California Estimated Tax Payments: Due Dates, Safe Harbors, Penalties

If you expect to owe California income tax of $500 or more after withholding and credits ($250 if you’re married or in a registered domestic partnership filing separately), California estimated tax payments are due to the Franchise Tax Board in four installments on April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15. California splits those installments unevenly: 30%, 40%, 0%, and 30% of your required annual payment.¹

Who Has to Pay

The $500 threshold ($250 if married or RDP filing separately) is the starting test. It generally catches self-employed workers, freelancers, landlords, and investors with meaningful capital gains or dividends — anyone earning income that isn’t run through payroll withholding.²

One clean exemption: if you’re a new resident or nonresident who had no California tax liability in the prior year, you don’t owe estimated payments for the current year.²

The Four Due Dates and the 30/40/0/30 Split

For the 2026 tax year, the installment schedule is:

April 15, 2026 — 30% of the required annual payment
June 15, 2026 — 40%
September 15, 2026 — 0% (no payment due)
January 15, 2027 — 30%

If a due date lands on a weekend or legal holiday, it moves to the next business day.³

The uneven split is the piece that catches people who are used to the federal system’s four equal 25% payments. California front-loads the year: 70% of your annual obligation is due by mid-June. Then nothing is required in September. That gap between June and January can feel like a break until the final 30% comes due.¹

How Much You Have to Pay: The Safe Harbors

California won’t penalize you if your combined withholding and estimated payments equal the smaller of:

90% of your current-year tax, or
100% of the tax on your prior-year California return, including any alternative minimum tax.¹

Meet either target and you’re safe, even if you still owe a balance at filing.

Higher-Income Rules

If your prior-year California AGI was more than $150,000 ($75,000 if married or RDP filing separately), the prior-year safe harbor rises from 100% to 110%. You’d pay the lesser of 90% of current-year tax or 110% of last year’s.²

At $1,000,000 or more in current-year California AGI ($500,000 if married or RDP filing separately), the prior-year safe harbor disappears entirely. You must base payments on 90% of your current-year tax.¹ This is the rule that catches people who have a one-off big income year. If you earned $1.2 million this year and $200,000 last year, paying based on last year’s tax will produce a penalty.

Calculating Your Payment

The California Estimated Tax Worksheet in the Form 540-ES instructions walks through it: project your California AGI, subtract deductions and credits to estimate total tax, compare the two safe harbor figures, and take the smaller one as your required annual payment. That number gets divided using the 30/40/0/30 schedule.²

If your income shifts during the year, recalculate. The FTB says recalculating for each payment period improves accuracy. There’s no separate form for adjusting — you rerun the worksheet with updated numbers and send a different amount for the next installment.²

The Behavioral Health Services Tax

If your taxable income tops $1,000,000, an additional 1% Behavioral Health Services Tax applies to the amount above that threshold, and you need to fold it into your estimated payments. The 2026 Form 540-ES instructions include a separate worksheet for it.¹ It’s easy to miss if you’re basing this year’s payments on a prior return from a year when your income was lower.

How to Pay

The fastest method is FTB Web Pay, a direct debit from your bank account. Through your MyFTB account you can schedule all four installments at the start of the year.⁴ Sole proprietors use Web Pay personal, not the business version.

Credit card payments go through the FTB’s third-party processor and carry a 2.3% service fee on the payment amount.⁵

You can also mail a check or money order with Form 540-ES as the voucher. Make it payable to “Franchise Tax Board,” write your Social Security number or ITIN and the tax year on the payment, and use the Sacramento address on the form instructions.

After paying, confirm the payment posted through your MyFTB account.⁶ Mailed payments can take a couple of weeks to appear, and you’d rather find a missing payment now than after the next deadline.

When Electronic Payment Becomes Mandatory

Once you make any estimated or extension payment over $20,000, or file a return with total tax liability over $80,000, all your future payments must be electronic regardless of amount. The trigger is permanent. The payment that first crosses the threshold doesn’t itself have to be electronic, but every payment after does. Failure to comply carries a 1% noncompliance penalty on the payment.¹

Using Withholding Instead

If you have a W-2 job alongside your other income, you can often skip estimated payments by boosting withholding from your paycheck. Estimate your annual tax, divide by remaining pay periods, and ask for that extra amount to be withheld.

For California, file a new Form DE 4 with your employer and enter the additional per-period amount on line 2.⁷ For federal, use IRS Form W-4, Step 4(c).⁸

Withholding has a useful quirk: it’s treated as paid evenly across the year no matter when it actually came out of your paycheck. If you realize in October that you’ve underpaid, cranking up withholding for the rest of the year can retroactively cover earlier quarters. A late estimated payment can’t do that — it only counts toward the installment period in which it’s made.

Underpayment Penalties

Missing a deadline or underpaying an installment triggers an underpayment penalty, even if your return ultimately shows a refund. The penalty works like interest at 7% annually on the shortfall, running until the amount is paid.⁹ The FTB usually calculates the penalty after you file and bills you separately.¹⁰

If you want to compute it yourself or claim an exception, use FTB Form 5805.

Uneven Income: The Annualized Method

If your income arrives unevenly across the year, the annualized income installment method on Part III of Form 5805 recalculates your required payment for each period based on income actually received through that period, using four cumulative windows (January–March, January–May, January–August, and the full year) with annualization factors of 4, 2.4, 1.5, and 1.¹⁰ If you use it for one installment, you have to use it for all four.

The March 1 Escape Hatch

You can avoid the underpayment penalty for the entire year by filing your California return and paying all tax due by March 1 of the following year — March 1, 2027 for the 2026 tax year.¹⁰ This wipes out the penalty entirely, not just the final installment. The tradeoff is filing about six weeks before the normal deadline, which means having your documents together early.

How This Differs From Federal Estimated Taxes

If you also owe federal estimated tax, you’re running two systems in parallel. The dates are the same, but three rules differ:

The IRS threshold is $1,000 of expected tax owed; California’s is $500 ($250 if married or RDP filing separately). You can owe California estimated tax while sitting below the federal threshold.¹¹
Federal installments are 25% each. California’s are 30/40/0/30.
Both systems raise the prior-year safe harbor to 110% above $150,000 in AGI, but California removes the prior-year safe harbor entirely at $1,000,000. The federal 110% option stays available at all income levels.²

Send them separately: federal to the IRS, state to the FTB.

1
Franchise Tax Board. 2026 Instructions for Form 540-ES Estimated Tax for Individuals
2
Franchise Tax Board. Estimated Tax Payments
3
Franchise Tax Board. When to File – Personal Income Tax Due Dates
4
Franchise Tax Board. Pay by Bank Account (Web Pay)
5
Franchise Tax Board. Pay by Credit Card
6
Franchise Tax Board. MyFTB Account
7
Employment Development Department. Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate (DE 4)
8
Internal Revenue Service. Form W-4, Employee’s Withholding Certificate
9
Franchise Tax Board. Interest and Estimate Penalty Rates
10
Franchise Tax Board. 2024 Instructions for Form FTB 5805
11
Internal Revenue Service. Estimated Tax