IRS Form 56 Instructions: Fiduciary Notice and Termination

IRS Form 56, Notice Concerning Fiduciary Relationship, is the form you file to tell the IRS you have legal authority to act for another taxpayer as an executor, trustee, guardian, or similar fiduciary. The instructions for Form 56 walk through two parts: Part I establishes the relationship, and Part II ends it. You complete the identifying information, check boxes describing how you got your authority and which taxes and forms you’ll handle, attach a copy of the court order or trust document that proves your appointment, and mail the form to the IRS service center where the taxpayer files returns. As of the December 2024 revision, Form 56 cannot be filed electronically, so plan on paper and postage.

Who Should File Form 56

A fiduciary, in the IRS’s usage, is someone who has legal authority to act on another person’s or entity’s behalf in tax matters. The IRS treats you as though you were the taxpayer: filing returns, paying taxes owed, and answering notices all become your responsibility.¹ The roles that typically require Form 56 include:

Executor or administrator of a decedent’s estate.
Trustee named in a trust instrument.
Court-appointed guardian or conservator for an incapacitated person or minor.
Receiver or assignee for the benefit of creditors.

A bankruptcy trustee or debtor-in-possession does not file Form 56. Bankruptcy proceedings follow the notification rules in Title 11 of the U.S. Code instead.²

What to Gather Before You Start

The Taxpayer Identification Number

If you’re a fiduciary for a living individual, use their Social Security Number or ITIN.³ Estates and trusts need their own Employer Identification Number, and you’ll usually want that in hand before you fill out Form 56 because it goes in the identifying number field.

Executors can apply for an estate EIN using Form SS-4. The online application through irs.gov is free and issues the number immediately.⁴

A detail that trips up new executors: for a decedent, the IRS instructions direct you to file one Form 56 for the decedent using their SSN (this covers the final Form 1040) and a separate Form 56 for the estate using the estate’s EIN (this covers Form 1041 and, if applicable, Form 706).²

Proof of Your Authority

The IRS will not recognize your fiduciary status from Form 56 alone. You have to attach the legal document that shows your appointment.⁵ What that document is depends on your role:

Executors and administrators attach current letters testamentary or a court certificate of appointment.²
Trustees attach the relevant pages of the trust instrument showing their appointment.
Guardians and conservators attach a court certificate or order of appointment.

“Current” is the word to pay attention to on letters testamentary. Some courts issue them with an expiration date. If yours have lapsed, ask the court for a fresh set before mailing the form, or the IRS may reject it.

Filling Out Part I

Each fiduciary files a separate Form 56. If an estate has co-executors, each one submits their own.²

Identifying the Taxpayer and Yourself

At the top, enter the name, address, and taxpayer identification number of the person or entity you’re acting for. Individuals use an SSN or ITIN; estates and trusts use an EIN. For a decedent’s estate that must file Form 706, enter both the decedent’s SSN and the estate’s EIN.² Below that, put your own name, address, and phone number as the fiduciary.

Section A: How You Got Your Authority

Section A is a set of checkboxes describing the source of your fiduciary role. The main choices are:

Line 1a, testate estate: you are the executor of someone who died with a valid will.
Line 1b, intestate estate with court appointment: you are the administrator of an estate where there was no will, appointed by a court.
Line 1c, guardian or conservator: a court appointed you to handle another person’s financial affairs.
Line 1d, intestate estate without a court appointment: you are acting for an intestate estate but have not been formally appointed.

If a court appointed you, you also fill in the court’s name and address and either the date of your appointment or the decedent’s date of death.¹

Section E: Which Taxes and Forms You’ll Handle

This is the section people sometimes rush and end up limiting their own authority. Check every type of tax you may be responsible for: income, gift, estate, generation-skipping transfer, employment, and excise. Then list the specific federal form numbers, such as Form 1040, Form 1041, or Form 706. If you check only “income” but the estate also owes employment taxes (say, from a business the decedent operated), the IRS may not route those notices to you. When in doubt, check every box that plausibly applies.

Where to Mail the Form

Send Form 56 to the IRS service center where the taxpayer is required to file their returns. If you’ll be handling more than one type of return and one is Form 1040, use the address for individual returns.⁶

For estate and trust fiduciaries filing Form 1041, the address depends on the taxpayer’s state:⁷

Eastern and midwestern states (Connecticut through Wisconsin, including the District of Columbia): Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, Kansas City, MO 64999-0048.
Western and southern states (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona through Wyoming): Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, Ogden, UT 84201-0048.

For Form 1040, look up the correct address by state on the “Where to File” page at irs.gov.⁸ A wrong address won’t invalidate the form, but it will delay processing, and until it’s processed you have no recognized authority.

Ending the Relationship: Part II

Filing the opening Form 56 is only half the job. When your role ends, you file another Form 56 with Part II completed. Until you do, the IRS keeps treating you as the responsible party and keeps sending notices to your address.¹

Section A of Part II asks for the date the relationship ended and a brief reason. Common reasons include the estate being fully administered and closed, a trust terminating according to its terms, or a court discharging a guardian. Nothing is required to be attached, but keeping the court’s final decree or closing order in your records is worthwhile in case the timeline is later questioned.

File the termination promptly. Former fiduciaries sometimes assume the job is over once an estate closes, but the IRS won’t know until you say so, and any notices that arrive in the meantime are still legally yours to answer.

Situations With Different Rules

A few fiduciaries follow a different path from the standard filing above. Receivers in receivership proceedings and assignees for the benefit of creditors must file Form 56 within 10 days of appointment, and the form goes to the Advisory Group Manager at the IRS area office with jurisdiction over the taxpayer rather than to a service center. They can optionally send a second copy to the normal service center to trigger the notice protections under section 6903.²

Federal agencies acting as fiduciary for a bank or thrift (typically the FDIC as receiver for a failed institution) use Form 56-F, not Form 56.⁹

What Happens If You Don’t File

Until the IRS receives a valid Form 56, notices sent to the taxpayer’s last known address remain legally sufficient, even if the taxpayer is deceased or incapacitated and no one is opening the mail. Deadlines to respond to audits, pay assessments, or appeal can pass with no one aware. By the time the fiduciary catches up, penalties and interest may have built.

Filing Form 56 shifts the IRS’s notice obligation. Once the form is processed, notices must go to the fiduciary’s address to be legally effective.⁵ Without the form on file, you also lack recognized authority to pull the taxpayer’s transcripts, request account information, or negotiate installment agreements or offers in compromise. You have the duty without the tools.

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Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 56
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Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 56
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Internal Revenue Service. Taxpayer Identification Numbers (TIN)
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Internal Revenue Service. Information for Executors
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Internal Revenue Service. About Form 56, Notice Concerning Fiduciary Relationship
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Internal Revenue Service. Where to File – Forms Beginning With the Number 5
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Internal Revenue Service. Where to File Your Taxes for Form 1041
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Internal Revenue Service. Where to File Paper Tax Returns With or Without a Payment
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Internal Revenue Service. Form 56-F, Notice Concerning Fiduciary Relationship of Financial Institution