Due Process Limitations Apply to Limit State Tax of Trust Beneficiaries

States with income taxes have varying rules on when they assert authority to tax income of trusts, based on combinations of contacts with their state of settlors, trustees, beneficiaries, assets, and management activities. In one of the more aggressive assertions of authority to tax, several states assert that they can tax the income of a trust merely because a beneficiary resides in the state. In a challenge to North Carolina’s scheme, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the presence of in-state beneficiaries alone does not empower a state to tax undistributed trust income when the beneficiaries have no right to demand that income and are uncertain to receive it.

In the case, the settlor formed a trust for his children in his home state of New York. The trustee of the trust was a New York resident. Trust documents and records were kept in New York, and the asset custodians were in Massachusetts.The trust granted the trustee absolute discretion to distribute assets to the beneficiaries. One of the children moved to North Carolina . . .