Whomever came up with the saying, "you can't get blood out of a turnip", never had to deal with the IRS...
I hear ya.
For my individual income tax, I pay the full year’s amount of estimated tax in one fell swoop before the first installment deadline (April 15th), at 100% of the prior year’s tax liability. That’s the safe harbor amount.
I used pay quarterly, but it got to be too much of a hassle.
“Instead of computing and paying quarterly taxes on my business income, I used to just pay the penalty for failing to do so. At the time, the time/hassle/expense far outweighed the penalty”
it used to be that misjudging quarterly withholdings could result in a greater penalty than just not withholding at all.