How Many Charitable Remainder Trusts Are There? Findings From My Tax Notes-Federal Analysis of a Decade of IRS Form 5227 Data

Jurisdiction: Federal

Primary Statutes: IRC §§ 664, 6104(b)

Key Authorities: Klaus Gottlieb, “Charitable Remainder Trusts, a Decade After the Last IRS Study,” Tax Notes Federal, Mar. 9, 2026, p. 1613; Lisa S. Rosenmerkel, “Split-Interest Trusts, Filing Year 2012,” 33(3) Statistics of Income Bulletin 51 (Winter 2014); IRS SOI Split-Interest Trust microdata (Form 5227, filing years 2016–2022)

Last Reviewed: July 2026

Category: Charitable Planning — Research / Data

By Klaus Gottlieb, Esq.

At a Glance

What this is, in one sentence. A plain-English summary of my study published in Tax Notes Federal (March 9, 2026) — the first comprehensive analysis of the charitable remainder trust population since the IRS’s own 2014 study — based on seven years of public IRS Form 5227 microdata.

How many CRTs are there? 95,165 charitable remainder trusts appear in the most recent public IRS data (filing year 2022) — 74,552 unitrusts (CRUTs) and 20,613 annuity trusts (CRATs).

The trend. The population has declined about 10 percent since the IRS’s 2012 benchmark of 105,860 — yet new formations have held steady at roughly 2,462 trusts per year, about 17 percent above the rate implied by the 2012 study.

The surprise. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s doubled estate tax exemption did not suppress CRT formation — evidence that income tax benefits, not estate tax planning, are the primary engine of CRT creation.

For researchers. The public Form 5227 microdata is usable but treacherous: trust-type classification depends on choosing the right field, 2017 cannot be classified at all, and the asset-size fields are unreliable.

Ask a basic question — how many charitable remainder trusts exist in the United States? — and until recently the most current answer was a 2014 IRS study of 2012 filing data. For a vehicle that sits at the center of charitable giving, retirement income planning, and wealth transfer, that is a remarkable evidence gap. My article in Tax Notes Federal, “Charitable Remainder Trusts, a Decade After the Last IRS Study” (March 9, 2026, p. 1613), closes it: the first comprehensive analysis of the CRT population since the IRS’s own benchmark, built from seven years of publicly available Form 5227 microdata (2016–2022). This brief summarizes the findings for advisors and donors; the full methodology and tables are in the published article.

1. Why Nobody Knew How Many CRTs Exist

Charitable remainder trusts file Form 5227, the Split-Interest Trust Information Return, and section 6104(b) makes those returns publicly disclosable. The IRS Statistics of Income division published its last comprehensive CRT study in 2014, examining filing year 2012: 105,860 CRTs holding approximately $91.7 billion. Since then — silence. The SOI division releases raw microdata files each year, but no one had systematically analyzed them. That raw material, covering filing years 2016 through 2022, is what my study works from.

2. Finding One: A Smaller but Stubbornly Persistent Population

The CRT population declined from the 2012 benchmark of 105,860 to 95,165 in filing year 2022 — a fall of roughly 10.1 percent, or about 1.06 percent per year compounded. The decline is real but undramatic, and it is not driven by a collapse in new interest. It reflects arithmetic: trusts created during the CRT boom of the 1990s and early 2000s are reaching the end of their terms or maturing at the deaths of their income beneficiaries, and terminations are simply outpacing formations.

3. Finding Two: TCJA Did Not Kill the CRT — and That Tells Us Why People Create Them

New CRT formations averaged 2,462 per year during 2015–2020, compared with an implied rate of about 2,100 per year from the 2012 study — an increase of roughly 17 percent. This is the study’s most consequential planning insight. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s dramatic increase in the estate tax exemption was widely expected to depress CRT formation; if CRTs were primarily estate tax tools, it should have. Formation rates didn’t budge. The reasonable inference is that donors create CRTs mainly for their income tax architecture — the immediate charitable deduction and, above all, the deferral of capital gains on appreciated assets — along with the income stream itself. For advisors, this reframes the conversation: the CRT’s value proposition never depended on the estate tax, and the data now shows it.

4. Finding Three: The Quiet Rise of the CRAT

The composition of the population has shifted. Unitrusts made up 86.2 percent of all CRTs in 2012 but roughly 78 percent in recent years. In absolute terms, CRUTs declined from 91,244 to 74,552 — while CRATs grew, from 14,616 in 2012 to 20,613 in 2022. My study did not investigate the causes of CRAT growth, and I am careful not to attribute it. But one overlap deserves a flag: part of that growth window coincides with the years in which the abusive CRAT/annuity arrangement — designated a listed transaction in July 2026 under T.D. 10051 — was being promoted. Whether promoted schemes account for any meaningful share of the new CRATs is an open empirical question; my analysis of that regulation is here.

5. Finding Four: CRTs Are Long-Lived Commitments

The mean age of active CRTs in the 2022 data is 18.2 years, with a median of 20 years, and 43.1 percent of all trusts are between 20 and 29 years old. Trusts established in the 1990s remain active in large numbers — consistent with lifetime income interests created by donors who were middle-aged at formation. The 2012 IRS study found terminating trusts averaged about 15 years of life. The practical lesson for anyone drafting or funding a CRT today: these instruments routinely operate for two or three decades. Design decisions — payout structure, trustee succession, investment policy, remainder beneficiary flexibility — should be made for that time horizon, not for the year of funding.

6. A Warning Label for Researchers: The Data Is Usable but Treacherous

A substantial part of the published article is methodological, because the public microdata will mislead a careless analyst. Three hazards stand out. First, trust-type classification: the files contain multiple columns that look like type codes, and only FR_5227_CD gives accurate results — using the similar-looking FR_1041_CD undercounts CRTs by roughly two-thirds. Second, the 2017 file lacks any trust-type field, forcing that year’s exclusion from longitudinal analysis. Third, the asset-size data — both the categorical ASSET_CD field and the ASSET_AMT dollar field — fails basic distributional and cross-validation tests, including single entries (one at $586 billion) that would exceed the reported assets of the entire national CRT population. Population counts and type composition are reliable; reported asset sizes are not. Researchers should verify methods against known benchmarks before drawing conclusions, and the article documents how.

7. What This Means for Advisors and Donors

Three takeaways. The CRT is not a declining species — formation demand is stable and modestly above its 2012 pace, sustained by income tax economics that survived TCJA intact. The planning conversation should lead with capital gains deferral and the income stream, because that is evidently what motivates real donors. And because these trusts live for decades, both the drafting and the ongoing administration deserve more analytical rigor than they typically receive — which is the gap the tools and analyses on this site are built to fill.

Klaus Gottlieb, Esq. (JD, MBA, LLM Taxation) is an estate planning attorney whose statewide California practice concentrates on charitable remainder trusts. He is the author of “Charitable Remainder Trusts, a Decade After the Last IRS Study” (Tax Notes Federal, March 9, 2026) and he was quoted in Tax Notes’ coverage of T.D. 10051. For CRT design questions, deduction modeling, or a second opinion on an existing structure, see the CalCRUT tools suite or schedule a call.

Sources: Klaus Gottlieb, “Charitable Remainder Trusts, a Decade After the Last IRS Study,” Tax Notes Federal, Mar. 9, 2026, p. 1613 (subscription; author reprint available here); Lisa S. Rosenmerkel, “Split-Interest Trusts, Filing Year 2012,” 33(3) Statistics of Income Bulletin 51 (Winter 2014); IRS SOI Tax Stats — Split-Interest Trust Statistics, irs.gov/pub/irs-soi.