IRS Form 56 — Notice Concerning Fiduciary Relationship
Notify the IRS that you are acting as a fiduciary — executor, trustee, guardian, or bankruptcy trustee — for another taxpayer. Clear pricing, no upsells.
Start filing Form 56 →What is Form 56?
Form 56 is the IRS notice you use to tell the IRS that a fiduciary relationship exists. It identifies the taxpayer being represented (often a decedent's estate, a trust, or a person under guardianship) and the fiduciary acting for them, lists the tax forms and tax types the fiduciary is responsible for, and provides the legal authority for the relationship. Filing it lets the IRS direct future notices and correspondence to the fiduciary instead of the taxpayer.
Who must file
- Executors and administrators of a decedent's estate.
- Trustees of valid trusts (testamentary, intervivos, or successor).
- Court-appointed guardians or conservators acting for an incapacitated person.
- Trustees in bankruptcy or assignees for the benefit of creditors.
- Anyone with legal authority to act for another taxpayer with respect to federal tax matters.
When it's due
There is no hard statutory deadline, but the IRS expects Form 56 as soon as the fiduciary relationship begins. Filing promptly avoids missed notices: until the IRS receives Form 56, correspondence may keep going to the taxpayer (or to a decedent's last known address). File another Form 56 when the relationship ends, using the termination section of the form.
Pricing
Form 56 e-filing
$5 per filing
Covers the e-file only: you enter your data on this site, it is checked against the IRS's Form 56 rules, we transmit Form 56 to the IRS, and you get the IRS's acceptance by email. Form 56 itself has no IRS tax — it is a notice form.
Have us do the filing for you
$80 flat
Full-service: you email us the estate / trust documents and identification details, we prepare and e-file Form 56, and we deliver your confirmation. Includes roughly one hour of our time — enough for a typical estate or single trust. If your situation needs more than that (complex authority, multiple related filings, IRS back-and-forth), the extra work is billed at the $80/hr support rate, quoted before we start.
Any other manual support — $80 per hour
$80 per hour
Any time a human at Gideon does something for you, it is billed at $80/hr. That includes answering questions, reviewing your entries, replying to IRS notices, terminating the fiduciary relationship later, and onboarding help. The $5 e-file fee does not cover any of that — at $5 per filing we cannot afford to answer questions for free. We quote the expected time before starting, bill in 15-minute increments, and never surprise you with a bill.
Right now Form 56 e-files at no charge: the $5 fee above is not being collected yet. We will change this page before it is.
IRS Form 1041 — U.S. Income Tax Return for Estates and TrustsPreview
The annual income tax return of a decedent's estate or a trust: its income and deductions, the income distribution deduction with a Schedule K-1 for each beneficiary, and the tax. Prepared one page at a time, with the totals worked out for you.
- Decedents' estates, simple and complex trusts, qualified disability trusts, ESBTs, grantor type trusts and pooled income funds (Form 1041, Item A).
- Schedules A, B and G on the form; Schedules D, I, J and K-1 (Form 1041) and the Form 1040 schedules and credit forms the return carries.
- Signed by the fiduciary's five-digit PIN on Form 8879-F, which we keep on file, or by a signed Form 8453-FE you attach.
- Files on the IRS tax year 2026 package. A calendar-year return, or an estate's fiscal or short year.
$25 per return
Preview: the IRS has not yet approved Gideon Tax to e-file Form 1041. We prepare and hold the return and transmit it the moment we are cleared; the fee is shown before anything is sent.
Start Form 1041 →