← Quarterly Estimated Tax Calendar
Keeper, a bookkeeping and tax-filing app for the self-employed, offers a free quarterly tax calculator that gives a ballpark estimate of what you owe, built from your expected income, business deductions, tax credits, and other taxes for the year. It answers an income-modeling question: starting from what you expect to earn and deduct, roughly what will this quarter's payment be.
That makes it useful for a different moment than this page: estimating a payment before you have solid year-end numbers to work from. This page does not model your income or deductions at all. It takes numbers you already have — last year's total tax, and optionally this year's own estimate — and applies the IRS's own published safe-harbor formula to them, rather than projecting what your year will look like.
| Question | Where to answer it |
|---|---|
| Roughly what will I owe this year, starting from expected income and deductions I haven't finalized? | Keeper's quarterly tax calculator — it is built to project from expected figures. |
| What's the exact IRS safe-harbor floor, given last year's tax (and this year's estimate, if I have one)? | This calendar — it applies Form 1040-ES's own 90%/100%/110% rule to numbers you already know, no projection involved. |
| When is each payment actually due this year, not just "the 15th"? | This calendar — due dates are shifted for weekends and federal holidays for the tax year you enter. |
| Can I get a reminder in my own calendar app without installing anything or making an account? | This calendar — the download is a standard .ics file with a 7-day-ahead alarm on each unpaid quarter, openable by any calendar app. |
| Do I want ongoing bookkeeping, deduction-finding, or a tax professional alongside the reminder? | Keeper or a similar paid service — this page is a single-purpose calculator and calendar-file generator, not a bookkeeping app. |
The two are not substitutes for the full year. A filer who has just started the year with only a rough income guess is better served by an estimator built for that, like Keeper's calculator. A filer who already knows last year's total tax — the number the IRS safe harbor is actually anchored to — gets an exact, published-formula floor from this page instead of a projection, plus the real due dates and a portable reminder that does not depend on keeping an app installed.
This calendar needs no account and no app install: it is a static page, every number is computed in your browser, and the downloaded .ics file keeps working in your calendar app long after you close this tab.
They answer related but different questions. Keeper's quarterly tax calculator (part of Keeper's bookkeeping and tax-filing app for the self-employed) gives a ballpark estimate of what you owe from your expected income, business deductions, and tax credits for the year — useful early in the year, before you have a completed prior-year return to anchor to. This page instead applies the IRS Form 1040-ES safe-harbor rule — the smaller of 90% of this year's estimated tax or 100%/110% of last year's tax — to numbers you already have, shows the four real due dates adjusted for weekends and federal holidays, and lets you download a calendar file with a 7-day reminder on each one. It does not estimate your income or deductions for you the way Keeper's calculator does; it takes the totals you already know and turns them into a payment schedule and due-date reminders.
Keeper's help center describes quarterly reminders and push or text notifications delivered inside its app once you have an account. This page's reminder is a standard .ics calendar file you download once, with no account and no app — it opens in whatever calendar you already use (phone, desktop, work), keeps working if you stop using this site, and does not depend on notifications from a service you have to keep installed.
No. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Keeper Tax Inc. Keeper is a trademark of its owner, named here only to describe what this calendar is and is not, based on Keeper's own public description of its quarterly tax calculator and app.
Open the Quarterly Estimated Tax Calendar to build your own safe-harbor schedule and download the reminder file.