Anyone remember the history of why quarterlies are due 6/15 instead of 7/15?

The current payment schedule dates back far further than the 1990s. The 6/15 date related to the fact that the government operated on a 6/30 fiscal yearend up until the early 1970s IIRC. Then they switched to a 9/30 yearend, but the goofy ES payment dates remained unchanged.

MTW

Do you think so? That's not what I recall. I recall Congress talking about how they'd earn money on interest if they shifted the quarterly due date forward a month.

Anyone else remember this?

-- Wendy

If you look at the 1040-ES forms on the IRS CD (the one they didn't issue this year), you will find that ...

The early 1040-ES forms were actually forms that were filed to inform the IRS that estimated taxes were due, not just vouchers to include with your payments as they are today.

The first 1040-ES was for tax year 1943. It was a single estimate of your taxes for the year, and was due on September 15, 1943. You had to file if you expected income not subject to withholding of over $100. (Criteria varied by filing status and type of income.) You paid your total estimated tax with the form.

There was no 1040-ES for 1944.

The 1945 1040-ES noted that the law had changed in 1944 and fewer people had to file an estimated tax form. If you did have to file, you had to estimate your 1945 tax by March 15, 1945!. You could pay the entire estimated amount with your form, or you could pay in four equal installments, on the 15-th of March, June, September and January (almost quarterly).

For TY 1955, the due date for the 1040-ES was changed from March 15 to April 15. The rest of the "quarterly" dates remained the same - April, June, September and January.

The 1040-ES remained essentially the same thru TY 1982. In TY 1983 it was changed to its present voucher form and no longer required a signature.

Don EA in Upstate NY

It's a clever thought, but not even close to reality. The current estimate payment dates were set by the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. Prior to its adoption, the first payment was due on March 15, not April 15, because that was the due date for filing your prior year tax return. The other three payment dates were in June, September, and January. So the earlier payment scheme was every three months, with an extra month for the last (January) payment. This makes logical sense (granted, rare for Congress/IRS) since it gives taxpayers a chance to determine what their year-end taxable income was before making the final estimate payment.

I found this information in the 1954 version of Pub. 17, Your Federal Income Tax on Google Books.

Ira Smilovitz

I vaguely recall at some point in the last 15 - 20 years they made some weird incremental changes in deposit dates for large corporations and/or large employers that were designed to accelerate certain deposits into the month of September (the federal government's fiscal year end). But the basic quarterly payment dates for individuals have remained unchanged for as long as I can remember...in this case, back to the mid 1970's.

MTW