How to Open a Trump Account for Your Child in 2026

The government is going to put $1,000 into an investment account for your child, and starting July 4, 2026 you can add to it. Claiming the seed is close to a formality. The parts worth your attention are the two levers almost no coverage mentions: where a second stream of free money hides, and a small recordkeeping habit that decides whether your own contributions get taxed once or twice.

This is the mechanics guide. If you are still deciding whether a Trump Account is the right home for your savings at all, start with our comparison of Trump Accounts against 529s and custodial Roth IRAs, then come back here to open one. For the full eligibility and rulebook, see who qualifies and the contribution rules.

What a Trump Account is, in one paragraph

A Trump Account is a tax-deferred investment account for a child under 18, created by the 2025 tax law (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act). Money inside it has to sit in a low-cost fund tracking the S&P 500 or a similar index of American stocks, and it is locked until the year the child turns 18. After that, it behaves like a traditional IRA. The headline feature is the one-time $1,000 federal seed for eligible newborns. The quiet feature is that anyone, including an employer, can add up to $5,000 a year.

Before you start: confirm your child qualifies for the seed

The $1,000 is not deposited automatically. You request it, and only children who are US citizens with a Social Security number, born between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028, are eligible for it. You can open a Trump Account for a child born outside that window, but there is no seed in that case, which changes the math considerably. The full eligibility rules cover the edge cases.

How to open and fund one, step by step

The IRS released its first guidance in Notice 2025-68 and is still finalizing the enrollment portal, so treat these steps as the shape of the process and verify the specifics at IRS.gov before you act.

1. Get the child a Social Security number first. No SSN, no seed and no account. For a newborn, request the SSN through the hospital birth-registration process so it arrives before you enroll.
2. Request the $1,000 pilot contribution. This runs through the IRS as part of the 2026 filing season. It is a claim you make, tied to the child's SSN and birth date, not a benefit that shows up on its own.
3. Choose where the account is held. Trump Accounts are offered through banks, brokerages, and fund providers. Because the investment menu is restricted to an index fund by law, the deciding factor between providers is cost and simplicity, not fund selection.
4. Fund it, if you choose to. You can add up to $5,000 a year. You do not have to add anything to keep the seed; the $1,000 can sit and compound on its own.
5. Confirm the money is invested. As with any account, the seed and your contributions have to be in the index fund to grow. Cash sitting uninvested earns nothing and wastes the entire point.

The free money most parents miss: employer contributions

Here is the lever that rarely makes the summaries. A new provision, Section 128, lets your employer contribute up to $2,500 a year into your child's Trump Account, and that money is excluded from your taxable wages. It counts inside the $5,000 annual cap rather than on top of it, but it is still someone else funding your child's account with pre-tax dollars.

The catch is administrative, not legal: most employers have not built this into their benefits yet. A short email to HR asking whether the company plans to offer Section 128 Trump Account contributions costs you nothing and can be worth real money. At $2,500 a year, invested for 18 years at a 7% return, an employer's contributions alone compound to about $85,000, none of it out of your paycheck. Even a partial match is found money.

The recordkeeping trap that can tax your money twice

This is the part to slow down on. A Trump Account splits into two kinds of money for tax purposes, and they are treated very differently on the way out:

• Your contributions go in after tax. They come back out tax-free, because you already paid tax on those dollars.
• The earnings and the government seed grow tax-deferred and are taxed as ordinary income when withdrawn, the same as wages.

That first line only holds if you can prove how much you contributed. The account works like a nondeductible traditional IRA, where your after-tax deposits create what the IRS calls basis. If you contribute for 18 years and never track the total, then years later nobody can cleanly separate your tax-free contributions from the taxable growth. The practical result is that money you already paid tax on gets taxed again as income.

Put a number on it. Max the account at $5,000 a year for 18 years and you contribute $90,000 of your own after-tax money. Fail to document it and, at a 22% ordinary-income rate, you are exposing that $90,000 to roughly $19,800 of tax it should never owe. The fix is boring and free: keep an annual record of every contribution, the way you would for a nondeductible IRA, and hand it to whoever files the taxes when withdrawals begin.

What to actually put in it

There is almost nothing to decide. By law, the money has to be in a mutual fund or ETF that tracks the S&P 500 or another index of primarily American stocks. There is no glide path that shifts toward bonds as your child approaches 18, which is a real difference from a 529 and something to plan around as the unlock date nears. For an 18-year horizon a broad US index fund is a reasonable default anyway. Pick the lowest-cost qualifying fund your provider offers and leave it alone.

Should you add your own money?

Claiming the seed is close to automatic in its logic: it is free, it compounds, and the only cost is enrollment. Whether to route your own savings here is the harder question, and it turns on the ordinary-income tax treatment above. For most families, a custodial Roth IRA or a 529 keeps more of your own money after tax, and our knowledge desk walks through why the free seed does not mean the account is the best home for everything. Take the gift first. Decide about your own dollars second.

Quick answers

Is the $1,000 automatic? No. You request it through the IRS, and only eligible children born 2025 through 2028 receive it. Opening the account and claiming the seed are two steps.

Can I open one for a child born before 2025? Yes, but there is no $1,000 seed. Without the seed, compare a 529 or custodial Roth first, because the Trump Account's tax treatment is its weakest feature for your own contributions.

Where should I open it? Through a bank, brokerage, or fund provider that offers Trump Accounts. Since the investment is a fixed index fund by law, choose on cost and ease, not on fund lineup.

Sources

• IRS and Treasury guidance on Trump Accounts, Notice 2025-68: IRS.gov newsroom
• Congressional Research Service, Trump Accounts overview and rules: Congress.gov R48910

Figures reviewed July 1, 2026. Growth numbers assume a 7% annual return and are illustrative, not guaranteed. This is educational information, not tax or investment advice; some details await final IRS regulations, so verify current rules at IRS.gov or with a tax professional.