Choosing a CPA for an estate after a death

After a death, the household return the person filed while alive is not the only federal filing that may exist. IRS Publication 559 (2025), Survivors, Executors, and Administrators, says you generally must file the final income tax return of the decedent, and that the decedent's gross income, age, and filing status generally determine whether that return must be filed. The same publication says every domestic estate with gross income of $600 or more during a tax year must file Form 1041. If one or more beneficiaries of the domestic estate are nonresident aliens, the personal representative must file Form 1041 regardless of the estate's gross income.

Form 1041 is the U.S. Income Tax Return for Estates and Trusts. Publication 559 also lists Form 706, the United States Estate (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return, as a different form. A CPA who prepares household Form 1040 returns has not, by that fact alone, agreed to prepare Form 1041 or Form 706. Ask which of those forms the engagement includes.

• They have filed Form 1041 for an estate, and they say so in plain language. Preparing a living person's Form 1040 is a different stack of work.
• They separate the decedent's final Form 1040 from the estate's Form 1041 before they describe the fee. Publication 559 treats those as different filing requirements.
• They can say whether Form 706 is part of their work or a referral. Do not accept the phrase estate tax return until they name the form.
• They ask who the personal representative is, and what appointment papers exist, before they ask for a shoebox of 1099s.
• Publication 559 has a section on income in respect of a decedent, including wages and inherited individual retirement arrangements. They should be willing to say which items they still need in order to sort the final Form 1040 from Form 1041. This page does not do that sorting.

Profiles that selected trusts and estates are listed under trusts and estates. That filter is not a license check. Use how to verify a CPA license for the credential, and questions to ask a CPA for who will sign.

• The death certificate and the paper that appoints the personal representative, if a court or the will has produced one.
• The decedent's last filed Form 1040, and any extension already requested.
• A list of accounts that paid interest, dividends, wages, or retirement distributions after the date of death, and the 1099s in the decedent's name.
• The will, and any trust the CPA is being asked to read. Say if you do not have them yet.
• The names of the beneficiaries the personal representative knows about, and whether any of them lives outside the United States. Publication 559's Form 1041 rule treats a nonresident-alien beneficiary as its own fact.

• Will you prepare the decedent's final Form 1040, Form 1041, both, or neither?
• Is Form 706 included, or is that a different engagement?
• Which items do you still need before you can say what belongs on which return?
• Who will apply for any taxpayer identification number the estate needs, and is that inside this engagement?
• If the estate also holds a rental or other real estate, will you handle that activity, or is it the separate conversation described in the real-estate hiring note?

A rental inside an estate is not this page's subject. Real estate tax questions to settle before you hire a CPA is that conversation. Bring it up only so the scope does not hide a second specialty.

• They describe the estate as one more Form 1040 and do not mention Form 1041.
• They use estate tax return without saying whether they mean Form 1041 or Form 706.
• They promise that the estate will owe nothing, or that the beneficiaries will pay less, before they have the date of death, the income after death, and the appointment papers.
• They will not look at the split Publication 559 draws between the decedent's final return and the estate's return.
• They ask you to sign a return for a year they have not identified as the final Form 1040 or as Form 1041.