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

An EFTPS same-day payment can go through one of two channels: a same-day ACH debit scheduled inside EFTPS itself, capped at $1 million per transaction and submitted by 3:00 p.m. ET, or a Fedwire transfer arranged through your bank using the IRS Same-Day Taxpayer Worksheet, with no practical dollar cap but a 5:00 p.m. ET deadline for the wire to reach the Federal Tax Collection Service.¹² Which one you use depends on the amount, the time on the clock, and whether EFTPS is actually online when you need it.

The ordinary EFTPS workflow asks you to schedule a payment by 8:00 p.m. ET the day before the due date.³ Both same-day options are the fallback when that window has already closed.

Which Method to Use

If your payment is $1 million or less and it’s before 3:00 p.m. ET on a business day, use the EFTPS same-day ACH. It’s free, you can submit it yourself from eftps.gov or by phone, and it uses the bank account already linked to your enrollment.

Use a Fedwire instead when any of these are true: the payment exceeds $1 million, you’ve missed the 3:00 p.m. ET ACH cutoff but can still reach your bank, or EFTPS is down. The IRS treats same-day wires as an “extraordinary circumstances” tool rather than a routine payment method.¹ Your bank will charge a wire fee, typically $25 to $35, and will often enforce an internal cutoff hours before the Treasury’s 5:00 p.m. ET deadline.

Submitting a Same-Day ACH Through EFTPS

You’ll need an active EFTPS enrollment, a funded bank account linked to that enrollment, and enough runway before 3:00 p.m. ET. The $1 million cap applies per individual transaction, not per day, so a larger liability can be split across multiple submissions for different tax periods as long as each stays under the limit.⁴

Log into eftps.gov and choose to make a payment. Pick the tax form (Form 941 for quarterly employment tax, Form 1120 for corporate income tax, Form 940 for FUTA, and so on), enter the tax period and the amount, and select today’s date as the settlement date. The system initiates an ACH debit from your linked bank, so the money needs to be sitting there when you submit. Confirm, and the system returns an EFT Acknowledgment Number. Save it. That number is your proof the payment was submitted on time.

The same process works through the EFTPS voice response system at 1-800-555-3453. The prompts ask for your TIN, PIN, tax form, period, amount, and settlement date, and read back the same acknowledgment number at the end.³

If the amount is over $1 million or the clock has passed 3:00 p.m. ET, EFTPS won’t accept today as the settlement date. At that point, switch to the wire.

Arranging a Same-Day Wire

Download the Same-Day Taxpayer Worksheet from irs.gov.² Fill in the payment amount, your taxpayer identification number, the tax form number, the tax period, and the tax type code. One worksheet per payment: if you owe on more than one form or period, complete a separate sheet for each. Take the worksheet to your bank and ask them to initiate a Fedwire to the Treasury.

You can’t send a Fedwire yourself. It has to go through a Fedwire-participating bank. The wire is directed to the Treasury’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York using routing number 021030004, and it’s final and irrevocable once it arrives.

The hard deadline is 5:00 p.m. ET, when the Federal Tax Collection Service stops accepting wires for the day. Wires that arrive later are rejected and returned to your bank, not held overnight.⁵ Call your bank first and confirm their own internal cutoff, because many require wire requests by early afternoon.

Getting the Wire Format Right

The most common reason a Fedwire tax payment fails is a formatting error in the Originator to Beneficiary Information field. That field has to carry your name, EIN or SSN, the tax form number, the tax period, and the tax type code, and each subfield has to end with a colon, including the last one.¹ A rejected wire comes back with an explanation code, but by then the deposit deadline may have passed. Check every field on the worksheet before you hand it over.

What Missing the Deadline Costs

The whole point of a same-day payment is avoiding the failure-to-deposit penalty under IRC 6656. The penalty scales with how late the payment arrives:⁶

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

A separate failure-to-pay penalty of 0.5% per month, capped at 25%, may also apply to unpaid tax shown on a return.⁷ On a sizable payroll tax deposit, the gap between a 2% penalty and a 15% penalty is the reason same-day options exist.

You Can’t Cancel a Same-Day Payment

EFTPS normally requires cancellation requests by 11:59 p.m. ET at least two business days before the scheduled settlement date.⁸ For a same-day transaction, that window has already closed before you ever hit submit. A submitted same-day EFTPS payment effectively cannot be canceled or edited.

Fedwire is even more unforgiving. Once the wire reaches the Federal Reserve, the transaction is irrevocable. A wrong amount or a wrong tax period becomes an after-the-fact correction with the IRS, which is slow. Verify the worksheet before your bank sends it.

When EFTPS Is Down

EFTPS occasionally goes offline for maintenance or technical problems. If the system is unreachable and your deposit is due today, pivot straight to the Fedwire route rather than waiting for EFTPS to come back. If an outage does cause you to miss the deadline, the IRS may waive the resulting penalty: a system failure that prevented timely electronic payment can qualify as reasonable cause.⁹ Call the number on any penalty notice and explain what happened, when it happened, and what you did to try to pay. Keep screenshots of error messages. If the issue can’t be resolved by phone, file Form 843 with a written explanation and supporting records.

For technical issues short of an outage, the IRS e-Help Desk is at 866-255-0654, Monday through Friday, 6:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Central time.¹⁰

Confirming the Payment Afterward

For an EFTPS ACH, the EFT Acknowledgment Number is your receipt. You can log back into eftps.gov to watch the status move from Pending to Processed to Settled; the debit from your bank hits on the settlement date you chose.

For a Fedwire, confirmation works differently. Call the Federal Tax Collection Service at 1-800-382-0045 on the next business day to obtain the 15-digit EFT number that proves the Treasury received the wire and applied it to the right tax period.¹¹ Keep that number together with the bank statement showing the debit, the time of submission, and the form and period paid. That’s the record you’ll want if the IRS ever questions whether you were on time.

A Note for Individual Taxpayers

If you’re paying personal taxes rather than business taxes, two things are worth knowing. The IRS has suggested that individuals making same-day payments under $2,000 should use IRS Direct Pay or another electronic method instead, because the cost and complexity of a wire aren’t worth it at that size.⁵ Separately, eftps.gov has indicated that individuals may be required to shift to IRS Direct Pay or the IRS Online Account later in 2026; EFTPS is still listed as available for individual payments as of this writing, but check eftps.gov for current guidance before you rely on it. Direct Pay allows payments from a bank account without registration or fees and runs most hours of the day.¹²

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