Quarterly Estimated Taxes for TLC Drivers (2026 Dates)

In short: if you drive for yourself — app, taxi lease or owner-driver — nobody withholds tax from your pay, so you generally must send estimated tax four times a year. The IRS says you need to if you expect to owe $1,000 or more when you file (IRS); New York says you can skip it only if you expect to owe less than $300 each of state, NYC and Yonkers tax (NYS). The 2026 due dates are April 15, June 15 and September 15, 2026, and January 15, 2027. As of today (October 12, 2026), the next one is January 15, 2027.

Estimated tax, in one line: tax you pay during the year on income that has no withholding, to cover both income tax and self-employment tax. This page is general information, not tax advice.

Dates: 2026 Form 1040-ES and NYS due dates.

Who must pay

Federal. Individuals, including sole proprietors, "generally have to make estimated tax payments if they expect to owe tax of $1,000 or more when their return is filed." The IRS adds that if you are in business for yourself, you generally need to make them, and that estimated tax covers self-employment tax too (IRS).

New York State and NYC. NYS says you may need to pay estimated tax if no tax is withheld from some of your income, or if you have net earnings from self-employment allocated to the MCTD (the MTA region, which includes all of NYC). You don't need to if you expect to owe less than $300 of NYS, $300 of NYC and $300 of Yonkers income tax after withholding and credits (NYS). NYC resident income tax is paid with your state payments. See MCTMT for why the 2026 MCTMT threshold change may lower your state estimate.

A driver with a W-2 job too can instead ask that employer to withhold more on Form W-4, which the IRS says can replace estimated payments.

Safe harbors: how much is "enough"

You don't have to guess your exact tax. Both the IRS and NYS give "safe harbor" amounts. Pay at least the smaller of these, spread across the four dates, and you generally avoid the underpayment penalty:

Sources: IRS, 2026 Form 1040-ES, NYS.

Worked example (fictional). Luis drove for an app all of 2025. His 2025 federal return showed total tax of $6,000 (income tax plus self-employment tax), and his AGI was under $150,000. Using the 100%-of-last-year rule, paying $1,500 on each of the four 2026 dates keeps him inside the federal safe harbor, even if 2026 turns out busier. He does the same arithmetic for his NYS and NYC tax. If 2026 is a much worse year, he can base payments on 90% of the lower 2026 tax instead.

How to pay

(IRS: How to pay estimated taxes; NYS)

What happens if you pay too little or too late

The IRS says that if you don't pay enough through withholding and estimated payments, you may owe a penalty for underpayment, and you can owe a penalty for late payments even if you are due a refund when you file (IRS).

The IRS may waive the penalty if the underpayment came from a casualty, disaster or other unusual circumstance, or if you retired after age 62 or became disabled and had reasonable cause. You ask for that on Form 2210.

A simple way to have the money ready

A quarterly bill is hard to pay if the money was already spent. One approach: look at last year's total tax (federal plus state and city) and divide it by last year's gross driving income. That gives you a rough share of each payout to move into a separate savings account every week. When a due date comes, pay from that account. Adjust the share if your income or expenses change. This is a budgeting habit, not an IRS rule — the safe harbors above are what decide whether you owe a penalty.

Weekends, holidays and mail

If a due date falls on a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday, the IRS treats a payment on the next business day as on time. A mailed payment counts on its U.S. postmark date (IRS). All four 2026 federal dates above fall on weekdays.

Uneven income: the annualized method

Driving income is rarely even. A slow winter and a busy fall can mean equal payments don't fit. The IRS says if your income arrives unevenly, you may be able to avoid or lower the penalty by annualizing your income and making unequal payments, using Form 2210 (IRS). This takes careful records of when you earned the money — your weekly pay statements help. A preparer can do the Form 2210 math.

NYC Unincorporated Business Tax estimates

NYC has a separate business tax, the UBT. Its instructions say every individual carrying on an unincorporated business in NYC whose UBT can reasonably be expected to exceed $3,400 for the year must file Form NYC-5UBTI, a declaration of estimated UBT, due the 15th day of the fourth month of the tax year (NYC-202S instructions, 2025). If the UBT is $3,400 or less, the UBT business tax credit cancels all of it — see NYC UBT and TLC drivers.

Estimate the inputs first

Your estimate is only as good as your profit figure. Car costs can be a large deduction for a driver. Use the estimator to compare the IRS mileage rate with your actual costs, then use that profit on the 1040-ES worksheet.

If you expect to claim the no tax on tips deduction, it can lower your income tax — but the IRS pages we read don't say it lowers self-employment tax, so don't cut your estimates for it without advice. For NYC rates, see how much NYC income tax do drivers pay?