Before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), trust income tax preparers were able to quickly verify if a return was prepared properly using a shortcut of comparing taxable income against the net capital gains minus the trust's $300 exemption.
This shortcut method was rendered null and void by changes brought about by the TCJA. So the assumption that simple trusts will not owe tax on ordinary income (such as dividends and interest) is no longer necessarily true.
Get the details of how the TCJA makes the preparation of simple trusts' returns less simple.