These might be some relatively basic questions below but I don't proclaim to be a tax expert and wanted to ask some people more knowledgeable than myself to help reassure myself.
Background:
My father passed in mid 2019 and his wife (my mother, died about three years prior to his death). I am the Administrator for his Estate. My father had prepared his affairs prior to his death to help simplify things upon his passing. He sold all this non-liquid assets in the tax year of 2018 or earlier which included stocks, real estate, household belonging, etc. During the year of 2019, he only had a Military pension (which included medical benefits) and interest income from both a credit union account and a money market account. He had a car and some simple belongings. The car was sold to a local dealership and most of this remaining belongings were given to charity (some small items were kept by the family). For the year of 2019, he lived in a rented apartment and only derived income from this pension and interest from the two accounts described prior. After his death, he had forgotten to list my brother and I as beneficiaries for the money market account so we had to go the route of Probate and I hired a probate attorney to handle the paperwork and to advise me.
I need to file a final federal tax return for 2019 for my father. As far as I can tell, the key items which should apply to this would be any pension income for that year and interest earned on the funds he deposited into the two interest-bearing accounts. I have a copy of Turbotax Deluxe 2019 which I was considering to use to guide me through his return. Additionally, all his assets (funds from the financial institutions) were transferred to a local credit union to hold the money until the probate process was completed. I read online that a Form 1041 is normally required to file for Estates. However, the total interest earned at the credit union for the Estate account was less than $27 for the year 2019. As such, I'm assuming no filling of any paperwork is necessary given the low interest amount received. My probate attorney recommended that I use an accountant for his final taxes for 2019 and referred me to a local firm he's familiar with. However, when I called another accountant (not the one attorney recommended), he said he'd be happy to do the return but recommended that I just file it myself without professional assistance and implied that it should be a problem.
My two questions are:
1) Given the information above, would only a Form 1040 be required to be submitted to the IRS for the year of 2019? Anything special here I should know about?
2) Would no taxes be due for the following tax year for the Estate if all the funds are distributed to the beneficiaries before end-of-year 2020 and any further interest income earned during the year of 2020 would amount to less than $600 total?
3) Would there be any benefit to having an accountant complete my father's taxes for the 2019 tax year? Is there anything I'm missing here insofar as me needing the services of an accountant (or maybe the attorney simply feels better about a professional doing the return)?
Please let me know your insights and thank you.
