If you choose not to use the Annualized Income Installment Method, the income is treated as received evenly throughout the year. The tax code does not permit you to treat one particular item of income as received in a particular tax quarter without doing so for all of your income, deductions and tax credits.
If you do use the Annualized Income Installment Method, income is treated as received in the tax quarter when actually received instead of treating it as having been received evenly throughout the year. This prevents income received later in the year from causing underpayment penalties for the earlier tax quarters of the year. As I mentioned, the Annualized Income Installment Method requires allocating all of your income, deductions and credits to the particular tax quarters in which they were received by preparing Schedule AI of Form 2210. The particular date within the quarter doesn't matter. TurboTax will offer the opportunity to do this if you would otherwise be subject to a tax underpayment penalty.
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