Tax Shop
Lone Tree, Colorado

Trusts and Taxes

By Charles Trautman, EA  ·  Reviewed October 15, 2026

A trust is a box with a rulebook.

The rulebook says who gets the money.

The tax code says who pays for it.

Those are often different people.

Welcome. We’re glad to serve you.

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Most trusts we see fall into two kinds. The revocable living trust that an estate lawyer set up to avoid probate, which does nothing to your taxes while you’re alive. And the irrevocable trust that the first kind turns into when its creator dies, or that was set up for a child, a disabled relative, or a surviving spouse, which files its own return, has the worst tax brackets in the code, and sends the beneficiaries a Schedule K-1 they don’t know what to do with.

The core idea is simple once stated: a trust’s income is taxed once, either to the trust if it keeps the money or to the beneficiary if it pays the money out. Everything else is detail about which of those happened. Below is how it works from both sides, the trustee’s and the beneficiary’s, and the deadlines that make the difference between 12% and 37%.

On this page

  1. The Revocable Trust: Nothing Happens Grantor trusts and your own Social Security number
  2. The Day It Becomes Irrevocable An EIN, a Form 1041, and a choice of year
  3. The Trust Brackets 37% at $16,000
  4. Distributions Carry the Income Out DNI, the distribution deduction, and the K-1
  5. Reading a K-1 from a Trust What goes where on your 1040
  6. Capital Gains: Usually Stuck in the Trust And the ways to get them out
  7. The 65-Day Rule A March decision that fixes December
  8. The Trusts People Hear Named Marital, bypass, QTIP, ILIT, charitable remainder
  9. A Worked Example The Harmon family trust, year one
  10. Colorado The fiduciary return and resident trusts
  11. Quick notes From my Form 1041 course and its exam
  12. Questions we get
  13. What to bring
  14. Preparer’s notes

The Revocable Trust: Nothing Happens

The IRS calls it: a grantor trust, Sections 671–677

If you can change or cancel the trust, you still own everything in it for tax purposes. The trust uses your Social Security number, its interest and dividends show up on your 1099s, and you report them on your 1040 as if the trust didn’t exist. No separate return, no separate rates, no K-1. Moving your house and brokerage account into a revocable trust is a title change, not a tax event, and the home-sale exclusion, the step-up in basis at death and everything else work the same as before.

Some irrevocable trusts are also grantor trusts, on purpose. An “intentionally defective” trust in a large estate plan, or a trust that lets the grantor swap assets, is taxed to the grantor even though the grantor can’t get the money. The attorney who drafted it will know; the first page of the trust usually says. If you are the grantor of one, the trust’s income is yours to report and the trustee should send you a statement, not a K-1.

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The Day It Becomes Irrevocable

The IRS calls it: a taxable trust; Form 1041, U.S. Income Tax Return for Estates and Trusts

When the person who set up the revocable trust dies, it becomes irrevocable and becomes a taxpayer. The trustee (often the adult child named as successor) has a short list: get an EIN for the trust, retitle the accounts to the trust’s EIN, and file Form 1041 for every year the trust has gross income over $600 or any taxable income at all (an estate’s threshold is $600 or more of gross income; gross income is before any deductions, so a trust with $700 of dividends and $5,000 of trustee fees still files), until it is fully distributed and closed. The final return has a box to check, and the sooner it is checked the better, for reasons in the next section.

One election worth knowing: the trustee and the executor can elect to treat the trust as part of the estate for income-tax purposes for the first two years or so. That lets the trust use a fiscal year ending up to eleven months after the death, which pushes the first tax bill out a year and often gives the beneficiaries time to receive distributions before they are taxed. It is made on the first return and it is not available later.

A probate estate on its own has the same freedom without any election: its first tax year can end on the last day of any month within twelve months of the death, and the executor picks the year simply by filing the first return (or the first extension) that way — the year written on the EIN application does not bind. A fiscal year pushes the first return and the first K-1s out as much as a year, and the heirs report the K-1 income in the calendar year in which the estate’s year ends. The cost is that the executor has to think in a fiscal year, and when the estate closes, two of its years can land in one of an heir’s years. Estates also owe no estimated tax until their first tax year ending two or more years after the death.

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The Trust Brackets

The IRS calls it: Section 1(e)

Trust or estate taxable income (2026)Rate
Up to $3,30010%
$3,300 to $11,70024%
$11,700 to $16,00035%
Over $16,00037%
Net investment income over $16,000+3.8%

A single person reaches 37% at $640,600 of income. A trust reaches it at $16,000. That is the whole reason trust taxation matters: income a trust keeps is taxed at the top rate almost immediately, while the same income paid to a beneficiary in the 12% bracket is taxed at 12%. A trust also gets no standard deduction, only a $100 or $300 exemption. The entire practice of trust tax planning is about getting income out of the box before year end, or within 65 days after it.

My mother set up the trust so the money would be handled carefully. The first year, careful handling meant leaving $30,000 of dividends in the account, and the trust paid $9,500 of tax on them. I would have paid $3,600. Careful cost us six thousand dollars.

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Distributions Carry the Income Out

The IRS calls it: distributable net income, and the distribution deduction, Sections 651 and 661

Here is the mechanism. The trust computes its income for the year, roughly interest plus dividends plus rents less expenses: that is distributable net income, DNI. If the trust pays a beneficiary during the year, the trust deducts the payment, up to DNI, and the beneficiary picks up the same amount as income, with the same character (dividends stay dividends, tax-exempt stays tax-exempt). Pay out all of DNI and the trust owes nothing; the beneficiaries pay at their own rates. Pay out nothing and the trust pays at 37% on everything over $16,000.

Distributions of principal are not income to anyone. If the trust holds $500,000 and earns $20,000, and pays a beneficiary $100,000, the beneficiary has $20,000 of income (all of DNI) and $80,000 of tax-free principal. The K-1 shows only the $20,000. People receive a large check, see a small K-1, and assume one of them is wrong. Both are right.

A simple trust is one whose document requires all income to be paid out every year; the beneficiary is taxed on the income whether or not the check was actually written. A complex trust lets the trustee decide; the beneficiary is taxed only on what was distributed. Most family trusts after a death are complex — and every trust is complex in its final year, because the terminating distribution is a distribution of principal.

Two refinements. If part of DNI is tax-exempt interest, that share of every distribution carries out tax-exempt income and the trust’s deduction is only the taxable share. And a distribution of property rather than cash counts at the lesser of the trust’s basis or its value, carries that basis to the beneficiary, and produces no gain to the trust — unless the property is used to pay a fixed-dollar bequest (“$100,000 to my niece” satisfied with stock), which the law treats as a sale: land worth $100,000 with a $98,000 basis handed over for a $100,000 bequest is a $2,000 gain to the estate. Distributing the asset itself works for a residuary beneficiary, not to settle a dollar amount.

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Reading a K-1 from a Trust

The IRS calls it: Schedule K-1 (Form 1041), Beneficiary’s Share of Income, Deductions, Credits

BoxWhat it isWhere it goes on your return
1Interest incomeSchedule B, taxed at your bracket
2a / 2bOrdinary and qualified dividendsSchedule B; qualified at capital-gains rates
3 / 4aShort-term and long-term capital gainsSchedule D (only if the trust passed gains out)
5Other portfolio and nonbusiness incomeSchedule E, page 2
6–8Rental, business, farm incomeSchedule E, page 2; may be passive
11Final-year deductions: excess deductions, unused lossesOnly on the trust’s last return; the loss carryovers come to you
14Other information: tax-exempt interest, foreign taxes, net investment incomeVarious; code by code

A trust on a fiscal year reports to you in the calendar year the fiscal year ends. A trust with a year ending March 31, 2026 sends you a K-1 for your 2026 return, even though most of the income was earned in 2025. The K-1 is often late; trusts have until April 15 to file and many extend. If yours hasn’t arrived, we extend your return rather than guess.

Box 11 is the one people throw away. In the trust’s final year, unused capital losses and excess deductions pass to the beneficiaries. A $40,000 capital loss carryover from the trust becomes your capital loss carryover, usable against your gains for the rest of your life.

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Capital Gains: Usually Stuck in the Trust

The IRS calls it: gains allocated to corpus, Reg. 1.643(a)-3

Under most trust documents and state law, a capital gain belongs to principal, not income. That means it is not part of DNI, a distribution doesn’t carry it out, and the trust pays tax on it at trust rates: 0% up to about $3,300, 15% to about $16,250, 20% above, plus 3.8% (verify 2026 trust capital-gain brackets). A trust that sells the family’s appreciated stock in year two and pays the beneficiaries the proceeds has still paid 23.8% on the gain itself, while the beneficiaries might have paid 15% or nothing.

There are three ways out. The trust document can give the trustee power to allocate gains to income. State law or a consistent practice of treating gains as distributed can do the same. Or the trustee can distribute the appreciated asset itself to the beneficiary, who then sells it in their own name at their own rate, with the trust’s basis. The third is the most reliable and the most overlooked. Talk to us before the trust sells anything large.

Two more things about gains. The rule reverses in the trust’s final year: gains realized in the year the trust winds up and distributes everything are treated as part of the distribution and pass out to the beneficiaries at their rates, which is one reason to sell in the termination year rather than the year before. And a net capital loss is stuck the other way — it stays in the trust, offsets $3,000 of the trust’s ordinary income a year, and cannot be passed to anyone until the final year, when whatever is left comes out on the last K-1.

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The 65-Day Rule

The IRS calls it: the Section 663(b) election

A distribution made in the first 65 days of the year (through March 6, 2027, for 2026) can be treated as made on December 31 of the prior year. The trustee makes the election on the 1041. This is the practical fix for the trustee who gets the 1099s in February, sees $30,000 of income still in the trust, and realizes the trust is about to pay 37% on most of it. Write the checks in February, elect, and the income is the beneficiaries’ for the prior year at their rates. There is a ceiling: the amount elected cannot exceed the greater of the trust’s accounting income or its DNI for the year, less what was already distributed during the year, and the trustee has to say which payments the election covers. We do this on most trust returns we prepare; it is the single highest-value line on the form.

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The Trusts People Hear Named

The IRS calls them: Sections 2056, 2010, 2042 and 664

Everything above is about how a trust is taxed. Families also come in with the names of trusts an attorney or a seminar mentioned, and want to know what they are. Most of them are the same two kinds of trust — grantor while the maker is alive, taxable after — built for a particular job.

  • Revocable living trust. The container most people mean by “a trust”: you keep control, it avoids probate for whatever is titled in it, and it does nothing for taxes. The first section of this page.
  • Marital trust (the “A” trust). Holds property for the surviving spouse, who must receive all the income at least annually and usually has the power to say where it goes at death. It qualifies for the marital deduction, so no estate tax at the first death; it is taxed in the survivor’s estate.
  • Bypass trust (the “B,” credit shelter or family trust). Holds the first spouse’s exemption amount for the children, paying income and support to the survivor, and is not taxed in the survivor’s estate however much it grows. Common before portability (2011); still used to protect the children’s share from a remarriage. Its income is taxed under the rules on this page — the trust brackets and the distribution deduction apply.
  • QTIP trust. A marital trust where the first spouse, not the survivor, decides who gets the property at the survivor’s death — the usual choice in second marriages with children from the first. It qualifies for the marital deduction by election on the Form 706.
  • Irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT). Owns a life insurance policy so the proceeds stay out of the insured’s taxable estate. If it holds nothing but the policy there is nothing to report while the insured lives; if it is funded with investments whose income can pay the premiums, it is a grantor trust and the insured reports that income. After the death it files a 1041 if it invests the proceeds.
  • Charitable remainder trust. You put appreciated property in, take an income stream for life or a term, and the charity gets what is left. You get a partial charitable deduction now, the trust itself pays no tax when it sells the property, and the payments come to you under a four-tier rule — ordinary income first, then the deferred capital gain, then tax-exempt income, then principal — so the gain is deferred and spread, not forgiven. The payout must be between 5% and 50% a year, the charity’s remainder must be worth at least 10% at the start, and a term of years is capped at 20. A tool for someone with a large low-basis holding and a charity in mind; the trust files its own return.
  • Special needs trust. Holds an inheritance for a disabled beneficiary so it supplements, rather than replaces, public benefits. Taxed as a trust; drafted only by an attorney who does them regularly.
  • The house in a bypass trust. One trap worth its own line: if the family home ends up in the bypass trust and the surviving spouse keeps living in it, a later sale by the trust is a capital gain with no $250,000 home-sale exclusion — a trust does not “live” in a house. Only a grantor trust looks through to its owner. The fixes are to leave the home to the spouse outright, in a trust that is a grantor trust as to the spouse, or to distribute it to the spouse before the sale.
  • Testamentary trust. Any trust created by a will rather than during life — often for minor children until an age the will sets. It exists only after probate.

Whatever the name, the questions for the return are the same: is the maker alive and in control (grantor trust, nothing to file), or not (Form 1041, the trust brackets, and whether income was distributed)? See the ten most common estate planning mistakes for how these get set up wrong.

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A Worked Example

The Harmon family trust, first full year after the death

Trust holds $900,000: a brokerage account producing $14,000 of qualified dividends and $9,000 of interest, and the house, sold during the year for a $20,000 gain over its stepped-up basis. Three beneficiaries, each in the 12% or 22% bracket. Trustee fees and tax prep: $4,000.

If the trustee distributes nothing: DNI is $19,000 ($23,000 of income less $4,000 of expenses); taxable income with the gain is about $38,900; trust tax roughly $7,800, with the dividends and the gain pushed into the 20% bracket and the 3.8% surtax above $16,000.

If the trustee distributes $19,000 by March 6 and elects the 65-day rule: the trust deducts $19,000; the beneficiaries pick up about $6,300 each, mostly qualified dividends at 0% or 15%, roughly $200 to $1,000 of tax apiece. The trust is left with the $20,000 gain less its exemption, about $2,800 of tax. Total: about $4,600 instead of $7,800.

If, in addition, the trustee had distributed the house itself to the three beneficiaries before the sale, the $20,000 gain would have been theirs, split three ways and largely in the 0% bracket. Total tax about $2,500.

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Colorado

A trust that owes federal tax files a Colorado fiduciary return, DR 0105, and pays 4.40% on the same taxable income. A trust is a Colorado resident if it was created by a Colorado resident’s will, or if the trust is administered in Colorado, and resident trusts are taxed on everything; nonresident trusts on Colorado-source income only. Beneficiaries who live in Colorado report their K-1 income on their own Colorado returns through federal taxable income, and a beneficiary in another state gets a Colorado K-1 only for Colorado-source items like the sale of Colorado real estate. There is no Colorado estate or inheritance tax, so the trust’s only Colorado obligation is income tax on what it keeps.

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Questions we get

My parents put everything in a living trust. Do they need to file a trust return?

No. A revocable trust is ignored for income tax while the people who created it are alive. They report everything on their own 1040 as before. The trust files its own return only after it becomes irrevocable, usually at the second death.

I received $80,000 from my aunt’s trust and a K-1 showing $4,100. Which is right?

Both. The $4,100 is your share of the trust’s income for the year, which you report. The rest is principal, your inheritance, and is not taxed. The K-1 only reports the income portion.

I’m the trustee. It’s February and the trust still has $25,000 of last year’s income in it. Is it too late?

No, if you act by March 6. Distributions in the first 65 days of the year can be elected as prior-year distributions on the trust return, moving the income to the beneficiaries at their rates instead of the trust’s 37%.

The trust sold stock at a big gain. Can we pass the gain to the beneficiaries?

Usually not by simply distributing the cash; gains stay in the trust under most documents. If the trust document allows gains to be treated as income, or if the trustee distributes the shares themselves before the sale, the gain can be the beneficiaries’. Call before the sale, not after.

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What to bring

  • The trust document, including amendments, and the date it became irrevocable
  • The trust’s EIN letter, or the decedent’s Social Security number if the trust was revocable all year
  • All 1099s issued to the trust, and brokerage statements showing date-of-death values
  • A list of every distribution to every beneficiary, with dates and whether it was cash or an asset
  • Trustee fees, legal and accounting fees, and any expenses paid by the trust
  • For beneficiaries: the Schedule K-1 (Form 1041) and the trust’s year-end
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Quick notes

From my course notes and the final exam — the rules in one line each, restated for 2026.

  • Accounting income is a state-law number set by the principal-and-income act and the trust document; it decides what an income beneficiary gets. Taxable income and DNI are federal numbers. The three are rarely the same.
  • A trust that distributes any principal during the year — including the terminating distribution — is a complex trust for that year; simple or complex is retested every year.
  • An estate files Form 1041 when its gross income is $600 or more; a trust files with any taxable income or gross income over $600; a revocable trust reporting under the grantor’s Social Security number files nothing.
  • A calendar-year trust or estate extended on Form 7004 has until September 30 — five and a half months; the extension does not extend the beneficiaries’ returns.
  • An estate can end its first tax year on the last day of any month within twelve months of death, and chooses the year by how it files the first return.
  • Trusts and estates pay no self-employment tax; they cannot take Section 179 at all; nobody gets bonus depreciation on inherited property; inherited property is always long-term.
  • Capital gains default to principal and are taxed to the trust; a net capital loss stays in the trust ($3,000 a year against ordinary income) until the final year.
  • A trust or estate recognizes no gain handing property to a residuary beneficiary, but recognizes gain when it uses property to pay a fixed-dollar bequest.
  • Fiduciary fees, probate costs, accountings, and tax preparation for the 706, 1041 and the decedent’s final 1040 are fully deductible; investment advice of the ordinary kind is not; a corporate trustee’s bundled fee is split by any reasonable method.
  • A trust’s charitable deduction has no percentage limit but requires authorization in the document and payment from gross income; an estate may deduct amounts permanently set aside, a trust may not.
  • Administration expenses go on the estate tax return or the income tax return, not both; the decedent’s own unpaid taxes and expenses go on both.
  • The personal exemption is $600 for an estate, $300 for a trust required to distribute all income, $100 for any other trust; the standard deduction is zero.
  • The distribution deduction cannot exceed DNI, DNI is absorbed first by required income distributions, and a payment that may come from income or principal at the trustee’s discretion can be a specific bequest that carries out nothing.
  • The 65-day election is the trustee’s alone, is capped at the greater of accounting income or DNI not already distributed, and should rarely be zero given the trust brackets.
  • A taxable IRA distribution to a trust is 100% in DNI even when the principal-and-income act calls 90% of it principal; it is excluded from net investment income at both levels.
  • A bankruptcy estate uses the $125,000 married-filing-separately NIIT threshold; a decedent’s estate pays NIIT above the top-bracket line; charitable trusts, retirement plan trusts and 529 plans are exempt.
  • An estate owes no estimated tax until its first tax year ending two or more years after death; a trust’s prior-year safe harbor needs a full twelve-month prior year.
  • Excess deductions, capital loss carryovers and NOL carryovers pass to the beneficiaries on the final K-1; a charitable deduction can never create an excess deduction.
  • A trustee who can distribute to himself, or a beneficiary who lets a five-and-five withdrawal right lapse, becomes the income-tax owner of that slice of the trust.
  • A grantor who keeps a power to change beneficiaries, a reversion worth more than 5%, the right to borrow without security, or the power to swap assets is taxed on the trust’s income; an independent trustee’s power to sprinkle income among beneficiaries does not do that.
  • The home-sale exclusion is available to a grantor trust owned by one person; it is not available to a bypass trust even if the surviving spouse lives in the house.
  • Where state law vests title to real estate directly in the heirs at death, the rental income is theirs, not the estate’s.

Preparer’s notes

For the Tax Shop desk · forms, code sections, and the things that get missed

  • Grantor trusts §671–679: revocable trusts and most “defective” trusts report under the grantor’s SSN (optional methods under Reg. §1.671-4; a 1041 with a grantor statement is acceptable but not required). At the grantor’s death: new EIN, Form 1041, Form 56 for the fiduciary. §645 election (Form 8855) to treat the qualified revocable trust as part of the estate: fiscal year, $600 exemption, estate’s other advantages, for two years after death (or six months after the 706 closing letter); must be made on the first timely filed 1041.
  • Rates 2026 (Rev. Proc. 2025-32): 10% to $3,300; 24% to $11,700; 35% to $16,000; 37% above. Exemption $300 simple / $100 complex / $600 estate. NIIT threshold is the 37% bracket start ($16,000). Trust capital-gain brackets 0%/15%/20% (verify 2026 breakpoints).
  • DNI §643(a): taxable income before the distribution deduction and exemption, plus tax-exempt interest, minus capital gains allocated to corpus. Distribution deduction §651 (simple) / §661 (complex) limited to DNI; character flows pro rata (§652/§662); tier rules for complex trusts (first tier: required income distributions). Specific bequests under §663(a)(1) carry out no DNI. Separate-share rule §663(c).
  • Capital gains in DNI: Reg. §1.643(a)-3(b): included if (1) allocated to income under the governing instrument or state law, (2) allocated to corpus but consistently treated as part of a distribution, (3) actually distributed or used to determine the amount distributed, or (4) distributed in liquidation of a beneficiary’s interest — which is why termination-year gains pass out (Examples 7 and 9). Document the trustee’s consistent practice from year one. In-kind distribution of appreciated property: no gain to the trust unless the §643(e)(3) election; beneficiary takes the trust’s basis.
  • 65-day rule §663(b): election on the 1041 (checkbox) for distributions within 65 days after year end; irrevocable once made; applies to complex trusts and estates. Deadline for 2026 tax year: March 6, 2027.
  • Deductions: §67(e) fiduciary fees and expenses unique to trust administration remain deductible (not miscellaneous itemized); Reg. §1.67-4. Excess deductions on termination §642(h)(2) pass to beneficiaries on the final K-1 box 11 and, under the 2020 regs, retain their character (above-the-line for §67(e) items). Unused NOL and capital-loss carryovers pass under §642(h)(1).
  • Beneficiary reporting: K-1 income in the beneficiary’s year that includes the trust’s year end (§662(c)); fiscal-year trusts defer. Box 14 codes: A tax-exempt interest (1040 line 2a), B foreign taxes, E net investment income, H the §1411 adjustment, I §199A information (verify against the 2026 K-1 instructions). Box 11 final-year codes: A excess deductions that were §67(e) costs (Schedule 1), B other itemized deductions (Schedule A), C/D short- and long-term capital loss carryovers, E/F NOL carryovers. Extend the 1040 if the K-1 is late rather than estimate.
  • Entity-level rules that surprise people: no self-employment tax on a business the estate or trust runs (§1401 reaches individuals only); §179 is simply unavailable to trusts and estates (§179(d)(4)) — a partnership with a trust partner keeps depreciating that share; bonus depreciation is allowed except on property acquired from a decedent; an estate (never a trust) gets the $25,000 rental allowance for tax years ending within two years of death if the decedent actively participated (§469(i)(4)); material participation is measured by the trustees’ own hours (Aragona, 142 T.C. 165). Depreciation is apportioned: estate by accounting income allocated to each (Reg. §1.167(h)-1(c)); trust first to any reserve, then by income. Qualified residence interest is deductible only if a present or residuary beneficiary lives in the home (§163(h)(4)(D)); a mortgage on the empty house pending sale is nondeductible unless it is rented. The SALT cap applies to trusts and estates; business and rental property taxes stay outside it on Schedules C/E/F. Qualified dividends and long-term gains count as investment income for the §163(d) limit only by election (Form 4952). Expenses allocable to tax-exempt income are disallowed by a reasonable, documented method (Reg. §1.265-1(d)); a termination fee is spread over the life of the trust (Rev. Rul. 77-466). The $600/$300/$100 exemption is not prorated in a short first year, only on a change of year.
  • Filing: Form 1041 due the 15th day of the 4th month after year end; extension 5½ months (Form 7004). Estimated tax applies to trusts (not estates, nor a §645 trust receiving the residue, until the first year ending two or more years after death); a new trust has no prior-year safe harbor until it has a full 12-month year. Final return: check the box; distribute everything, including loss carryovers; the §643(g) election (Form 1041-T, by the 65th day) assigns the trust’s estimated payments to the beneficiaries. The 2026 late-filing minimum penalty is about $525 (verify). Form 4810 (prompt assessment, 18 months) and Form 5495 (discharge from personal liability) protect the fiduciary.
  • Colorado: DR 0105 fiduciary return; resident trust per C.R.S. 39-22-103(10) (testamentary trust of a Colorado decedent, or administered in Colorado) (verify current residency definition); 4.40%; Colorado K-1 equivalents for nonresident beneficiaries with Colorado-source income; no estate or inheritance tax.

What to do about it

If you are a trustee, the two dates that matter are December 31 and March 6. Income left in the trust past the second one is taxed at 37%. If you are a beneficiary, the K-1 is smaller than the check for a reason, and it may come late for a reason. If you are the person setting up a trust, the tax questions are which kind, who pays, and whether the step-up survives, and those belong in the same meeting as the lawyer’s. We prepare Form 1041 and the Colorado fiduciary return, and the first thing we do with a new trust is read the document.

Call 303-734-1040 or stop by the office in Lone Tree. We’ve been reading the footnotes for Douglas County and the Denver area since 1969.

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Figures reflect the 2026 tax year as currently published and are rounded for readability. Items marked (verify) are to be confirmed against IRS or Colorado DOR sources before the figures freeze in December. Last updated October 15, 2026.

General information about federal and Colorado income tax for the 2026 tax year, as the law and IRS guidance stood on October 15, 2026. It is not advice about your return. Congress, the IRS and the annual inflation figures change; where something here matters to you, confirm it with a professional who knows your facts. How these articles are written.