Did you know that you can pay your taxes online and avoid the time and hassles involved with writing and mailing checks to the government? Electronic payments are safer, more secure and much faster than mailing physical checks. The process is easy to use, and we are all for simplifying the tax prep and payment process!
Check out our tips below for making tax payments via ACH (for either Federal or state amounts due or for estimated tax payments). As always, please email or call with questions.
Federal Tax Payments
For payments of amounts due with your Federal return or for quarterly Federal estimated tax payments, the IRS / United States Treasury gives us two ways to pay.
- IRS Direct Pay, https://www.irs.gov/payments/direct-pay allows you to make both payments for an amount due with a return and for estimated taxes. Payments can be entered and scheduled for a future date (up to 365 days out). Note that only two payments can be made or scheduled on any given day. So, if you were looking to make all your estimated payments via IRS direct pay, you could not enter all four payments on the same day, you would have to split the entry across two or more dates.
- Validation is done via entering some basic information about your prior year's tax return (social security #, tax filing status, etc.)
- EFTPS / Electronic Federal Tax Payment System. To utilize EFTPS you must first enroll. You can initiate enrollment at the following link. https://www.eftps.gov/eftps/enrollment/new-enrollment-flow?execution=e1s1
My recommendation for Federal electronic payments is that you establish EFTPS credentials and use this system. However, if you need to make a tax payment ASAP and don’t have an EFTPS login, the IRS Direct Pay system is the way to go.
State Tax Payments
Most states have some type of system for making online state tax payments. Below we provide specific information for how North Carolina’s system works. For residents of other states, you should explore the website for your state’s taxing authority which, depending on the state, could be the Department of Revenue, Department of Taxation, Comptroller’s Office, etc.
For NC payments/amounts due with your NC tax return, go to: https://www.ncdor.gov/taxes-forms/individual-income-tax and then click on ‘Pay original tax due’ or alternatively go to the following link: https://electronic-services.dor.nc.gov/wps/portal/d400v. Note that D-400V is the form # that corresponds to a payment of an amount due with your NC return.
For NC estimated tax payments, go to https://www.ncdor.gov/taxes-forms/individual-income-tax, and click on ‘Pay Estimated Income Tax’. Note that NC-40 is the form # that corresponds to a NC Estimated Income Tax payment. You can schedule payments to be paid on a future date. For example, if you have 4 estimated tax payments to be made in a given year, you can enter all of them on one day, and schedule them for say April 13th, June 13th, Sept 13th, and January 13th.
In conclusion, while you can always mail tax payments, personally, I prefer ACH / electronic options.
Please call or email with questions.
LPL Tracking Number: 1-05302725