have paid IRS full amount. how do i avoid form 2210?

[dougmeier47]

paid directly to my IRS account full tax amount should not need IRS for 2210. how do i avoid 2210?

[MonikaK1]

Paying all of your tax prior to the due date of the tax return will ensure that you avoid interest for late payment. However, depending on when you made your tax payments, you could still be subject to the underpayment of estimated tax penalty (Form 2210).

For most filers, if your federal tax withholdings and timely payments are not equal to 90% of your current year tax, or 100% of the total tax from the prior year (whichever is less), then you may need to complete Form 2210 to determine if you are required to pay an underpayment penalty.

If your current year total tax (not just the amount due with the return) minus the amount of tax you paid through withholding is less than $1,000, you are not required to pay the underpayment penalty and do not need to complete Form 2210.

It may help in some situations to go through the Underpayment Penalty section of TurboTax and answer the interview questions. The program will calculate a penalty automatically based on just the amounts and dates paid and the amount of tax due, but the penalty may be reduced depending on the answers to the questions.

See this TurboTax tips article for more information about Form 2210.

If TurboTax is showing an underpayment penalty on your return, visit or revisit the Underpayment Penalty section under Other Tax Situations and answer the interview questions. The penalty calculation may change based on your answers, including information about when your withholding was applied. In addition, if you believe you qualify for a waiver of the penalty, you can request a waiver in that section.

The IRS may reduce an underpayment penalty if any of the following apply:

• You or your spouse (if you file a joint return) retired in the past 2 years after reaching age 62 or became disabled and you had reasonable cause to underpay or pay your estimated tax late. See Waiver of Penalty in Instructions for Form 2210PDF.
• You had most of your income tax withheld early in the year instead of spreading it equally through the year. 
• Your income varies during the year. Complete Form 2210, Schedule AI, Annualized Income Installment Method PDF(found within the form).

The penalty for underpayment of estimated tax can also be removed to the extent that the underpayment is the result of a casualty, local disaster, or other unusual circumstance such that it would not be fair to impose the penalty.

See here for information about different TurboTax tools you can use to calculate withholding and estimated taxes.

Make sure that you included any payments you made directly to IRS in TurboTax so that any penalty is calculated correctly. See this help article for instructions to enter estimated tax payments, both quarterly and other payments.

[Edited 02/10/25| 2:58pm PST] 

@dougmeier47:  (edited) 

[allemke99]

TurboTax doesn’t handle form 2210 correctly.
Line 7: If you have zero withholding taxes, Line 4 (Current year tax) – Line 6 ($0 withholding), is likely going to exceed $1000.
Line 9: Line 9 (required annual payment) is likely going to be greater than line 6 ($0 withholding)

Those two lines trigger the IRS to assess a penalty. The IRS expects equal estimated payments and assesses a penalty and interest from the start of the tax year even if the unplanned income is at the end of the year and the taxpayer has made extra payments for unexpected income and has overpaid quarterly taxes for every quarter based on actual cumulative.

This is particularly problematic if income comes from dividends that don’t pay out equally throughout the year or if you do a ROTH conversion that results in a lump sum of ordinary income and you make a special estimated tax payment to cover the taxes on the same day as the conversion. I did find a work around. I went back to the underpayment penalty test and increased the only number available to change to greater than double my actual current tax. That gave me a box to check that forced creation of Form 2210 with box C checked for annualized income installment method. I shouldn’t have to enter false data to get the correct answer.