Skip to main content

End-of-year closedown Our offices and phone lines will close down over the holiday season but you can still contact us online. Find out more

You can file the estate or trust beneficiary details - IR6B when you file your estate or trust return – IR6 or do it through our myIR file upload service. 

Beneficiary information required

You must file an IR6B for every beneficiary that receives a distribution (whether taxable or non-taxable) in the income year with the:

  • beneficiary details – name, date of birth, IRD or taxpayer identification number (if they have one)
  • details of distributions to the beneficiary
  • taxable income and tax credits allocated to the beneficiary.

Losses and credits

You cannot distribute losses or parts of losses to beneficiaries. Losses must stay with the trust, even if the total distribution to a beneficiary would be positive.

If your trust has tax credits associated with an income source that you are planning to distribute to multiple beneficiaries, then beneficiaries must usually receive the same percentage of the credits as they do the income. This is also true if you only distribute a part of the income.

File through our myIR file upload service

If you have many beneficiaries you may wish to use our file upload service. You'll need to make sure that the information you send us meets the file upload specifications.

You can use the template provided to send us the information. To do this, delete the header row on the template, add the beneficiary details then save the document as a CSV file. You can then upload it to myIR.

When you upload the CSV file, we will automatically check for any errors in the data you have provided. You can use the IR6B File Specification document to check that your file meets all the requirements.

Last updated: 01 Apr 2024
Jump back to the top of the page