Do I have to pay quarterly taxes if I'm self-employed in Indiana?

When you were on payroll, an employer took taxes out before you ever saw the money. Working for yourself, nobody does that — the money lands whole and the tax is still coming. That's the entire mental shift, and the people who get hurt are the ones who spent the whole check.

Self-employed people generally deal with tax in estimated payments through the year rather than one bill in April, and in Indiana there's a state and county layer alongside the federal one. We are deliberately not printing rates, thresholds or due dates here, because they depend on your income, your structure and your county — and a wrong number off a website is worse than no number.

What we'd tell a neighbor: open a second account and move a percentage of every job into it the day you're paid, before the money feels like yours. Then buy one hour of a real accountant — the cheapest hour in small business — and have them tell you your percentage, your dates and your forms. Do that once, at the start, and you'll never dread April.

We're builders, not accountants — the IRS, the Indiana Department of Revenue and a licensed professional are the word here, not us.