The new Trump Account program can put $1,000 in long-term savings in your child’s name if they were born in 2025 or if you are expecting in 2026, 2027, or 2028. However, the funds won’t appear on their own. To open the account, parents or legal guardians will have to submit a particular IRS form.
The child must be a citizen of the United States, have a current Social Security number, and be born between 2025 and 2028 in order to qualify for the federal $1,000 pilot deposit.
This money could be seen as a starting point for the child’s future, a long-term investment, or a savings vault for future goals… like college.
How to enroll and important dates
IRS Form 4547 must be filed by parents and legal guardians in order to choose and create the first Trump Account for a child who qualifies. An online tool is expected to be launched in the middle of 2026, and you can use Form 4547 when filing your 2025 tax return next year.
According to information released online by the White House, “After the election is made, beginning in May 2026, Treasury or its agent will send information to the individual who made the election to activate the account through an authentication process and complete the opening of the initial Trump account,” For eligible children born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, the Treasury handles the initial setup and, once the account is opened, makes the one-time $1,000 contribution.
There are other age groups that can open an account apart from newborns. Any child under the age of 18 can open a Trump account at the end of the election year. If the election takes place in 2026, the child must have been born after December 31, 2008.
Generally speaking, the $1,000 initial investment cannot be removed before the child turns 18 on January 1st—and it doesn’t come in the form of cash either: The law allows only broad U.S. equity index funds with annual fees limited to 0.10%. The entire balance can then be transferred to a preferred brokerage by parents or guardians through a trustee-to-trustee rollover.
Extra funds and participation in the project
Thanks to Michael and Susan Dell‘s charitable donation, some families can receive an extra $250 in addition to the $1,000 from the federal government (more information will be given in 2026). For the moment it focuses on the first 25 million American children under the age of 10 who reside in ZIP codes with average earnings under $150,000. Child savings accounts are about “forming tangible hopes,” according to researcher William Elliott III. “They don’t just give up,” he said.
Elliott warns that “If they don’t do automatic enrollment, you’d never get full participation or anything close to it,” He estimates that with aggressive marketing, sign-ups could reach 40% to 50%.
In other places, automatic systems have already been successful. Every public school kindergartener in San Francisco is given a $50 account through the Kindergarten to College Program, which is the “first universal, automatic Child Savings Account program in the country,” “putting students on a path to college from their first day of school.”
“A thousand dollars in and of itself from the federal government is nice,” Elliott said. “It will be helpful but not enough.” “You have the opportunity to really stack wealth in these accounts.” he continues, highlighting collaborations. Contributions could be made by parents, grandparents, friends, employers, eligible charities, and governmental organizations.
However, there’s a $5,000 annual contribution cap per kid (with cost-of-living increases after 2027); eligible charities and governmental organizations are able to contribute more without going against this cap. The annual cap is not applied to the $1,000 federal seed.
Planning the future from the very beginning
The potential is easy to visualize, but the initiative is optional.
Do you have doubts? The IRS published some guidelines online that can be already very useful. And according to TrumpAccounts.gov, more details will be released on December 17.