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Thanks Merlo for your prompt response. Let me make sure I understand your info and have questions as follow up: What you would need to do is estimate what your net income will be after deducting your expenses. 1)>>Net income - Is this my salary from my corporate job and income I earn as a self-employed? Does this include dividends, interest? If it includes the latter part, I'm not necessarily going to get all that before 1/15/10 (quarterly payment due date). Your net income after expenses is then subject to self employment taxes (SS and Medicare). The tax rate for SS will be 12.4% on all net earnings from self employment up to a maximum of $106,800 for the year. Since you worked a regular job the first 10 months of the year, you will need to take in to consideration the total SS wages already paid on the salary you received during that time period so you do not exceed the maximum amount that you would owe. 2)>>I've already reached the cap paying SS tax from my corporate job. Do I have to pay SS tax from self-employment as well then for 2009? As far as regular income taxes, this will depend on your entire income all year from all sources. If you are married and your spouse also has income, you will need to consider your entire household income to estimate what your taxes will be for the year and then deduct from that your standard deduction and personal allowances based on the number of dependents you can claim. Once you have an estimate of what you will owe, you should deduct from that any income taxes that were already withheld from your paychecks during the last 10 months of the year, and then pay in the balance as estimated payments. 3)>>This sounds to me like that the tax work I normally do to prep for the 4/15 annual deadline I now have to do before 1/15, again, since I would need to wait for dividend and interest info. Appreciate your help. Sounds like more work than I had thought and wondering if it would be easier to get an accountant to do this for me. I'm not married, but in a registered domestic partnership, so for California, that gets a bit more complicated since we can't file together for Federal, but have to for CA. So does that mean even more work for me to pay CA state taxes?