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Few additional thoughts...

 

As to the question of your CD earnings being uneven etc, by default IRS assumes your income was earned evenly over the year, and any withholding is also applied evenly over the year even if you pay more withholding later in the year, withholding is always considered "timely".  Estimated taxes however need to paid quarterly, it's one of the few things you enter into TT with a date, and the penalty calculation is then performed quarterly by dividing your 'safe harbor' tax amount due and withholding by 4, and lining that up with the estimated taxes per quarter.

 

Note - If you do have some larger unplanned income event later in the year that you couldn't plan ahead with quarterly estimated tax e.g. Roth conversion, then you can pay one-off estimated tax and then file using "Annualized Income" method on Form 2210 but that can be a lot of additional filing work.  I wouldn't try applying that to uneven payments for CDs etc.

 

If you're able to increase withholding to make your 'safe harbor' amount described by others here (100% of your 2024 tax (110% if 2024 AGI > 150k) or 90% of your 2025 tax, whichever is smaller) then that is always considered "timely", tho you only have about 6 months left of the year to make up the difference thru withholding.

 

If you need to pay estimated tax but missed or underpaid for Q1 then you will have a penalty for that, but if you pay 50% of the total estimated tax for the year in Q2 (deadline 6/16) that will stop the penalty from accruing beyond a few months.

 

In TT under Other Tax Situations / Form W4 and Estimated Taxes you can provide 2025 estimates of your income to calculate the estimated tax.   If you use desktop version go to Forms mode / Est Tax Options shows the calculation.  There are probably other online calculators you can use.  You don't need to use the vouchers generated by TT if you have better estimate.

 

You should not be concerned about paying estimated tax and those not being returned to you if you overpay.  When you file 2025 you input these into TT and they are counted towards your final amount to be paid or refunded.  IRS also tracks these payments and you can see them under your account on irs.gov.

 

Finally for payments don't use checks/vouchers just pay directly at irs.gov if able.