<prompt> Human: Howdy financial wizards. My great Aunt just passed away, and shes left me a CD for 75,000. Im a 48 year old, married father of one, with no debt and a stable, thriving business of my own. My first plan was just to send a notarized letter to the bank asking them to close the account and send me a check which I would deposit into our savings, but possibly there are smarter read less Federal tax evaporating options which I havent considered. Thank you for your input and advice.  <response>: Im assuming that the 75K figure is a post-estateinheritance tax number. Your great-aunt would have to be extremely wealthy to trip the federal estate tax, but that would be paid by her estate before anything came to you. State inheritance taxes are a different story, since youd have to pay them in some cases, but a lot of states dont have them.With that in mind, there is no federal income tax on inheritance, so the only taxes youd have to worry about are the taxes youll pay going forward from the money that money makes, in the form of interest or investment returns. You could stick the first 5,500 in an IRA, or you could pay down debt, or make some big purchase. But otherwise you should only have the problem of paying taxes on future interestinvestment income, which is a good problem to have.42; unless your great-aunt was a tax evader who renounced her citizenship, in which case I admire her moxie but for tax purposes youre gonna take it in the shorts 