Jonas Romule called Suzie. The accountant asked Suzie. “Suzie, can you tell me what your parents paid for this stock that you sold and what did they pay for the house?” “Why are you asking?” Suzie asked. I have to compute the capital gains taxes. Its a rather complicated formula. You get to elect a partial step-up, but I have to determine what is the basis first. “How do you do that?” Suzie asked. “Well first, we have to determine what the property was worth when your father died. You see because of a old court ruling, the basis of the property for your mother was the value on the date that your father died. Once we get that, then we need to determine what other assets your mother had when she died in order to allocate the increase in basis permitted by the statute”, the accountant replied. “Wow, does that mean we might owe taxes on what we inherited?” Suzie inquired, nervously. “Its possible, we just have to run the numbers”, the accountant replied.