Making Estimated Payments

[Updated 2/6/2024]

Do I need to make estimated payments?

Normally federal and state taxes are withheld from employee paychecks.

When you earn income as an employee, money is withheld for federal and state taxes. The amounts withheld will later be applied to the payment of the tax calculated when you complete your annual personal income tax return, 1040-NR. The amount withheld will be reported to you in January on IRS Form W-2, box 2 (federal) and box 17 (state). You may also have tax withheld from other sources of payment and reported to you on 1042-S, 1099-NEC, 1099-MISC, or 1099-INT (or other forms). 

If all of your income is from employers and they are withholding federal and state taxes, you should not need to be concerned about estimated taxes. 

Sometimes federal and/or state taxes are not withheld.

But there may be some situations where no tax is withheld (even when it should be). For example:

• Some of your scholarship is taxable but the university fails to withhold federal taxes. (This taxable income would be reported to you on IRS Form 1042-S.)

• You employer is not registered as a business in the state in which you are actually performing the work. (Not uncommon when working remotely.) In these cases, it may be that no state taxes are withheld. Or state taxes are withheld but not reported for the state in which the work was actually performed. 

• You are working as an independent contractor and no tax is withheld from the payments made to you. (This income would be reported to you on IRS Form 1099-NEC.)

Underpayment of income taxes may result in penalties.

Underpayment of federal income taxes

For federal personal income taxes, if you owe more than $1,000 when you file your tax return, it's possible you may be penalized. For more information, see IRS document "Estimated Taxes."  See "Who Must Make Estimated Tax Payments"

Underpayment of Oregon income taxes

For Oregon personal income taxes, if you owe more than $1,000 in Oregon income taxes when you file your tax return, it's possible you may be penalized. See Oregon Estimated Income Tax Instructions (2024) and read "Do I have to make Oregon estimated tax payments?" for more complete information.

Due Dates for Estimated Tax Payments

Federal Estimated Tax Payments

Due Dates - due dates may be adjust for weekend and holidays.

1. 4/15/2024

2. 6/15/2024

3. 9/15/2024

4. 1/17/2025 *you don't have to make this payment if you file by Jan 31 and pay the total due when filing

Oregon Estimated Tax Payments

Due Dates - due dates may be adjust for weekend and holidays.

1. 4/15/2024

2. 6/15/2024

3. 9/15/2024

4. 1/17/2025 

Information to calculate the needed amount estimated tax payments

Federal Taxes

IRS Form 1040-ES: instructions and worksheets to help you calculate and pay any federal estimated taxes you should make this year. This document also has instructions for how to make the payments.

The IRS has a "Tax Withholding Estimator" but it does not work well for nonresident aliens and may be too confusing to use.

Oregon Taxes

OR-ESTIMATE (2024): instructions and worksheets to help you calculate and pay any Oregon estimated taxes you should make this year. This document also has instructions for how to make the payments.

Other Tools

You might also be able to use this free payroll calculator provided by ADP (a payroll company) to see how much federal and state income taxes would have been withheld if you had been paid as an employee. You would then calculate the difference between what has and will be withheld and what would have been withheld if all your income was paid as employee wages [NOTE: this calculator may not operate correctly on all browsers. For example, there were problems with Firefox (Jan 2022), but worked on Chrome.]