**TL;DR** - Form 1040es lines 14a and 14b are very different, causing me to be wary of my end result for required quarterly estimated tax payments.

I've been working through my 1040es for the first time as a self-employed individual, and have followed the directions to a tee, but my end result seems like it simply cannot be correct.

My question mostly concerns form 1040es line 14b. Last year I was a student and subsequently worked full-time for a few months before making the switch to self employment at the end of the year - so after applying ed credits and whatnot my tax requirement wasn't too high. However, my numbers this year are going to be a bit higher as I'm making a higher rate and working for the full length of the year (as opposed to hemorrhaging money as a student for half the year) - I'm calculating this from last year's 1040a as per the instructions.

This caused my result on line 14b to be considerably lower than my result on line 14a, and since the rest of the form is based off of the lower number of the two, my quarterly payment requirements ended up being a lot lower than I was expecting.

Again, I've followed the directions to the best of my ability (I'm still new at this, but I'm a DIY kinda person - maybe not the best idea in this situation), so I guess my question is - does it sound like I did this right, or is there perhaps something I'm not taking into account? I'm just a little uneasy about messing this up my first time...