When are estimated tax payment dates? The 2026 and 2027 quarterly schedule

What are the estimated tax payment dates for 2026?

Four dates, set by statute and printed on the 2026 Form 1040-ES.¹

Wednesday, Monday, Tuesday, Friday. Not one of them is a weekend or a federal holiday, which means no 2026 estimated tax deadline shifts anywhere. Plenty of pages will tell you about the weekend rule without ever telling you whether it bites this year, so: it doesn't.

There is one near miss. Emancipation Day, the District of Columbia holiday that occasionally shoves the April filing deadline forward, falls on Thursday, April 16 in 2026, a day too late to move anything.

What are the estimated tax payment dates for 2027?

Same statutory pattern the following year, but the last one moves.²

That last one is a double shift, which almost never happens and is worth watching in slow motion. January 15, 2028 is a Saturday, so the deadline rolls to Monday the 17th, which turns out to be Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so it rolls a second time and lands on Tuesday, January 18.³

Fair warning on that whole table: it comes from the statute plus the calendar, not from the IRS. The 2027 Form 1040-ES won't exist until around December 2026.

Which tax year does a January quarterly tax payment belong to?

A January payment belongs to the previous tax year, not the calendar year you write the check in.

The payment due January 15, 2027 is the fourth and final installment for tax year 2026, covering income earned from September 1 through December 31, 2026. The next payment, on April 15, 2027, opens tax year 2027.

Mixing these up creates a specific and annoying problem: you claim the January 15, 2027 payment on the 2026 return you file in April 2027, not on the 2027 return you file in 2028. Put it on the wrong return and you'll appear underpaid for one year and overpaid for the next.

Why aren't quarterly tax payment dates evenly spaced?

The IRS splits the year into four unequal periods, not four three-month quarters.²

Almost every article on this topic prints that table and moves on. Here's what it actually means for your cash flow.

Q2 is the squeeze. You pay Q1 on April 15, quite possibly alongside a balance owed on last year's return, and then Q2 arrives eight weeks later on June 15 covering only two months of income. Two payments inside two months, right when your April bill just cleared.

Q4 is the opposite. Income you book on September 2 isn't due until January 15, more than four months later. That's a long time to sit on money you owe, and it's why the fourth installment is the one people most often spend by accident.

What happens when a quarterly tax due date falls on a weekend or holiday?

It shifts to the next business day, automatically and with no penalty.

The rule is Internal Revenue Code Section 7503: when the last day for performing any act under the tax laws falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, doing it on the next day that isn't one of those counts as on time.³"Legal holiday" means a legal holiday in the District of Columbia, which is why DC-specific days like Emancipation Day can move a national deadline.

The shift can happen twice, as the January 2028 date shows. Roll off a Saturday onto a Monday that turns out to be a federal holiday, and you roll again.

Statutory deadlines move. Payment systems don't, and the two systems most people use behave differently:

• EFTPS has a real cutoff. Submit your payment instructions by 8:00 p.m. Eastern at least one calendar day before the due date.⁴Scheduling on the due date itself is too late.
• IRS Direct Pay accepts same-day payments on the due date. You get credit for the date you select, even if the withdrawal processes later. Payments submitted after 8:00 p.m. Eastern may show as next-business-day in your online account, which is a display quirk, not a lateness problem.⁴

That 8:00 p.m. figure means opposite things in the two systems, which is where a lot of bad advice on this comes from.

Do fiscal-year filers follow different quarterly tax dates?

Fiscal-year filers do follow a different calendar, and it's built from your year rather than the IRS's. Your installments fall on the 15th day of the 4th, 6th, and 9th months of your fiscal year, plus the 15th day of the first month after it closes.¹

Take a fiscal year ending June 30. Your payments land on October 15, December 15, March 15, and July 15, and each of them shifts for weekends and holidays the same way the calendar-year dates do.

Can you skip the January quarterly tax payment by filing early?

You can, and the mechanism is simple: file your full return and pay the entire balance early, and the penalty on that fourth installment disappears.²

The statute names January 31. But for tax year 2026 the date you actually need is February 1, 2027, since January 31 falls on a Sunday and the next-business-day rule takes over. The 2026 Form 1040-ES prints February 1 outright.¹

Check this one every year. Most write-ups just repeat the statutory January 31 without noticing which day of the week it lands on. The trade is a good one if your books close early: one payment instead of two, and you're finished with the whole year in January.

Do farmers and fishers follow a different quarterly tax payment schedule?

Farmers and fishers get a much simpler schedule than everyone else. Clear the two-thirds test, meaning at least that share of your gross income comes from farming or fishing in either the current or prior year, and you owe one installment instead of four, due January 15.²

Or skip estimated payments altogether by filing your Form 1040 and paying in full by March 1.¹That's the farmers-and-fishers version of the early-filing rule above, with a later date attached.

Which states use different due dates?

Most states with an income tax match the federal calendar. Four don't, and three of those differ only in the first quarter.⁵

Delaware and Virginia are the ones people get wrong, because a different Q1 date reads like a different schedule. It isn't. Their remaining three installments are on the federal dates.

Separately, the IRS routinely postpones estimated tax deadlines for federally declared disaster areas, sometimes by several months, and relief is granted county by county rather than statewide. Those dates change often enough that the only reliable move is to check the IRS disaster relief page directly for your county.