Tax Year Prior to 2020: 2019 CA Form 540-ES Payments

[rkreklow]

Upon completion of my 2018 CA State Taxes, Turbo Tax provided a Payment Form 540-ES 2 and a Payment Form 4 540-ES 4.  In filing my 2019 CA State Taxes, Turbo Tax provided Payment Forms 1, 2 and 4 for use in 2020 and indicated I owed $1,939.00.  Did Turbo Tax not supply the proper number of Payment Forms for use in 2019 and that the owed amount is based on a missing quarterly payment?

[VolvoGirl]

That's right,  

California does not want a 3rd quarter estimate payment.  They want  30%  40%  0%  30%

[VolvoGirl]

Scroll down and see When to Pay here,

https://www.ftb.ca.gov/pay/estimated-tax-payments.html

[rkreklow]

Thank you, VolvoGirl.  I appreciate your help. 

[rkreklow]

So, if Turbo Tax computed my California State Tax and only provided two of the four forms for filing, then the Turbo Tax program malfunctioned.  Is that correct?  Not sure I can trust Turbo Tax again. 

[VolvoGirl]

Exactly what 2 forms did you get?  What dates on them?  You should have at least 3 for 540ES.  It gave me 3.  Did you print them?  Maybe 1 printed on the back or you ran out of paper?  Are you looking through the pdf?

[VolvoGirl]

Oh I read your top question again.  You only got 2 forms for 2019 estimates?  Which ones?  What tax due was on them?    Did you maybe say to apply a 2018 refund to the first estimated payment?  Or if you filed after April 15 you might have said you already made the first payment?  Do you still have the pdf of 2018 return?  See if all 3 ES slips are there.  

[rkreklow]

I filed my taxes electronically in February 2019.  The Turbotax file indicated on page 1 of 2 that there were only two vouchers to be paid (#2 and #4).  Page 2 of 2 provided instructions for filling out the checks or money orders for payment, and the next two pages were the actual ES-540 2018 Forms (#2 and #4).  Didn't run out of paper and it didn't print on the reverse side.  The saved PDF shows the same exact thing.  Since I did not prepay any taxes for the future 2019 filing, I can only assume that there was something wrong with the Turbotax program.  I should have known better however, because I have been using Turbotax for years and have only being paying California 3 times a year.  My bad I guess, but it is irritating to get hit with an unexpected large payment and a penalty. 

[VolvoGirl]

Guess it's too late to worry about it now.  Did you use the Online version or the Desktop (Win or Mac) program?  I would open the 2018 program again and see if you can figure it out.  Like you might have answered a question wrong or gone into the actual forms and checked the wrong box for something?  My 2018 Desktop program gave me 3 payments.  Go though the state estimated section again.  I guess it didn't just take the total due and put it on 2 slips if you came up short when filing now.  

[caroldcarr]

I need CA 540-ES vouchers but i cannot find them on Turbo Tax.

[VictorW9]

If you don't owe CA taxes, the 540-ES will simply not be generated. The form appears if you CA taxes and you are required to make estimated payments.