How do I list deceased parent's former revocable grantor trust in TurboTax?

[lbirnie]

Father died 2/16/16 and I'm successor trustee to his now irrevocable trust. I do have an EIN. Should I use the original trust establishment date, or date of death?  Is the trust still considered a grantor trust with dad as grantor? Finally, would the report year be Feb through December, or the full calendar year?

[tagteam · Accepted solution]

" Should I use the original trust establishment date, or date of death?"

Use the date of death since the trust began its existence as a separate, taxable entity on that date, and the IRS will most likely be looking for that date, if anything (otherwise, there is a chance that the IRS might want to know why prior returns were not filed for previous tax years).

"Is the trust still considered a grantor trust with dad as grantor?"

The language in the trust itself would have to be fairly atypical for the trust to continue to be considered a grantor trust (an example would be if the sole trustee were the sole beneficiary and had the power the vest the entire corpus into his/her own name and dissolve the trust).

"Finally, would the report year be Feb through December, or the full calendar year?"

If you enter the date the trust was created as "02/16/2016", TurboTax Business will automatically mark the return as a "short year" (which is technically a fiscal year) that closes on 12/31/2016. Although trusts typically use calendar years, you can select a different fiscal year for the initial return which would begin 02/01/2016 and end 01/31/2017.