By Suzanne Kubota
Senior Internet Editor
FederalNewsRadio.com

Tax day cometh, and the IRS will be knocking. But we’re not talking about April 18th, which is the deadline for you to file your federal tax returns.

January 18th, about a week from now, is your last chance to pay any estimated federal taxes that are due from 2010.

Registered Employee Benefit Consultant Ed Zurndorfer explains most federal employees have federal and state income taxes taken out of their checks.

But there are some employees who have to pay estimated taxes because they have additional sources of income.

For example, said Zurndorfer, if they owned a “capital asset such as a stock, a bond, or a mutual fund. They sold it at a profit, a gain. There’s no taxes withheld from that gain. The individual has to figure out what’s the tax liability resulting from the sale of the capital asset and figure out how much do I owe the federal government.”

Zurndorfer said the long term capital gain tax rate is a flat 15%. If the money to pay that tax wasn’t withheld, it’s your obligation to pay the government on a quarterly basis.

Fortunately, filers have a few extra days for this quarter to figure all this out. The quarterly payment would normally be due on January 15th, but because that’s a Saturday this year, the payment date moves to the following Monday. Even better, that date, the 17th is the observation of Martin Luther King Junior’s birthday, so the estimated tax payment is due on January 18th.

States, reminds Zurndorfer, have similar requirements for paying estimated taxes, including the deadline dates.

For more information, see the estimated tax information page on irs.gov.

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