How to estimate, save for, and pay your quarterly taxes

Challenge: As a small business owner, tracking your estimated quarterly taxes can be a messy and manual process, especially if you have business income and expenses spread across different accounts and apps.

Solution: Since Found has all of your business income and expenses in one place, we can automatically estimate your quarterly taxes throughout the year as you earn income and log expenses. We also help you automatically set money aside for taxes as you are paid so that you earmark cash for this quarterly tax bill.

Each quarter, subscribers to FoundPlus* who file a Schedule C can even pay their quarterly taxes from within the app.

Step-by-step Instructions

Step 1: Automatically set aside money for taxes when your paid 

In the Banking section, use your Taxes pocket to automatically set aside money for taxes every time you earn income into your Found account.

This money is still in your same checking account, but allows you to see that it has been set aside for taxes.

You can manually set your own percentage or select a “Smart Percentage”, which Found will calculate based on your Found activity and information in your tax profile.

Learn more: How does my Taxes pocket work?

Step 2: Categorize expenses to log tax write-offs

The Activity section shows you a transaction-level view of all income, expenses, and other transactions in your Found account.

As you spend on your Found debit card or import transactions from another bank account or credit card, you will see those expenses here. Click on an expense to add a category from our library of expense categories or create your own category. 

By assigning a category to that expense, Found will log that as a business deduction and show you the estimated taxes you’ve saved by lowering your taxable income.

Tip: You can automate this categorization for common vendors by creating a category rule**.

Step 3: See your real-time tax estimate update in real-time

In the Taxes section, you will see a real-time estimate for your quarterly taxes based on the latest income you’ve earned and expenses you’ve logged.

You can click into this tax estimate to see a breakdown of business income and deductible expenses. 

You will see the balance of your Taxes pocket beside this estimate to check that you’ve set aside enough cash to cover this estimate.

Step 4: Pay your quarterly taxes

When it comes time to pay quarterly taxes, subscribers to Found Plus can make tax payments from within the Found app.

We will track these quarterly tax payments in Found so that you have up-to-date data on what you’ve already paid when it comes time to file your taxes annually.

Note: In-app quarterly tax payments are only available for Schedule C filers.

Found partners with TurboTax and Column Tax, and is not a filing service.

*Found's core features are free. Found also offers an optional paid product, Found Plus for $19.99 / month or $149.99 / year. Advanced, optional add-on bookkeeping software available for $19.99/month or $149.99/ year. There are no monthly account maintenance fees, but transactional fees for wires, instant transfers, and ATM apply. Read more here.

**A limited number of bookkeeping features are available at no cost. After reaching certain usage thresholds, additional features will be accessible through a Found Plus subscription. Found Plus is available for $19.99 per month or $149.99 per year.