EFTPS Same-Day Payment: ACH, Wire Fallback, and Cutoffs

An EFTPS same-day payment can go one of two ways. You can log into eftps.gov and submit an ACH debit with today’s date as the settlement date, provided the amount is $1 million or less and you finish by 3:00 p.m. ET. If you’re over that cap or past that cutoff, you fall back on a Fedwire transfer that your bank sends using the IRS Same-Day Taxpayer Worksheet, which has no practical dollar limit but must reach the Federal Tax Collection Service by 5:00 p.m. ET.¹² Getting either one right today is what stands between you and a failure-to-deposit penalty that starts at 2% and climbs to 15%.³

Submitting a Same-Day ACH Through EFTPS

Log into eftps.gov, choose the tax form (941 for quarterly employment tax, 1120 for corporate income tax, and so on), enter the tax period and amount, and select the current business day as the settlement date. The system initiates an ACH debit from the bank account linked to your enrollment, so funds need to be available at the moment you submit. Confirm the payment and the system produces an EFT Acknowledgment Number. Save it. That number is your proof the payment was submitted on time.

The $1 million ceiling applies per transaction, not per day, so if you owe more than that across separate tax periods you can submit multiple payments as long as each one stays under the cap.⁴ A single obligation above $1 million cannot be split just to squeeze under the limit; it has to go by wire.

If you can’t get to a browser, the EFTPS voice response system at 1-800-555-3453 walks you through the same fields — TIN, PIN, tax form, period, amount, settlement date — and issues the same acknowledgment number at the end of the call.⁵

Past 3:00 p.m. ET, or over $1 million, the system will not accept a same-day settlement date. That’s when the wire option becomes the only route left.

Using the Same-Day Wire (Fedwire) Fallback

The IRS treats the same-day wire as an extraordinary-circumstances tool rather than a routine method.¹ It exists for the days when the amount is too large, EFTPS is down, or the 3:00 p.m. cutoff has already passed.

Download the Same-Day Taxpayer Worksheet from irs.gov and fill it out with the payment amount, your TIN, the tax form number, the tax period, and the tax type code.² Use a separate worksheet for each tax form or period. Take the completed worksheet to your bank and ask them to send a Fedwire to the Treasury’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York using routing number 021030004. You can’t send a Fedwire yourself; it has to go through a Fedwire-participating financial institution, and it becomes final and irrevocable once it reaches the Treasury.

The hard deadline is 5:00 p.m. ET, when the Federal Tax Collection Service stops accepting incoming wires for the day. Wires arriving after that are rejected and returned to your bank rather than held until the next business day.⁶ Your bank needs processing time before that, and many banks impose their own internal cutoff in the early afternoon. Call first.

Where Wire Payments Fail

The single most common reason a tax wire gets rejected is a formatting problem in the Originator to Beneficiary Information field. That field must include your name, EIN or SSN, the tax form number, the tax period, and the tax type code, with a colon ending every subfield including the last.¹ A rejected wire comes back with an explanation code, but you may not learn about it until after the deposit deadline has passed. Check every field on the worksheet before handing it over.

Wire Fees

Banks generally charge $25 to $35 for a domestic outgoing Fedwire, though the number varies and some business accounts waive the fee. Ask before you initiate.

Which Tax Forms Qualify

Both same-day methods cover the same set of federal tax forms listed on the IRS Same-Day Taxpayer Worksheet:

Form 941, Employer’s Quarterly Federal Tax Return
Form 940, Employer’s Annual Federal Unemployment Tax
Form 944, Employer’s Annual Federal Tax Return
Form 945, Annual Return of Withheld Federal Income Tax
Form 1120, Corporation Income Tax
Form 720, Quarterly Federal Excise Tax
Form 990-T, Exempt Organization Business Income Tax
Form 1042, Annual Withholding Tax for U.S. Source Income of Foreign Persons
Form 2290, Heavy Highway Vehicle Use Tax
Form 8804, Annual Return for Partnership Withholding Tax

For individual payments under $2,000, the IRS suggests IRS Direct Pay or another electronic method rather than a same-day wire, since the cost and complexity aren’t worth it at that size.⁶

The Penalty You’re Trying to Beat

The failure-to-deposit penalty under IRC 6656 is why the same-day options exist. It escalates by how late the deposit lands:

1 to 5 days late: 2% of the unpaid amount
6 to 15 days late: 5% of the unpaid amount
More than 15 days late: 10% of the unpaid amount
Still unpaid 10 days after the IRS sends a delinquency notice: 15% of the unpaid amount

Those tiers stack quickly, and the jump from 2% to 15% can happen inside a few weeks if a notice goes unopened.³ A separate failure-to-pay penalty of 0.5% per month, capped at 25%, can also apply to unpaid tax shown on a return.⁷ On a sizable payroll deposit, one same-day payment can save thousands.

Confirming the Payment Went Through

For an EFTPS submission, keep the EFT Acknowledgment Number the system gave you. Log back in later to watch the status move from Pending to Processed to Settled; the actual bank debit occurs on the settlement date you selected.

For a Fedwire, the confirmation lives with the Treasury rather than in EFTPS. Call the Federal Tax Collection Service at 1-800-382-0045 on the next business day and ask for your 15-digit EFT number, which is your evidence that the Treasury received the wire and credited it to the correct tax period.⁸

Either way, keep the confirmation number together with the bank statement showing the debit, the submission date and time, and the tax form and period. That’s what the IRS will want to see if timeliness is ever questioned.

You Can’t Cancel a Same-Day Payment

The EFTPS cancellation window closes at 11:59 p.m. ET at least two business days before the settlement date.⁹ For a same-day payment, that window has already closed before you hit submit. A same-day EFTPS payment cannot be canceled or edited after submission; the only remedy is to cancel and resubmit, which is not available for same-day transactions in the first place.

A Fedwire is worse to reverse. Once it reaches the Federal Reserve, it’s irrevocable. A wrong amount or a wrong tax period turns into a slow correspondence with the IRS to get the payment reapplied. Verify every field on the worksheet before the wire leaves the bank.

If EFTPS Is Down

EFTPS goes offline sometimes for maintenance or technical problems. If today is your deposit deadline and the site won’t cooperate, don’t wait it out. Download the Same-Day Taxpayer Worksheet, fill it out, and take it to your bank for a Fedwire.

If an EFTPS outage does cause a missed deposit, the resulting penalty can often be waived. A system failure that prevented a timely electronic payment qualifies as reasonable cause for penalty relief.¹⁰ Call the number on the penalty notice and explain what happened, when, and what you did to try to pay. Bring documentation, including screenshots of error messages if you have them. If the phone call doesn’t resolve it, file Form 843, Claim for Refund and Request for Abatement, with a written explanation and supporting records.

For general EFTPS technical trouble, the IRS e-Help Desk is at 866-255-0654, Monday through Friday, 6:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Central time.¹¹

A Note for Individual Taxpayers

The eftps.gov site has indicated that individuals may be required to move to IRS Direct Pay or the IRS Online Account later in 2026, though as of this writing the IRS still lists EFTPS as available for individual payments. If you’re paying personal tax, check eftps.gov for the current guidance before you rely on it for a same-day payment. IRS Direct Pay allows payments from a bank account without registration or fees and is available most hours of the day.¹²

1
Treasury Fiscal Service. Financial Institution Handbook
2
Internal Revenue Service. Same-Day Wire Federal Tax Payments
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 6656 – Failure to Make Deposit of Taxes
4
Bureau of the Fiscal Service. Max Ranges for Dollar Amounts in SPS
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Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS). Welcome to EFTPS Online
6
Internal Revenue Service. IRM 3.17.277 Electronic Payments
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Internal Revenue Service. Failure to Pay Penalty
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Treasury Fiscal Service. Federal Tax Collection
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Department of the Treasury. EFTPS Payment Instruction Booklet
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Internal Revenue Service. Penalty Relief for Reasonable Cause
11
Internal Revenue Service. Telephone Assistance Contacts for Business Customers
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Internal Revenue Service. Pay Personal Taxes From Your Bank Account