If nobody withholds your taxes, the IRS expects you to pay them four times a year. Here are the 2026 deadlines, how much to set aside, and how Kronos handles all of it for you — so you never get hit with an underpayment penalty.
Join the waitlistWhen you're a W-2 employee, your employer withholds income and payroll taxes from every paycheck and sends them to the IRS for you. When you're self-employed — a gig driver, freelancer, contractor, or creator — there is no employer doing that. So the IRS shifts the responsibility to you, and it doesn't want to wait until April. It wants estimated tax payments four times a year.
This catches a huge number of gig workers off guard. They assume taxes are an April event, skip the quarterly payments, and then discover they owe not just the tax but an underpayment penalty on top — effectively interest for not paying as they went. The system is designed for people whose employer handles it; nobody hands a new gig worker a memo explaining it applies to them now.
Federal estimated taxes are due on roughly the same four dates every year. Each payment covers the income you earned during that slice of the year:
| Payment | Income period | Due date |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 | Jan 1 – Mar 31 | April 15, 2026 |
| Q2 | Apr 1 – May 31 | June 15, 2026 |
| Q3 | Jun 1 – Aug 31 | September 15, 2026 |
| Q4 | Sep 1 – Dec 31 | January 15, 2027 |
If a deadline lands on a weekend or federal holiday, it shifts to the next business day. Kronos sends a reminder before each one.
The honest answer is "it depends on your income and deductions," but a workable rule of thumb is to set aside 25–30% of your net self-employment income. That covers two things at once:
Kronos defaults to a 22% auto set-aside per deposit and lets you raise it if your income is higher. The key insight: your set-aside should drop as your deductions rise — and most gig workers never claim the deductions that would lower it. That's what the AI Accountant is for. The more legitimate deductions it finds, the less you actually owe each quarter.
Two failure modes hit gig workers every year, and both are avoidable:
Estimate what you'll owe in a couple of minutes with the free gig tax estimator.
Generally yes if you expect to owe $1,000 or more in tax for the year from self-employment. A side hustle counts. If you also have a W-2 job, you can sometimes cover the difference through extra withholding there — but most pure-gig income needs quarterly payments.
That's the norm for gig work, and it's exactly why a per-deposit set-aside beats a fixed monthly transfer. Kronos sets aside a percentage of each deposit, so your tax bucket scales up and down with your actual earnings automatically.
Kronos sets the money aside, reminds you, and shows the amount — you make the payment to the IRS (it's quick from the funded bucket). We don't auto-debit the government on your behalf, by design, so you stay in control of every payment.
It's a safe starting point for many gig workers, but raise it if you're in a higher bracket and lower it as the AI Accountant finds deductions. The year-to-date estimate tells you whether you're on track.
In a separate Tax bucket inside your Kronos account — FDIC pass-through via partner banks, fully yours, just sequestered so you don't spend it before the deadline.
KronosPay Inc. is a Delaware C-Corporation founded in 2026 by Sultan Mogaji to build the bank for the self-employed — including the quarterly-tax workflow every other neobank ignored.
Compliance: DUNS 144991867 · FinCEN BSA MSB Tracking Number MRX26-00003995 · KYC via Plaid Identity Verification · cash deposits FDIC pass-through via partner banks (Lead Bank) through our banking partner.
This page is general information, not tax advice. Deadlines and rates can change; confirm your specifics with a tax professional or the IRS.
Auto set-aside, deadline reminders, and an AI Accountant — built into your bank.
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