@maoakden wrote:
Thanks for your response. I appreciate you taking the time to share. I was told by a tax preparer I couldn't file a 2024 return becauseshe passed in 2023. Obviously they were wrong. Thanks again.
That's a little complicated. If a person has income after their death, that income is received by a separate legal entity known as the estate, and the estate must file tax returns. (One example would be an author, whose books continue to sell, and they have an estate to manage royalties and rights for the work.)
I don't actually know what you need to do in this situation, where the person is due a credit but does not have after-death income. For a living person, you would use the IRC 1341 claim of right. Possibly, you would have to file an estate tax return to claim the credit. That uses a different version of turbotax and requires a different tax form (form 1041), and the estate must have a separate tax ID number, not the person's SSN. It could be that the cost of legal advice is more than the credit would be. (Depending on her income level in 2023, the credit would be between $300 and $1000.)
You may want to continue to seek advice.
