Annualized Income

What Is Annualized Income?

Annualized income is an estimate of the amount of money that an individual or a business creates throughout a year's time. Annualized income is calculated with short of what one year's worth of data, so it is just a guess of total income for the year. Annualized income figures can be useful for making [budgets](/financial plan) and making estimated income tax payments.

Grasping Annualized Income

Annualized income can be calculated by duplicating the earned income figure by the ratio of the number of months in a year separated by the number of months for which income data is available. If, for instance, a consultant earned $10,000 in January, $12,000 in February, $9,000 in March and $13,000 in April, the earned income figure for those four months totals $44,000. To annualize the consultant's income, increase $44,000 by 12/4 to approach $132,000.

How Estimated Tax Payments Work

Taxpayers pay annual tax liabilities through tax withholdings and by making estimated tax payments each quarter. There are many kinds of revenue that are not subject to tax withholding. Income from self-employment, interest and dividend income and capital gains are not subject to tax withholdings, alongside alimony and a few different types of revenue that might be reported to a taxpayer on Form 1099. To stay away from a penalty for tax underpayment, the total tax withholdings and estimated tax payments must equivalent to the lesser of 90% of the tax owed for the current year or the full tax owed the previous year.

Instances of Annualized Income That Fluctuates

Registering estimated tax payments is troublesome assuming that the taxpayer's income sources change during the year. Numerous self-employed individuals create income that differs enormously over time. Expect, for instance, that a self-employed salesman earns $25,000 during the first quarter and $50,000 in the second quarter of the year. The higher income in the subsequent quarter demonstrates a higher total level of income for the year, and the first quarter's estimated tax payment depends on a lower level of income. Subsequently, the salesman might be assessed an underpayment penalty for the first quarter.

Figuring in the Annualized Income Installment Method

To keep away from the underpayment punishments due to fluctuating income, the IRS Form 2210 permits the taxpayer to annualize income for a specific quarter and register the estimated tax payments in light of that amount. Schedule AI of Form 2210 gives a column to every quarterly period, and the taxpayer annualizes the income for that period and processes an estimated tax payment in view of that estimate. Utilizing the salesman model, Form 2210 permits the taxpayer to annualize the $25,000 first quarter income separately from the $50,000 second quarter income.