k pretty easily.  Just assume that it comes off the top and doesn't add at all to your deductions.  Then for April, do the same by June 15. Just like your W-2 is used to estimate how much your employer should withhold, the 1040ES is designed to estimate how much extra you need to pay to the IRS to avoid penalties.  It'll all get resolved after you file your final 1040 for the 2017 calendar year. For estimating your take home salary, I suggest using one of the many free salary calculators available over the Internet. I personally use PaycheckCity.com, but there are plenty of others available. To calculate your allowances for the US Federal tax, you can use the worksheet attached to the form W-4.  Similar form (with a similar worksheet) is available for state taxes, on the Illinois Department of Revenue web site. No, even businesses pay taxes quarterly.  So if you formed Nathan, LLC, or otherwise became self employed, you'd still have to file quarterly estimates and make tax payments.  This would cause taxes to be a much more high touch part of your life. However, you should ensure that you're claiming the proper exemptions etc to avoid excessive withholding. Do you have a regular job, where you work for somebody else and they pay you a salary? If so, they should be deducting estimated taxes from your paychecks and sending them in to the government. How much they deduct depends on your salary and what you put down on your W-4. Assuming you filled that out accurately, they will withhold an amount that should closely match the taxes you would owe if you took the standard deduction, have no income besides this job, and no unusual deductions. If that's the case, come next April 15 you will probably get a small refund. If you own a small business or are an independent contractor, then you have to estimate the taxes you will owe and make quarterly payments. If you're worried that the amount they're withholding doesn't sound right, then as GradeEhBacon says, get a copy of last year's tax forms (or this year's if they're out by now) -- paper or electronic -- fill them out by estimating what your total income will be for the year, etc, and see what the tax comes out to be. If you have a relatively stable income and deductions you can get a fairly good estimate using last year's tax bill. Suppose you paid $12000 of actual taxes last year and you are paid once a month.   If you plan to make a similar amount of money with similar deductions, you need each monthly paycheck to have $1000 of federal income taxes withheld.   I go to a paycheck calculator and find the withholding required to make sure I have that amount withheld every paycheck. If you've already used TurboTax on your 2015 taxes, you can use the numbers TurboTax gave you as your reasonable estimate.  Line 4 is your estimate of total tax liability for 2015. This would be line 63 of form 1040. This is Federal income tax only, not Social Security tax.  Line 5 is the total of tax payments you made last year. You should be able to read this off your W-2 forms, Box 2. It corresponds to line 74 on the 1040.  Line 6 is the difference between lines 4 and 5. You can't claim a refund on the extension, so if line 5 is more than line 4, enter 0. Otherwise, subtract line 5 from line 4, and enter it in line 6. This is the amount you should send in with the form to minimize any penalty due with your taxes later.  The TurboTax software can generate this extension form automatically, I believe.  Also, don't forget to give a copy of this extension form to your tax preparer. He will need to know the amount you sent in.