You should not receive a penalty for 2017 for not paying estimated taxes since you did not have a tax liability for 2016 but you should be paying them going forward. TurboTax will help you calculate the estimated tax payments you should make and give you the information to pay them.
At filing time, you have not paid enough income taxes through withholding or quarterly estimated payments, you may have to pay a penalty for underpayment.
To determine whether you need to make quarterly estimates, answer these questions:
- Do you expect to owe less than $1,000 in taxes for the tax year after subtracting your federal income tax withholding from the total amount of tax you expect to owe this year? If so, you're safe—you don't need to make estimated tax payments.
- Do you expect your federal income tax withholding (plus any estimated taxes paid on time) to amount to at least 90 percent of the tax that you will owe for this tax year? If so, then you're in the clear, and you don't need to make estimated tax payments.
- Do you expect that your income tax withholding will be at least 100 percent of the tax on your previous year's return? Or, if your adjusted gross income (Form 1040, line 37) on your tax return was over $150,000 ($75,000 if you're married and file separately), do you expect that your income tax withholding will be at least 110 percent of the tax you owed in tax for the previous year? If so, then you're not required to make estimated tax payments.
You can also review the TurboTax Guide on How to Determine Estimated Taxes and When at the link below:
https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/small-business-taxes/estimated-taxes-how-to-determine-what-to-p...
