can you walk me through estimating my quarterly taxes when my wife and I have w2 income but I also have 1099 income

Sure. The goal with quarterly estimated taxes is to make sure enough gets paid in throughout the year so you don't owe a big bill (or penalty) at filing time.

Start with your 1099 income. Take whatever you expect to earn from self-employment for the year and subtract your business expenses. That net profit is what gets taxed. From that number, you owe self-employment tax of 15.3% (that covers Social Security and Medicare), plus regular federal income tax on top of it.

Here's where your W2 income helps: your employer is already withholding federal tax from both your and your wife's paychecks. So you don't need to cover all of your tax bill through quarterly payments, only the portion your withholding doesn't already cover.

A practical way to estimate: take your expected 1099 net profit and multiply it by about 25-30% as a rough combined rate for self-employment tax plus income tax. Then check whether your W2 withholding is already covering your household's tax liability on the W2 income. If it is, your quarterly payments really just need to cover the tax on your self-employment income.

One useful shortcut is the "safe harbor" rule. If your total payments (withholding plus estimated payments) equal at least 100% of last year's tax bill, you avoid underpayment penalties regardless of what you owe at filing. If your adjusted gross income last year was over $150,000, that threshold bumps up to 110%.

Quarterly due dates are typically April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15.