[Code of Federal Regulations]
[Title 26, Volume 18]
[Revised as of April 1, 2004]
From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access
[CITE: 26CFR301.7701-6]

[Page 622]
 
                       TITLE 26--INTERNAL REVENUE
 
    CHAPTER I--INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY 
                               (CONTINUED)
 
PART 301_PROCEDURE AND ADMINISTRATION--Table of Contents
 
                               Definitions
 
Sec. 301.7701-6  Definitions; person, fiduciary.

    (a) Person. The term person includes an individual, a corporation, a 
partnership, a trust or estate, a joint-stock company, an association, 
or a syndicate, group, pool, joint venture, or other unincorporated 
organization or group. The term also includes a guardian, committee, 
trustee, executor, administrator, trustee in bankruptcy, receiver, 
assignee for the benefit of creditors, conservator, or any person acting 
in a fiduciary capacity.
    (b) Fiduciary--(1) In general. Fiduciary is a term that applies to 
persons who occupy positions of peculiar confidence toward others, such 
as trustees, executors, and administrators. A fiduciary is a person who 
holds in trust an estate to which another has a beneficial interest, or 
receives and controls income of another, as in the case of receivers. A 
committee or guardian of the property of an incompetent person is a 
fiduciary.
    (2) Fiduciary distinguished from agent. There may be a fiduciary 
relationship between an agent and a principal, but the word agent does 
not denote a fiduciary. An agent having entire charge of property, with 
authority to effect and execute leases with tenants entirely on his own 
responsibility and without consulting his principal, merely turning over 
the net profits from the property periodically to his principal by 
virtue of authority conferred upon him by a power of attorney, is not a 
fiduciary within the meaning of the Internal Revenue Code. In cases when 
no legal trust has been created in the estate controlled by the agent 
and attorney, the liability to make a return rests with the principal.
    (c) Effective date. The rules of this section are effective as of 
January 1, 1997.

[T.D. 8697, 61 FR 66593, Dec. 18, 1996]