If your dental practice is taxed as an S corporation, there’s an important tax deadline approaching.
For calendar-year individual taxpayers, the third estimated tax payment of 2026 is due September 15. For S-corp dental practice owners, that makes late summer a good time to check whether the payments you planned earlier in the year still reflect how your practice is actually performing.
A lot can change over the course of a year. Collections may be higher or lower than projected. Expenses may have increased. Your compensation or distributions may look different than expected. And decisions made within the practice may have changed your overall tax picture.
Before making your next estimated payment, here are five things worth reviewing with your dental CPA.
- Has Your Practice Performed Differently Than Expected?
Start with the practice itself.
Compare your year-to-date results with the projections used when your estimated tax payments were originally calculated. Are collections running ahead of expectations? Has profitability improved? Did expenses increase more than anticipated?
If your practice is having a significantly different year than expected, your original tax projections may no longer tell the full story.
A stronger year can be great news, but it may also mean more taxable income flowing through to you as the owner. On the other hand, higher expenses or lower-than-expected profitability could change the picture in the opposite direction.
The goal isn’t to adjust your estimated payment every time the practice has a strong or slow month. It’s to identify meaningful changes that may affect the bigger tax picture.
- Are Your Salary and Distributions Still on Track?
S-corp dental practice owners often receive money from the business through a combination of wages and shareholder distributions.
If either looks substantially different from what you anticipated earlier in the year, it’s worth factoring that into your tax-planning conversation.
Your W-2 wages may already have federal and state income taxes withheld through payroll. Distributions, however, generally don’t have taxes automatically withheld when they are paid.
That means looking only at how much money you’ve taken out of the practice doesn’t necessarily tell you how much you’ve already paid toward your tax liability.
Reviewing compensation, distributions and practice profitability together can provide a much clearer picture of where you stand.
- How Much Have You Already Paid Through Withholding?
Your quarterly estimated payment is only one part of your overall tax picture.
If you’re receiving W-2 wages from your practice, federal income tax may already be withheld from your paycheck throughout the year. Depending on your situation, there may also be withholding from a spouse’s wages or other sources of income.
Before deciding whether your next estimated payment is still appropriate, compare what you’ve already paid with your projected total tax liability.
If your income has increased while withholding and estimated payments have remained the same, you could be falling behind without realizing it.
Conversely, if withholding has increased during the year, that should also be considered when reviewing your next payment.
- What Else Has Changed This Year?
Not every change that affects your tax picture will show up on an estimated tax payment schedule.
Maybe you purchased equipment or made significant practice improvements. Perhaps you hired another dentist, bought into another practice, opened a second location, purchased real estate or changed your retirement contributions.
You may also have earned significant income outside the practice or experienced another major financial change.
Your dental CPA can only plan around the information they have. The Q3 estimated-tax deadline provides a natural opportunity to bring those changes into the conversation and make sure your projections still reflect what is actually happening.
- Don’t Automatically Send the Same Payment as Last Quarter
Estimated taxes are just that: estimates.
It may be convenient to make the same payment each quarter, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the amount continues to match your circumstances.
If the assumptions used to calculate your original payments have changed, the amount you planned earlier in the year may need another look.
That doesn’t mean every S-corp owner should increase or decrease their September payment. It means the payment should be based on an updated understanding of your income, withholding and practice performance—not simply copied from the previous quarter.
Use Q3 as a Tax-Planning Checkpoint
The September estimated-tax deadline is more than another date on the calendar.
It arrives at a useful point in the year. You now have several months of actual practice results to evaluate, while still having time to make adjustments before year-end.
Before making your next payment, take another look at your practice profitability, projected income, compensation, distributions, withholding and any significant financial changes that have occurred during the year.
You don’t need to know exactly what your final tax return will look like.
You do want to know whether the assumptions you made earlier in the year still make sense today.
At Engage Advisors, we help dental practice owners take a proactive approach to tax planning throughout the year. If your practice has performed differently than expected or you’re unsure whether your estimated payments are still on track, talk with your dental CPA before the next deadline.
This information is intended for general educational purposes and should not be considered individualized tax advice. Tax rules and circumstances vary, and state estimated-tax requirements may differ. Consult your tax professional regarding your specific situation.