Form 1041 is the U.S income tax return form which particularly for estates and living trusts. To get this form, you may want to go on to the IRS website download the form after fill information in its required fields. Form 1041 is not required for every estate but only applies to certain circumstances. Unlike other tax return form, IRS is only filed by estates and trusts which belongs to people who passed away.
-Estates
For estates, form 1041 is used for tracking the income that an estate earns after the owner’s death and before beneficiaries receive the designated estates. Normally, the executor or personal representative of the estate is responsible for filling the form. However, this is not always required. For example, for a designated estate which generated gross income less than $600 per year, form 1041 does not have to be filed. Also, there are special conditions when the estate’s beneficiaries are non-resident aliens, then the return must be filed no matter how much income was earned (whether above or below $600). Beneficiaries will receive Schedule K-1 for the purpose reporting any asset distribution they have received from the estate by the end of the tax year and report on their personal income return form.
-Trusts
Similar to estates, a trust that earns more than $600/year need to file form 1041. If any of the beneficiaries are non-resident aliens, then a form must be filed regardless how much earnings has been made. There are simple and complex trusts. The income of a simple trusts must be distributed to beneficiaries at the time the income is received. Since the capital gains is belongs to the corpus, it will not be transferred to the trust’s beneficiaries.