I have a question, and really don't know where to turn. The IRS is useless. I spent 20 minutes chasing phone prompts, only to get hung up on.

Anyway, my question is this. My stepmother left my brother and I a couple of fund accounts. There is nothing super huge, but they are a decent amount. (*less than $100K each) One of them is in a tax exempt Income fund. I don't know if anyone can answer this, or if I have to pay a tax person, but I want to know what happens if I cash out this fund. Do I pay capital gains on it back to when opened, or only up to my stepmothers passing as with a much, much smaller fund?

I have tried looking online, but all I get regarding tax law is ads for unpaid tax help.

O clue but if you want me to check into it I would be glad to stop at your house bro. I did my own taxes before my strokes, and got audited by the IRS twice. Once I won and didn't own them anything, and once I won and didn't owe them more than I paid. I am always here for you bro.

I just need to find out if there are tax consequences if I withdraw the money, or not. I don't want to leave it in the fund it's in, but if it's too big a tax crush, I'll have to.

We need to grab lunch one day soon, though.

Any day you want lunch, or just to meet up I am here for you bro.

It'd be worth paying a CPA in my opinion...

in general though, i believe you should get the stepped up cost basis which would mean the basis would be what it was worth at the time of your step-mom's passing... I'm not really familiar with tax exempt income funds, so could be wrong... but I would think the cost basis would step up so that if you did sell you'd pay gains on the stepped up basis.... but talk with a CPA

If you find out there is a big tax hit then you'll likely just want to plan on selling some off at a time to help deinvest the account without too big of a tax hit...

I've had to deinvest one of my accounts because I was over leveraged in it... but have done my best to manage it where the tax hit isn't awful.... last year I had some capital losses that I was able to use to help off-set a little bit of the gains....

there are some proposals for changes in tax code for capital gains, but the most recent proposal (I believe) would only affect those with a AGI over $400k for single filer and $450k for joint filers...