Executor's Checklist: Tax Steps After Someone Dies in 2026

The federal tax filings, in the order you'll typically need them

1. Get an EIN for the estate (Form SS-4). An estate is its own taxpayer for federal purposes — it needs its own Employer Identification Number, separate from the decedent's Social Security number, before you can open an estate bank account or file an estate tax return.
2. File Form 56, Notice Concerning Fiduciary Relationship. This tells the IRS you're the one authorized to act on the estate's behalf — it's what lets the IRS talk to you instead of requiring a separate power of attorney for every filing.
3. File the decedent's final Form 1040. Covers their income from January 1 through the date of death — wages, investment income, and anything else that would normally go on their individual return. Due on the normal individual filing deadline for that tax year, not accelerated by the death.
4. File Form 1041 if the estate itself earns income. Once assets are in the estate (interest, dividends, rental income, gains from selling estate property before distribution), that income is reported on the estate's own return, not the decedent's personal one. Required only if the estate's gross income is $600 or more for the tax year.
5. File Form 706 if the estate is large enough (or portability is being elected). Required when the gross estate exceeds the federal basic exclusion amount — $15,000,000 per person for 2026 — or when a surviving spouse wants to preserve the deceased spouse's unused exclusion via portability, even if no tax is owed. Due 9 months after the date of death (IRC §6075(a)). See the Estate Tax Guide for how the tax itself is calculated and what portability actually protects.
6. Check for a state inheritance or estate tax filing. Roughly a dozen states plus DC have their own estate tax, and a handful of states separately tax inheritances received by beneficiaries — both are independent of, and in addition to, anything owed federally. See the state-specific section below.
7. Request an estate tax closing letter once Form 706 has been processed, if one was filed — this is the IRS's confirmation that the return has been accepted, useful for closing out the estate with the probate court and distributing remaining assets with confidence.

The Form 706 extension most people don't know exists

If 9 months isn't enough time — and for a complex estate with hard-to-value assets, it often isn't — filing Form 4768 by the original due date gets an automatic 6-month extension to file, per the IRS's own Instructions for Form 4768. The catch, and it's an important one: this extends the time to file the return, not the time to pay the tax. Interest accrues on any unpaid estate tax from the original 9-month due date regardless of the extension, so an executor who expects the estate to owe tax should pay a reasonable estimate by the original deadline even while using the extra 6 months to finish the actual paperwork.

State deadlines: two verified, the rest need a direct check

State inheritance-tax filing deadlines are set independently of the federal 9-month clock, and this calculator suite currently tracks a verified deadline for two states specifically:

• Kentucky — for deaths before July 1, 2026, the inheritance tax return is due within 18 months of the date of death. For deaths on or after July 1, 2026, that deadline was extended to 36 months by HB 757 (2026 Ky. Acts ch. 161, signed after a veto override).
• Pennsylvania — the inheritance tax return becomes delinquent 9 months after the date of death. Paying within 3 months of death earns a 5% discount on the tax due — one of the few state inheritance tax rules that rewards filing early rather than merely penalizing filing late.

For every other state with an inheritance or estate tax — including Maryland, Nebraska, and New Jersey on the inheritance-tax side, and the dozen-plus states with their own estate tax covered in the Estate Tax Guide — confirm the exact filing deadline directly with that state's Department of Revenue or Taxation. This site doesn't independently track a specific due date for those states, and stating one without verifying it against a primary source isn't a risk worth taking with a real filing deadline.

Frequently asked questions