Quarterly Taxes Due

For some reason when I woke up this morning a reminder popped into my head that a quarterly tax payment to the United States Treasury is due on Tuesday. Normally my income tax preparer sends me a reminder by email well ahead of time. I didn’t hear from her last week. Perhaps she thinks I’m trained and no longer need one.

Like millions of other taxpayers I make an estimated federal tax payment four times a year using Form 1040-ES. I have been doing this since I retired more than 10 years ago. You would think by now I would have a system in place to make sure the payments get in on time. I don’t.

As a convenience my tax preparer fills out the quarterly payment forms for me in advance when she does my income taxes for the year that just ended. The forms have preprinted due dates, and I carefully file them in a folder labeled “Current Year Taxes.” The only thing I need to do is to write a check to the Treasury and put the form and the check in the mail. That’s the easy part. Remembering that the payment is due is the hard part.

In “Quarterly” Payments I blogged about the difficulty of remembering to make the June 15th payment, which is due two (not three) months after the April 15th payment. Of the other three payments, the final one—due January 15th—is the second hardest to remember. I don’t know why that’s true for me, but it is.

So I’m congratulating myself today for remembering and for getting the payment in the mail. On a day that the Seattle Seahawks’ magical season ended with a heartbreaking last-minute 30 to 28 loss to Atlanta in the NFC division playoffs, I have to find something to feel good about.