Most tax professionals run into trust and estate work before they’re ready for it. A client mentions a trust over the phone. A longtime filer loses a parent. An attorney asks who handles the 1041. The preparers who can say yes pick up work that pays better, recurs annually, and holds up against the pressures squeezing individual returns.
If you’re on the fence about adding trust and estate returns to your practice, consider the following.
Trust and estate work bills higher than individual work
According to the National Society of Accountants’ Income and Fees Survey, fiduciary returns command meaningfully higher average fees than individual returns, and the per-return comparison undersells it.
Picture a client who’s paid you a few hundred dollars a year for a straightforward 1040. Their parent dies, and suddenly there’s a final return, an estate return, a trust return that recurs annually, and possibly a 706 behind it. That’s a multi-return, multi-thousand-dollar relationship, if you’re the one equipped to handle it.
Record exemptions are fueling trust and gift activity
Under IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32, the federal estate and gift tax exemption sits at $15 million per individual for 2026, with the annual gift exclusion holding at $19,000 per recipient.
A married couple can shield $30 million, but only if the first estate files a 706 to elect portability, and plenty don’t. Meanwhile, it’s projected that $124 trillion will be changing hands through the estate and gift process through 2048. When a client mentions, almost in passing, that they’re thinking about a trust for the kids, that’s not small talk.
That’s an opening, and it goes to whoever’s ready for it.
Trust returns generate revenue year after year
A trust doesn’t file once and disappear. Form 1041 must be filed for any year a domestic trust has taxable income, gross income of $600 or more, a nonresident alien beneficiary, or a qualified investment in a qualified opportunity fund. Most funded trusts clear these thresholds without trying. Take on one trust return today and you may still be preparing it a decade from now.
Life events are when clients decide to stay or go
After a death or a divorce, most people don’t go shopping for a new tax professional. They call the one they already know. Imagine a longtime client calling the week after they lose a spouse, only to hear that you don’t handle estate and trust returns. That’s often the moment they start looking elsewhere, and they take their other returns with them.
Few preparers specialize here, which works in your favor
Plenty of general practitioners steer clear of trusts and estates because the rules feel unfamiliar, and the stakes feel high. That hesitation is the opening. The preparer who turns down a trust return this year watches it go to the one who learned the rules and who picks up two more clients from that same family next year.
This work doesn’t hand off to software
Individual returns face constant pressure from DIY platforms and AI tools that improve every filing season. Fiduciary work holds up better, because so much of it comes down to judgment calls that don’t fit a guided interview.
A client can push a simple return through an app in an evening. Deciding whether to make the 65-day election under IRC §663(b), available to complex trusts and estates, but not to simple or grantor trusts, is a different problem, and one they’ll still need you for.
It opens the door to referral relationships
Estate attorneys, financial advisors, and wealth managers all run into clients who need a tax professional fluent in trusts. Being known for this work puts you in that conversation instead of outside it.
And the trigger is predictable: per Form 1041’s instructions, a revocable living trust reports on the grantor’s own return during their lifetime, then becomes a separate taxpayer at death – new EIN, fiduciary return, and someone who knows how to prepare one.
Ready to start saying yes to trust and estate work? Spidell’s 2026 Trust Webinar Series gives you the practical skills to prepare Forms 1041 and 709, guide clients through asset protection and advanced trust planning, and turn fiduciary work into a profitable part of your practice. The series includes 7 live webinars totaling 15 CPE hours, beginning October 26, 2026.
Click here to register.
