Your best bet for determining the tax nature of this recovered property is the owner of the property, your best friend, as they are the one's who provided the necessary proof to convince the state of PA to send them the check. The brokerage firm is required to report the abandoned/lost property after three years of no contact by the owner. Hopefully your friend can provide some statements or tax documents that can be used to gain some understanding of what assets were in this brokerage account. This would give some info as to account numbers, broker that they dealt with, or they may be able to request the information from the brokerage itself. Most brokerage that I'm familiar with can electronically access account information going back at least seven years. Your friend will need to either provide more information or approach Charles Schwab for help in researching the account (s).
