I am a grad student that is about to pick up 10-15 hours of independent contracting work per week. I work and live in Syracuse. I make $19,000 per year (pre-tax) as a grad student, and will make $25/hr as an independent contractor.
The first paycheck for about 18 hours of work is coming next week. I have filed a W9 with the company, of course, and am doing research on how I should calculate the estimated taxes and make the quarterly payments.
Does anyone have any straight forward advice, tips, rules, that I should follow on estimating the taxes I should estimate given my base yearly salary and an assumed $375/wk (15hr/week * $25/hr = $375/week) in the contracting work? Do I need to pay the estimated taxes only for the contracting work? And since the first paycheck is coming in soon, probably before the September 15th cutoff for the 3rd quarterly payment, should I send money in then or wait til the January 15th date?
I'm going over the 1040ES and it's really hard to follow. I was gonna just estimate 33% and hope it's slightly too much and get money back in April.
Thanks.