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My Mom had nothing when she passed. The house sold for just enough tonpay back taxes and Medicaid. I asked my tax repairer if I needed to file taxes and she said no. All Mom would be entitled to would be her claiming herself as a dependent and that was maybe $300. Which is what it would cost me to have her do Moms taxes. Mom had not filed taxes in 10 years. So I did not worry about it.
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Reply to JoAnn29
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Kathleenk, welcome to the forum. Even after my Dad had passed, while his estate was in Probate for almost two years, I needed to pay his income taxes. Dad had dividends/interest on his stock and bank accounts which were high enough for his estate to file taxes for those two years.
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Reply to freqflyer
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My parents stopped filing taxes when social security and VA Aid and Attendance was their only income and it was going towards their rent in Assisted Living. They had signed their wealth over to me and I was managing their money for 8 years before both of them passed.
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Reply to lealonnie1
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I'm an AARP volunteer tax aide, and we've been told to encourage everyone to file even if they have very low income and don't owe taxes. One reason is to avoid identity theft. Anyone can have their taxes done for free through this program, though the focus is on elders and lower income folks. In our state, there are some tax credits for lower-income folks that are only available if people who file taxes.

Back when the federal government gave out COVID stimulus checks, they went automatically to people on government pensions and those who had filed taxes. If you weren't on social security and hadn't filed taxes, you didn't get the payment because you weren't in any government data base. AARP volunteers ended up filing taxes for a lot of people just so they could get the payment; fortunately there was the option to check off if a person hadn't received the previous COVID payments, so people were able to get payments retroactively.
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Reply to newbiewife
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My Mom is 95 and this past year she cashed in several mature EE bonds. Her SS is not even $1600 but the income from the bonds will definitely create a tax exposure, where in the past several years she hasn't had enough taxable income to file.

If you are uncertain you can consult over the phone with a CPA. Or, go through an app like TurboTax, HR Block, etc. Some have a free version.

Or, you can ask on bogleheads.org which is crowd-source forum for financial and investment questions.
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Reply to Geaton777
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