OVERVIEW
An estate or trust can generate income that gets reported on Form 1041, United States Income Tax Return for Estates and Trusts. However, if trust and estate beneficiaries are entitled to receive the income, the beneficiaries pay the income tax rather than the trust or estate. At the end of the year, all income distributions made to beneficiaries are reported on a Schedule K-1.
Schedule K-1
Schedule K-1 is a tax document that you might receive if you are the beneficiary of a trust or estate. This document reports a beneficiary's share of income, deductions and credits from the trust or estate. You use this information to complete your tax return much in the way that you use a Form W-2 to report your wages from a job.
When to file K-1s
A trust needs to file a tax return if it has a gross income of $600 or more during the trust tax year or there is a nonresident alien beneficiary or if there is any taxable income. An estate needs to file a tax return if it has a gross income of $600 or there is a nonresident alien beneficiary.
Trusts and estates report their income and deductions on Form 1041 as well as the income distributed to beneficiaries of the trust or estate. Unless the trust document specifies otherwise, capital gains and losses are often not distributed to beneficiaries since they are considered part of the trust corpus.
For example, suppose you’re a trustee, and the terms of the trust require all dividend income from a stock portfolio to be distributed equally among the beneficiaries. You would report all dividend income on the Form 1041, and you report the share of dividend income for each beneficiary on their Schedule K-1. You then provide each beneficiary a copy of their K-1, and attach copies of all of the K-1s for all of the beneficiaries to Form 1041 when you file the tax return with the Internal Revenue Service.
Trust and estate deductions
Trusts and estates have to report all income on the tax return and they are allowed deductions for amounts that are required to be distributed to beneficiaries. Form 1041 allows for an “income distribution deduction” that includes the total income reported on all beneficiary K-1s. You include Schedule B with the Form 1041 to take the distribution deduction.
Sometimes the income distribution is discretionary, meaning the trustee or estate administrator has authority to decide whether beneficiaries will receive distributions. In this case, any income not distributed isn’t deductible on 1041 and is not reported on Schedule K-1. The trust or estate is responsible for paying the income tax on this income, not the beneficiaries.
Reading Schedule K-1
If you are the beneficiary of a trust or estate and you receive a K-1, you need to include the amounts from the K-1 on your personal income tax return. Your K-1 will report each type, or character, of income, deductions, and credits you receive in various boxes of the form.
For example, box 2a shows the amount of your income from ordinary dividends, and box 2b has the amount of box 2a that are qualified dividends. Some of the other income categories reported on the K-1 include interest earnings, long-term and short-term capital gains, ordinary business income, and rental real estate income.
Other K-1 information
The K-1 may also report information other than your share of income (or loss). Box 9, for example, shows the amount of depletion, depreciation and amortization deductions allocated to you. Schedule K-1 may also show tax credits in box 13, or the information you will need to calculate the qualified business income deduction you can take as an income adjustment on your personal tax return.
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