Thanks for your advice. And yes, I do have an estate & Living Trust attorney, who was my mother's Living Trust estate attorney. When mother died, then I hired her to counsel me to navigate the plethora of laws and schedules govt. requires. And yes, an investment brokerage firm has the net proceeds from house sale. Funds will be released for my personal use, and for my sibling, the other heir, after some reimbursements are finalized. But for my own purposes, I am not clear if I am immune from any taxes other than personal income tax. Bluntly, I did not have sufficient annual income to worry about paying taxes or much of it. But inheriting in just a couple of months ago or less an amount which may be at $1M or less, not exceed it, caused me to find out if all I am expected to pay is personal income tax. When I was not even concerned about inheritance this or that, I did not pay much attention when Fed. policy revised tax laws on how much capital gains inheritance funds is immune from taxes, or up to how much was tax free and how much if into senior citizen age. I think locally or statewide, being in CA, transfer tax is imposed on the basis of how much from the inheritance if from selling one property goes toward buying another residential property. My plan is to buy a home costing less than amount I inherited.
Much appreciated if you can, at least, educate me on how laws were revised in more recent years designed to help protect or minimize taxes on people inheriting funds from deceased. More I know now, less any attorney can feed me convoluted language to stretch fees. And when it is time to actually hire some tax accountant, if Turbotax cannot accommodate me, I will pay for actual application and filing of tax forms, not for basic information.
Thanks.
