California Form 592-Q: Due Dates, Payment, and Penalties

California Form 592-Q is the quarterly voucher a pass-through entity uses to send nonresident withholding tax to the Franchise Tax Board. If your partnership, LLC, S corporation, estate, or trust pays California-source income to owners or beneficiaries who live outside the state, you complete this half-page voucher, calculate 7 percent of the quarter’s gross distributions to those nonresidents, and remit it by the quarterly due date.¹

Who Has to File

Any pass-through entity distributing California-source income to a nonresident payee acts as the withholding agent. That covers partnerships, multi-member LLCs taxed as partnerships, S corporations, estates, and trusts. The authority sits in Revenue and Taxation Code Section 18662.²

A nonresident payee is an individual who lives outside California, a corporation or LLC without a permanent place of business in the state, or any other out-of-state entity receiving the income. If all of your partners, members, shareholders, or beneficiaries live in California, you have nothing to file on Form 592-Q.

Withholding is required once total California-source payments to a nonresident payee exceed $1,500 for the calendar year.³ The rate is 7 percent of the gross payment, calculated on the full distribution before any expenses.⁴

When the Payee Is Exempt

Some nonresident payees don’t trigger withholding at all: tax-exempt organizations, government entities and their agencies, and corporations qualified to do business in California. Payments purely for goods are also outside the rules. A payee claiming an exemption gives the withholding agent Form 590 to document it.⁵

A payee who expects to owe California tax well below 7 percent can ask the FTB for a full waiver on Form 588 or a reduced rate on Form 589. Until the FTB approves one of those requests in writing, withhold the full 7 percent.⁴

Filling Out the Voucher

Download the current year’s form from the FTB forms page; the 2026 version is titled “2026 Form 592-Q.”¹ If completing it by hand, use black or blue ink.

Check the box that matches the tax identification number you’ll enter. Four options are listed:

SSN or ITIN, for a sole proprietor or individual acting as withholding agent
FEIN, the Federal Employer Identification Number used by most partnerships, LLCs, and S corporations
CA Corp no., the California Corporation number
CA SOS file no., the Secretary of State file number

Enter the number in the boxes, then the entity’s business name (or your first and last name if you’re filing as an individual), telephone number, and street address. The form directs filers with a foreign address to the instructions for formatting.

Select the payment period by checking the box for the quarter you’re paying. On the “Amount of payment” line, enter 7 percent of the total gross distributions made to all nonresident payees during that quarter. Add up every nonresident distribution for the period, multiply by 0.07, and enter the result.

If no payment is due for a quarter, don’t send the form. The voucher itself says so: “IF NO PAYMENT IS DUE, DO NOT MAIL THIS FORM.”¹

Quarterly Due Dates

The four periods are not evenly spaced. For the 2026 tax year:¹

Payment 1, covering January 1 through March 31, is due April 15, 2026
Payment 2, covering April 1 through May 31, is due June 15, 2026
Payment 3, covering June 1 through August 31, is due September 15, 2026
Payment 4, covering September 1 through December 31, is due January 15, 2027

The second period runs only two months and the third runs three. If a due date lands on a weekend or legal holiday, the deadline moves to the next business day.⁶

How to Pay

You can mail a check or pay online. For a mailed payment, make the check or money order payable to “Franchise Tax Board” and write your tax ID number and “2026 Form 592-Q” on it so the FTB can match the payment to your account. Send the voucher and payment to:¹

Withholding Services and Compliance MS F182
Franchise Tax Board
PO Box 942867
Sacramento, CA 94267-0651

Use certified mail or a trackable service so you have proof of timely delivery if the FTB later questions when you paid.

The FTB’s Web Pay system handles electronic payments directly from a bank account. Choose the business payment option and select Form 592-Q as the payment type. You get immediate confirmation, which beats waiting for a check to clear.

Reconciling at Year-End With Form 592-PTE

The quarterly vouchers are only the cash side. After the tax year ends, the entity files Form 592-PTE to report the total withholding for the year and allocate it among each nonresident payee.⁶ That annual return is what tells the FTB which nonresident received how much and had how much withheld, and each payee uses it to claim credit on their own California return.

At the bottom of the 592-Q page is a Supplemental Payment Voucher. Use it when you need to remit additional withholding alongside your Form 592-PTE, for instance after discovering you underpaid during the quarterly cycle. The supplemental voucher is due on the same date as Form 592-PTE, regardless of any filing extension.¹

Penalties for Late or Missing Withholding

When an entity fails to withhold or pays late, the FTB can assess penalties and charge interest from the original due date. For real property transactions, the penalty for failing to withhold is the greater of $500 or 10 percent of the required withholding. A false certification of exemption carries a penalty of the greater of $1,000 or 20 percent of the required withholding.⁷ The FTB may withdraw a penalty for reasonable cause, but a simple oversight rarely qualifies.

The withholding agent is also personally liable for the tax that should have been withheld. The entity pays out of its own funds rather than recovering it from the nonresident payee, and interest runs from the original due date until the payment arrives.

1
Franchise Tax Board. California Form 592-Q – Payment Voucher for Pass-Through Entity Withholding
2
California Legislative Information. California Code RTC 18662 – Withholding
3
Franchise Tax Board. Withholding on Nonresidents
4
Legal Information Institute. 18 CCR 18662-4 – Withholding on Payments (Nonresident Individuals and Non-California Business Entities) – General
5
Franchise Tax Board. 2025 Instructions for Form 588
6
Franchise Tax Board. 2025 Instructions for Form 592
7
New York Codes, Rules and Regulations. 18 CCR 18662-8 – Reporting and Remitting Amounts Withheld, Penalties