Recently I ran across a Grantor trust agreement containing the language: "The tax identification of the trust is the Grantor's Social Security number. As a matter of convenience for financial records, this number may be formatted as xx-xxxxxxx."

The very idea of reformatting the SSN to resemble an EIN goes against everything I have ever learned about assigning TIN ownership to bank accounts, but I wondered if anyone else has used or experienced this type of SSN formatting with regards to Grantor trusts, and if so, if could you offer some insight as to how it works (or does not work) with regards to tax reporting?

Thank you.

It's nonsense...