The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service published temporary regulations for Trump accounts on September 30, and the most consequential sentence in them is about who does the electing. On or about October 1, the agencies write, the Secretary of the Treasury will make an election to establish an account for each individual the Secretary has determined satisfies the age and Social Security number requirements and for whom no one else has already elected. The account comes into existence without an application from a parent.
That is a reversal of the design the agencies put out earlier. Under the prior proposed rule, elections to establish an initial Trump account would generally have been made by persons other than the Secretary, with the Secretary's own authority reserved for the narrow case where an unauthorized person had submitted an election. Commenters pushed the other way, arguing that requiring an affirmative election would reduce participation among nonfilers and families with limited time or familiarity with tax procedures, and that a child should not lose contributions or investment growth because no adult got around to filling out a form. The temporary regulations, published as TD 10056 and effective the same day, adopt the broad reading and take some care to say that this reflects a different administrative structure rather than a changed interpretation of the statute. After the first round, the Secretary will make periodic elections for individuals who satisfy the requirements and for whom nobody has elected.
A tax privacy statute decided the shape of the account
The obstacle to enrolling everyone at once was not the tax code but section 6103. The existence of an account and the account-identifying data held by the Secretary or an authorized agent count as return information, and the agency said plainly that a structure letting anyone act for a beneficiary before identity and legal authority were established would risk disclosures the statute forbids.
The answer is a split between ownership and administration. Each auto account is established under its own written governing instrument with its own account-level records, but the assets attributable to those accounts are invested collectively through a master group trust that is intended to meet the requirements of Revenue Ruling 81-100 and to be exempt from tax under section 408(e). Pooling is what makes the structure workable: the trustee of the master group trust can execute transactions without receiving or disclosing the return information of each beneficiary, and the identifying data stays with the Secretary and the financial agent authorized to hold it. Treasury determines which eligible investments the trust holds, and the accounts hold an undivided proportionate interest in them. Neither the trustee nor the Secretary, acting as responsible party, is expected to have discretion over voting or other corporate actions, which lets those matters be handled uniformly without individualized instructions.
The same privacy logic makes the accounts narrow. During the growth period, an auto account may accept qualified general contributions, including qualified stock contributions, and, in limited circumstances, the $1,000 pilot program contribution. After the growth period it generally may not accept contributions at all. That limitation is what keeps account information inside the safeguarded environment while the Secretary remains the responsible party.
A claimed account is a different instrument. Once an auto account has been claimed, the balance moves by qualified rollover contribution into a claimed initial Trump account, which is maintained by a trustee the Secretary selects, or into a rollover Trump account held by a trustee the family chooses. A claimed initial account can receive anything a Trump account may receive: family contributions up to the $5,000 annual limit, employer contributions under section 128 of up to $2,500 that count against that limit, and general funding contributions from governments and nonprofits that are facilitated by Treasury and do not count against it.
The Secretary is the responsible party for each auto account and is deemed to have activated it, so no signature is needed for the account to exist. Any person approved by the IRS as of December 31, 2025 to serve as a nonbank trustee of an IRA is automatically approved for Trump accounts. An existing IRA cannot be amended into a Trump account, and the account has to be designated and titled as a Trump account when it is created.
Claiming is a separate process from existing
The regulations treat establishment and control as two different events. To claim an auto account, a guardian or legal custodian with authority under state law over the beneficiary's property or financial affairs, or a beneficiary with legal capacity, applies through the electronic application the Secretary makes available. The claimant has to supply information, authenticate identity, establish legal authority to act for the beneficiary, and execute any consent required for the disclosures needed to process the claim and move the balance.
Making a claim does not establish the receiving account. The claimed account has to be activated under the trustee's instructions, and until the funds transfer, another claim can be filed. If several claims arrive, the responsible party is the first person to activate the account. Because the rollover moves the entire balance, a beneficiary can have only one funded Trump account at a time.
The growth period starts before anyone can direct the money
The first day of the growth period is the day the account is established, and the final day is December 31 of the calendar year in which the beneficiary turns 17. The regulations specify that an age is attained on a birthday and not the day before, so a child born on January 1, 2009 turns 18 on January 1, 2027. Automatic establishment therefore starts the clock on an account that may have no contributions in it and no one with authority to direct it. The family's access lags the account's creation by however long the claim takes.
The regulations also work through what happens when the sequencing breaks. If a beneficiary dies during the growth period before a funded auto account has been claimed, the account stops being a Trump account on the date of death but remains an IRA, and it can still be claimed; the estate becomes the beneficiary. An unfunded auto account is closed. A funded account cannot be closed during the growth period unless all its assets have first been distributed in a distribution the statute permits.
The rules open a second door for stock
The second half of the package covers qualified stock contributions, and it exists because the two-step contribution structure in the statute needed rules for donors who want to give shares rather than cash. Qualified stock is publicly traded stock issued by a domestic corporation and not subject to pre-existing transfer restrictions. Using the regulatory authority in section 530A(a) to create an exception to the cash-contribution requirement of section 408(a)(1), the regulations let that stock go directly into the accounts of a qualified class, which avoids the eligible investment restriction that would otherwise be violated if account funds bought it.
Once the stock is in an account, it is subject to a minimum holding period that ends on the earlier of five years after the contribution or the end of the beneficiary's growth period. If the stock is sold before then, the trustee has to repurchase the same number of shares of the same class as soon as practicable. After the holding period, the trustee must sell within a reasonable period and invest the proceeds in an eligible investment, which the regulations treat as prompt if it happens within 30 calendar days. The rule allows a reasonable period rather than a fixed date so that a predictable, concentrated sale does not hit the market all at once. Sales are also permitted during the holding period to fund an ABLE account rollover, to handle fractional shares that cannot transfer in kind, to accept a tender offer at the responsible party's direction, or when the issuer is acquired for cash.
Donors get the charity questions settled in advance
A donor route that broad needed an answer for the tax treatment on the giving side, and the regulations provide one. An approved class has to consist of at least 5,000 beneficiaries in their growth period, defined by state or qualified geographic area and by birth year, and Treasury accepts the funding under a written Treasury acceptance agreement that fixes the amount, the class, the record date, and any stock details. The Secretary approves requests at sole discretion, weighing implementation cost, operational feasibility, and the effect of other federal laws such as the securities laws.
On the tax side, a person contributing to a section 501(c)(3) eligible donor to fund a general funding contribution gets a deduction under section 170, and an individual's gift to an eligible donor qualifies under section 2522. Providing the contribution furthers the charity's exempt purposes, and an eligible donor that makes one is treated as exercising expenditure responsibility under sections 4945 and 4966 to the extent such an obligation arises. The regulations also state that a general funding contribution is neither a grant to an individual under section 4945 nor a distribution to a natural person under section 4966. The rules apply whether the money moves directly or through a donor advised fund.
The rules took effect without waiting for comments
The temporary regulations became effective on publication, apply to tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2026, and expire on September 30, 2029. The agencies found good cause to skip advance notice and comment under the Administrative Procedure Act, concluding that delaying effectiveness would be impracticable and "contrary to the public interest" because the Secretary could not administer auto elections uniformly and eligible children might have no account ready to receive contributions. A cross-referenced notice of proposed rulemaking is being published at the same time, and the agency says it will consider timely comments before issuing final regulations. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs designated the rulemaking economically significant under Executive Order 12866.
What remains outside the package is reporting. The regulations, the earlier guidance, and the rulemaking docket all point the same way: reporting rules for Trump accounts, including the rules relevant to auto accounts, will be addressed in future guidance.
The structure settles the government's problem, which was how to create accounts at national scale without handing return information to a trustee. It leaves the family's problem roughly where it was. Someone still has to claim the account, elect the pilot contribution, or make the section 128 employer contribution, and none of that is automatic. What auto enrollment changes is that the growth period begins anyway, on an account that may sit empty, in the name of a child whose family has not asked for anything yet. Universal establishment and universal funding are two different goals, and these rules deliver only the first.
Primary sources
- Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department, Trump Accounts, temporary regulations, 91 FR 61705, Sept. 30, 2026, FR Doc. 2026-20026, docket TD 10056, for the auto enrollment rules, the master group trust structure, the claiming and activation procedures, the qualified stock contribution requirements, the applicability and expiration dates, and the good cause findings.
- Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department, Trump Accounts, notice of proposed rulemaking, 91 FR 11194, March 9, 2026, for the earlier approach to elections that the temporary regulations replace.
- Regulations.gov docket TD 10056, for the rulemaking record and the cross-referenced notice of proposed rulemaking.
- Section 530A of the Internal Revenue Code, as enacted by section 70204 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Pub. L. 119-21, for the account structure, the growth period, the $5,000 annual contribution limit, the section 128 employer contribution, and the $1,000 pilot program.
- Internal Revenue Service, Notice 2025-68, for the prior guidance and comment request under section 530A.