How do you pay quarterly estimated taxes if you've never filed before?

​

Last year I started working as a self-employed independent contractor (my first job after graduating), but I had no previous experience filing taxes and didn’t realize that quarterly estimated tax payments were a thing, so I didn’t do them and just ended up paying my total tax amount to the IRS in one big lump when my husband and I jointly filed our 2023 tax return.

Now I’m trying to pay my 2024 Q1 estimated tax payment on the IRS website using this link. The site says that “Direct Pay verifies your identity using information from your 1040 filing history. Please provide the following information from a 1040 tax return you filed for one of the years listed in the Tax Year for Verification drop down menu.” You can select a year from 2018-2022 from the drop down menu, and then it says to “Enter information from your [2022] 1040 tax return in the fields below.”

The problem is, the first time I ever filed taxes at all was just recently for 2023, which is not one of the options listed. I’m not even sure whether our 2023 tax return included a 1040 because I hadn’t paid the estimated taxes that year. My husband and I used H&R Block to help us file, and I can’t remember whether it said anything about a 1040 being included.

So if I am required to enter info about a previous 1040 tax return in order to pay my current estimated taxes, but I don’t have a previous 1040 tax return, how am I supposed to pay the estimated taxes? And if I don’t pay them this year, how am I supposed to ever get a 1040 tax return so that I’ll be able to fill in the form and pay them next year?