Trust Income Tax Calculator

Trusts pay federal income tax on a compressed schedule that punishes retained income hard. Where an individual climbs gradually toward the top rate, a trust hits the 37% marginal bracket at just $16,000 of taxable income for the 2026 tax year. Grasping how quickly that ceiling arrives is the heart of sound trust planning and the difference between an expected bill and a painful one.

Using the 2026 federal rates for non-grantor trusts and estates, the calculator works through a progressive bracket structure in which successive slices of taxable income face rising marginal rates. The lowest rate applies to the first segment of income, the next rate to the segment above it, and so on until every dollar of taxable income has been accounted for, using the estates-and-trusts rate table in Rev. Proc. 2025-32: 10% up to $3,300, 24% up to $11,700, 35% up to $16,000 and 37% above that. All income is treated as ordinary income, so the tax on long-term gains and qualified dividends kept in the trust, which qualify for lower rates, is overstated.

The scope here is federal income tax only, so state and local taxes, which differ considerably from place to place, fall outside the estimate. Feed the calculator the trust's taxable income after all allowable deductions rather than its gross income. Distributable net income (DNI) and taxable income are not interchangeable, and conflating the two is one of the surest paths to a miscalculation.