1041 Additional Extension

[lbones]

I have a client that is the court appointed fiduciary of his Aunts estate.  His Aunt passed away in 1984 and she had a house that was not sold until 2022 and for whatever reason, an estate return was never filed.  I am trying to establish the basis of the property as a step up is not valid and the closest I can come up with is the assessment of 18K from the 1999 timeframe (property sold for 207K).  My clients lawyer has contacted a real estate agent that is going through some old MLS listings on similar homes sold in that area in that timeframe to help with the basis.  The issue is that I am running out of time as my extension expires on 9/15/23.  I have been trying to get an answer on the availability to extend a second time until the basis information is received but I have not been able to come up with the correct method to do this. 

Is it possible to get a second extension and what is the proper method to process it 

[IRonMaN]

You only get one extension.

The house has been in her name for almost 40 years after her death?  No improvements have been made to the house in all of those years?

[TaxGuyBill]

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@lbones wrote:

 I am running out of time as my extension expires on 9/15/23. 

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You are not running out of time, the client is running out of time.  Just because the client has been dragging their feet doesn't mean that you should worry about it.  Don't let your client stress you. 

I assume you have told the client YOUR deadline (which is likely before the IRS deadline), and leave it in their hands to see if they give you the required information on time.

[sjrcpa]

Client can hire an appraiser to get a "retrospective" appraisal for the date of death. Probably can't happen by 9/15, though.

I'm looking at one now - appraiser went back to 1992, with stops in 2004, 2007, etc for various deaths through the years,.

[IRonMaN]

Based on a selling price of $207,000 and a 1999 assessment of $18,000, how much can you really be off if you knock a couple of bucks off the $18,000 to come up with a guesstimate of the 1984 value?  But again, there were no improvements made in all of those years?

[BobKamman]

Do the best you can with what you have by 9/15, then file an amended return if it turns out wrong.  

You can always use zero as the cost basis.  But there's not much risk in using something higher than that.  How many square feet in the house?  And what was the range of price per square foot, back then?  Use the low end of the range.  Newspaper back issues are online, and they still had classified ads back then.

Don't tell your client why it can't be done.  Tell him how you are going to do it.