never too old to learn

It depends on what your income situation is, but paying tax estimates has been part of my life pretty much forever. Comes with making money by being an investor instead of by salary.

My nasty surprise this year came when TurboTax greatly raised my NM tax due when I installed an update around February 26. It turns out that NM had made a change from previous years which increased the marginal tax rate for capital gains by 67%, and Intuit had failed to update their NM version to reflect this huge increase until then.

Had such an increase been applied to a socially sympathetic group, it would have been all over the papers, but I don't recall seeing a single story on this one.

I will have to start paying tax estimates. Not only did I owe a huge tax bill but was also assessed an underpayment of tax penalty. uggg!

I've been paying fed & state taxes quarterly ever since I retired 25 years ago. It's always a tough call when preparing the 1040ES since I never know how the investments will do for the current year. Capital gains are the killer, since there are always unpredictable swings from year to year.

To keep from getting hit with a big tax bill and maybe underpayment penalties, I usually include extra $$ on the 1040ES to cover unforeseen events. It's a crap shoot at best though.

Two years ago my wife found a bug in TurboTax. In CO
we had a fire remediation deduction that didn't work
correctly. TT support found the line of code in error. We were warned that it wouldn't be fixed that year. Well,,, last year is wasn't fixed either. This year for more reasons than that we are using an accountant.
advised

Is I will live with the $1600 times 4 payments. I'll even live with the $210 or so in lost interest.

But not everyone has a spare $6k to let the IRS borrow for a year.

This is a special case for me because in my 32 years of having investments, it's the first time I cashed in 5 figures. I'm sure it won't be the last, so I get it, this is the system, nobody did anything to me. Learn it, abide by it.

Imagine, the place where I reside, PA, they get to tax that at the ordinary income rate. What did they do to earn that payment? Nothing.

The other funny thing is with Turbo Tax I got out all the paperwork for the American vehicle we purchased, punched in the VIN, only to find we don't qualify lol and then also paying that huge sales tax to PA our SALT was still greater. Just funny I used to "care" where I don't want some entity like Intuit knowing this info when it's not going to be useful. Today we often go with the flow and let our personal data be mined.

I mean think about this, how much easier is it for me to let Turbo Tax download my 1099 from Fidelity when the sale of the security, said security was purchased from 1994 to about 2004? As opposed to me manually typing it in? There was a time I didn't want to pass through a Fidlelity login in order to keep it secured. Now I just go with the flow....this was a scary reminder on how absolutely much relies upon 2 factor to my cell phone. Meaning if I "got a free iPhone 17 Pro" with a new line i.e. change my number, what a very bad day it would have been on Saturday. This happened in 2022 when I got the iPhone 13 Pro for $309 no trade--changed my number and had to deal with it. But back then far less 2 factor was going on.

p.s. I'm on a Windows 10 laptop (again kept it this way due to BMW factory software running on it), and more and more sites will not allow me to access their web page due to unsupported Windows and browser. That's not a bad thing. This website doesn't seem to care about https lol which is strange to say the least

I started using an accountant for my taxes back in the 1980s and have never regretted it for one minute. There have been three over the years, as I've moved, but have been using the same one for 20 years now. I also have investments, but have scaled back after retiring.

Two years ago, I took some losses I've been sitting on and had no tax due. My accountant didn't charge me anything that year, even though there was still a pile of paperwork to submit. I pressed her and wanted to pay *something* but she flatly refused (which bothered me a bit, because I don't want to feel like a "charity case", LOL).

Last year, she charged me $60. This year, I'd expect about the same. But the point is, I don't have to worry about buggy tax software or making dumb mistakes, I leave it to a pro.

Regarding https and this site... really... what's up with that? IMO, there is just no excuse not to use https today, it can be done for nothing. If a website requires you to create an account with a password, it *really* needs to use https.

We were discussing the demise of gpsreview.net in another thread. Tim, who founded the site, remained as the forum administrator even after selling it years earlier. They weren't using https either and I asked him why. He said that was a sore point, he had been urging management to adopt https but they weren't interested. Soon afterwards, they shut the whole thing down without any advance notice.

Some of you might also remember laptopgps.com. I questioned why they weren't using https and the site owner had some odd reasons why it would be a problem. A few months later, he shut it down (although at least it was announced in advance).

I hope the management of this site will adopt https. In the meantime... do you use the same password on other sites? If so, now is the time to change that.

It used to annoy me when I worked and all the young clerical staff would be going on and on about how much they were getting back from taxes. They always looked confused when they asked me how much I was getting and what I was going to do with the money because I always just looked at them and said, "I have to pay..." Ah, youth.

I have been paying tax estimates to avoid any penalties at tax time. I was not awary of teh increase of the marginal tax rate for capital gains but I am not sure it will impact me too much.

You can generally guarantee you won't be assessed a late payment penalty if you pay estimates for the current year that meet a safe harbor criterion based on the previous year.

If your income fluctuates from year to year, this method can mean you overpay estimates in some years--perhaps by a lot. I generally do pay a safe harbor amount, but recheck in early January before sending in the fourth quarter estimate payment. If I've already paid more than seems likely to be my tax due for the current year, then I omit the fourth payment. Those are years when I get a refund, which I don't like. I view a refund as evidence that I loaned the government money without adequate return.

This has been discussed in the past and I forget why the whole site doesn't use https, but the log in page is in https so your password here is secure.

As for using the same password on other sites, I used to, but then everyone started wanting "strong" passwords which were hard to remember so now I use a password manager. Now the big thing is log in with a PIN in place of your password, so it's back to a 4 digit number, but the password itself still has to be 90 million characters long using every number and letter we have. Go figure.

Yes, I am still trying to figure that one out. I like passkeys, BUT if my phone has face or fingerprint bios and I have to enter a pin (4 digits) to use them to create a passkey, I am again back to 4 digit failure. On the computer side, my desktop creates passkeys without using bios. BUT it can also run without entering a PW or having an insecure PW and my laptop uses bios but also can have a 4 digit pin. So, in addition to the passkey one must lock away the device so it can't be stolen. Makes it more difficult to access and use. My PW manager has an 18 character master PW - very secure, BUT I can also setup a 4 digit pin.
Then there are the folks that recommend changing PW every month regardless of whether they were compromised or not. With all the PW I have, I would be doing nothing but changing PW the rest of my life.
Bottom line, it is the same as locking your car or home. It just keeps honest ppl honest.

.....Are the way and the light.

I bought Apple when it was $50 and my friends mocked me. With all the increases and splits, you would not believe it now.

Withdraw with NO TAX when I decide to.

Roth IRA:

AND with Roth IRA there are no mandatory withdrawals during your life. I went Roth for the freedom, not really at all sure whether it was saving me money or not.

And congratulations on buying Apple shares back then.

Wow

A few years ago, I also started running into this, and for the same reason mentioned here. I have some mutual funds through Vanguard, and even when not cashing in some of the investments, the capital gains are so variable year to year that I find it easier to make both federal and state estimated taxes quarterly rather than trying to adjust my withholdings. I don't try to guess whether I'm getting a refund or if I owe each year and simply use the future estimated tax payments based on what TurboTax found in my previous year's federal and state returns.

I'm so happy to read that I'm not alone.

For 2026, I bit the bullet and tried using the online federal and state tax payments' websites. I think this was partly due to the recent USPS change of procedure resulting in potential late payment fines due to late postmarks. The good news is that the IRS and the state online payment system (at least for Wisconsin) are quite easy to use. Besides the postmark issue, I'm now saving having to handwrite two envelopes' addresses four times a year, write personal checks, and pay whatever the current "Forever" stamp rate is valued at...plus the potential for a payment being lost in the mail.

Thanks, POI Factory folks, for sharing...

Unfortunately, my state (PA) doesn't offer direct debit tax payments. I used that service for my fed quarterly taxes a few years ago but didn't see it offered through TurboTax this year. It's indeed a handy time (and stamp) saver. I suppose I'll have to go through the IRS website (Yuk) to try and set it up.

I keep track of my last year’s end of year balances and adjust my withdrawals accordingly. This year is the first year that I’ve had to adjust my withdrawals since I started having to take out RMD’s. But with the way the market has been going for the last couple of years, I knew that it was inevitable that I would have to increase them. I would hate paying a penalty for not taking enough out.

the IRS web site for our quarterly federal tax payments. It's pretty simple and actually easy to understand and use. Almost painless except for the $$...haha

I've been paying estimated quarterly payments for a while. I have withholding taken out for everything except investments. I prefer to have the earnings reinvest so the value of the account grows. The tax authorities want you to estimate the total taxable earnings and pay one fourth every quarter. The complication is that for me, 80% of my capital gains and dividends come in December. Thy expect me to be able to predict the stock market a year in advance. If I could do that, I'd have a lot more money than I do now! As a defense; you can compute the actual quarterly income and payments, but that is a real pain and practically invites an audit.
Mark