Federal Estimated Tax Deadlines

Since Florida doesn’t impose a state income tax, your only quarterly obligation is to the IRS. The estimated tax deadlines for tax year 2025 are:

• Q1 (Jan 1 – Mar 31): April 15
• Q2 (Apr 1 – May 31): June 16
• Q3 (Jun 1 – Aug 31): September 15
• Q4 (Sep 1 – Dec 31): January 15 of the following year

Pay through IRS Direct Pay, EFTPS, or by mailing Form 1040-ES vouchers. Most Miami filers we work with prefer Direct Pay for the instant confirmation — mailing a check to the IRS and hoping it arrives by the deadline is a stress nobody needs.

No State Tax Doesn’t Mean No Planning

We talk to Miami residents all the time who assume that living in a no-income-tax state means they can ignore estimated payments entirely. That’s wrong, and it’s an expensive mistake. Federal self-employment tax alone is 15.3% on the first $176,100 of net earnings (12.4% Social Security + 2.9% Medicare), plus an additional 0.9% Medicare surtax on earnings above $200,000. Add federal income tax on top of that.

A freelancer in Miami earning $150,000 in net self-employment income still owes roughly $23,000 in self-employment tax and $20,000-$25,000 in federal income tax. That’s $43,000-$48,000 in total federal tax — due in quarterly installments. Florida’s lack of a state tax saves you compared to New York or California, but it doesn’t eliminate the quarterly filing requirement.

The Safe Harbor Rule

Pay at least 100% of last year’s total federal tax liability across four equal installments and you won’t owe an underpayment penalty, regardless of how much you actually owe this year. If your AGI exceeded $150,000, that threshold increases to 110%.

For Miami residents who recently moved from a high-tax state, the safe harbor calculation can work in your favor. Your prior-year tax was inflated by state taxes that no longer apply, which means your safe harbor number is higher than what you’ll actually owe. You’re effectively over-covered. But the flip side is true too — if you moved from Florida to a taxing state, your prior-year safe harbor doesn’t account for the new state liability.

What Miami Gets Wrong

The biggest mistake we see from Miami-based filers: they move from New York, stop paying estimated taxes entirely because “Florida has no state tax,” and then get hit with a $3,000 underpayment penalty from the IRS the following April. The state tax went away. The federal obligation didn’t.

Second most common: not adjusting for the loss of the state income tax deduction. If you previously itemized and deducted $15,000 in state income taxes, moving to Florida means you lose that deduction. Your federal taxable income goes up, which means your federal estimated payments should go up too. A lot of people miss this.

Third: forgetting about the SALT cap. The $10,000 SALT deduction limit means the actual tax savings of moving to a no-income-tax state are capped at $10,000 in deduction value (roughly $3,500 in actual tax savings for someone in the 35% bracket). If you were already at the SALT cap in your prior state, moving to Florida saves you the full state tax bill but doesn’t change your federal picture at all.

Florida Business Taxes You Should Know About

Florida doesn’t tax personal income, but it does impose a corporate income tax of 5.5% on C-corporations and entities taxed as C-corps. If you run a business through a C-corp in Miami, that entity still owes quarterly estimated payments to the state — using Florida Form F-1120ES.

S-corps, LLCs taxed as partnerships, and sole proprietors pass through to your personal return, and since Florida doesn’t tax personal income, there’s no state payment. But if your business has employees, you still owe Florida reemployment (unemployment) tax on their wages. That’s a payroll tax, not an income tax, but it’s easy to confuse the two when you’re setting up a business.