General and form-related guidelines for 1041 electronic filing

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The following links provide information about miscellaneous guidelines that do not refer to specific input screens, as well as information about IRS limitations to the number of characters that can be entered in certain fields. Follow these guidelines to create IRS-acceptable electronic files. You can find a more complete list of these guidelines and procedures for the Form 1041 e-File Program in the IRS publication.

Note: Further information is available at the IRS website at www.irs.gov/forms-instructions.

Data-entry guidelines for alpha, numeric, alphanumeric, and special characters

  • Alpha characters consist of the upper-case letters A through Z. No other characters are allowed in alpha-only fields. Few fields are alpha-only fields.
  • Numeric characters consist of the numbers 0 through 9. These characters are used in all of the numeric information fields.
  • Alphanumeric characters consist of the upper-case letters A through Z and numbers 0 through 9. These characters are allowed in most text fields.
  • Special characters generally include ampersand (&), hyphen (-), percent (%), backslash (\), among others. The IRS may or may not allow certain special characters. For additional information, refer to IRS Publication 4164, Modernized e-File (MeF) Guide for Software Developers And Transmitters.

Note: UltraTax CS strips invalid characters from fields and converts all lower-case characters to upper-case alpha characters in the electronic file.

How to include information in the electronic return

Attached text is not recognized in the electronic return. Use the statement dialog for the Preparer notes field on Screen ELF or the statement dialog for the General footnote field on Screen 1041 to enter general information to be included in the electronic tax return.

Note: To include text in the Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, or Wisconsin electronic file, use the General Footnote fields on the Gen screen in the applicable state application.

IRS field size limitations for UltraTax/1041

Descriptions of default government print collations with editing information

By default, Forms 8453-FE and 8879-F print in the government collation for electronically filed 1041 returns.

For more information, see Customizing the print collation for returns filed electronically.

Name control field information

The IRS 1041 electronic filing program requires a name control field for the estate's or trust's name. See Name control guidelines for 1041 electronic filing for information on how the IRS and UltraTax CS determines the name control.

Data-entry guidelines for trust or estate names

The trust or estate name can contain only alpha characters (A-Z), numeric characters (0-9), and the following special characters: ampersand (&) and hyphen (-). The first character of the trust or estate name must be an alpha character.

How to enter names that include titles or suffixes in UltraTax/1041

If a beneficiary's name or the estate's or trust's name contains a title or suffix that can be expressed as a numeric relationship, convert the title or suffix to a Roman numeral. For example, enter Jim Smith 3rd as Jim Smith III.

Related topic: Entering data for 1041 electronic returns overview

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