Thanks - I efiled last year, guess I'll do that this year if USAA offers TurboTax for free again. I just downloaded forms and instructions to do a penciled-in rough estimate while I'm waiting for the 1099-INTs to come in. It's crazy - we're not even itemizing, we've got 2 new schedules this year and it took me a couple of hours to go through the instructions and do the schedules to find out we qualify for the "standard" $1000 real estate tax deduction the $800 "pay to work" credit without adjustments. I thought our taxes were supposed to be getting simpler - I pity the people who are trying to figure out if/how much they qualify for all the new credits Obama put out last year. And I still have to figure our state tax (CT isn't a "piggyback" state)!

Thirdfrt, Just for your information, The basic inheritance, is the cost mom paid for it and the money you received for the house, the difference is technically your capital gain, minus all fees to sell it. Ex- mom paid 5,000.00 you sold for 100,000 and had 6,000 in fees to sell the home. Technically, you made 89,000.00 on the property. I would consult a tax professional for read up online at the irs website on inheritance and capital gain. I don't think you would pay any capital gain on the house only because it was an inheritance and depending on the amount of money, which is small, you probably don't have any tax on it. You can't claim a loss on a situation where you can't prove you actually lost money by selling the property, which you didn't, because you didn't pay for the property and it has accumulated some value since your mom bought it.

Don't live in NJ but that surely won't be a good thing for anyone. That might put a lot of people into a higher tax bracket. Don't think at this point that would be a good thing for this economy either. There would have to be a restructuring of the tax brackets or a threshhold whereby people under that limit would still be able to claim those deductions. Sounds like time to put pen to paper. Good luck on some better news on this one.

Yes, I know that. House A is our primary residence--that's essential so we can get the tax deduction when we sell that. C isn't an investment property--so I don't know if that advice would work for us. It's a little complicated. Our 18% share is because we refused to take money from MIL's assets when we had huge legal fees when other relatives were stealing from her. We were legally entitled to be repaid for bringing the matter to the court's attention, but as the outlaws had already stolen a quarter of a mil from her, we weren't comfortable taking even a penny of the little she had left for her end care (she had Alzheimer's). The lawyers (ours, MIL's financial guardian, and the out-laws' lawyer) and came up with the solution that they'd put a percentage of the house in our name which we'd get after she died. She did (outlaws never even told us, so we missed the funeral, but that's another post, GRRR). So, long story short--I'm not exactly sure how you would classify that bit of property--we've owned it on paper for a few years, but haven't had use of it, nor income--but we also haven't had any expenses for it's upkeep, either. So it's all a little complicated. Only thing I know, is that we really couldn't afford the money we put out at the time--but we felt we couldn't afford NOT to either, and now my sweet MIL is at peace, and we will finally recoup what we spent to protect her from a bunch of folks who professed to love her with their mouths, while they were shoving their hands into her pockets. But I do appreciate the suggestion and will bring it up when I get to sit down with my accountant. I was sort of thinking that I might want to invest in some sort of property eventually, once we've liquidated all this extra real estate we've found ourselves holding at the moment.