Death and Capital Gains Taxes (United States)
My understanding is that when you die, the stocks are sold and then   the money is given to the beneficiary or the stock is repurchased in   the beneficiaries name. This is wrong, and the conclusion you draw from michael's otherwise correct answer follows your false assumption.  You seem to understand the Estate Tax federal threshold. Jersey would have its own, and I have no idea how it works there. If the decedent happened to trade in the tax year prior to passing, normal tax rules apply.  Now, if the executor chooses to sell off and liquidate the estate to cash, there's no further taxable gain, a $5M portfolio can have millions in long term gain, but the step up basis pretty much negates all of it.  If that's the case, the beneficiaries aren't likely to repurchase those shares, in fact, they might not even know what the list of stocks was, unless they sifted through the asset list. But, that sale was unnecessary, assets can be divvied up and distributed in-kind, each beneficiary getting their fraction of the number of shares of each stock. And then your share of the $5M has a stepped up basis, meaning if you sell that day, your gains are near zero. You might owe a few dollars for whatever the share move in the time passing between the step up date and date you sell.  I hope that clarifies your misunderstanding.  By the way, the IRS is just an intermediary. It's congress that writes the laws, including the tangled web of tax code. The IRS is the moral equivalent of a great customer service team working for a company we don't care for.