If someone recently left you money or property, it is unlikely that you would owe an estate tax. Georgia no longer has this type of tax for new estates.
Additionally, the estate itself owed the tax under the previous system. Therefore, you as an inheritor would not have had to pay. There are some other financial obligations that heirs could have, however.
Court fees
To get access to the property in the first place, you might need to go through probate court. Depending on the complexity of your case, this could create various fees.
Almost every legal action has a fee. In Gwinnett County, the highest probate fees are around $170.
Again, this is typically something that the estate would pay. There are even sometimes options to proceed without paying the fees until the money in the estate is available.
Capital gains tax
The IRS requires people to pay capital gains tax when they make money off of many investments. Specifically, this tax is necessary when you sell something for a higher value than its adjusted cost basis. For your inheritance, that basis would probably equal the fair market value upon the date of death.
For example, imagine that you inherited shares of a technology company. Even if the person had owned those shares for many years, you would normally only pay taxes on the growth between the date of death and the date upon which you sold the stock.
As you can see, the general pattern is that the estate pays for many of the fees and taxes involved with inheriting property. There are also often ways to further minimize tax burden through estate planning, probate administration and financial strategy.
