How much hassle is it inheriting shares?
If you prefer the stock rather than cash, you might find it easier to take the cash, report it, and then buy the same stock from within your own country.
There are not necessarily large shareholders, maybe every other Joe Schmoe owns 3 or 5 shares; and many shares might be inside investment funds. If you are looking for voting rights, typically, the banks/investment companies that host the accounts of the individual shareholders/fund owners have the collective voting rights, so the Fidelity's and Vanguard's of the world will be the main and deciding voters. That is very common. The money goes to the seller.  There are a lot of behind the scenes things that happen, and some transactions are very complicated with many parties involved (evidenced by all the comments on @keshlam's perfectly reasonable high-level answer), but ultimately the money goes to the seller.  Sometimes the seller is the company.  The billions of shares that change hands each day are moving between other individuals like you and investment funds; these transactions have no direct impact on the company's financials, in general. "It depends on when she became the shareholder of record. When your wife received the stock, was ownership clearly transferred to her?  If it was, then she should have the right to sell it if she wants.  The gross amount of the sale will be reported to the IRS, and then it will be up to you (and/or your tax advisers) to determine its tax basis so that you pay tax only on the appropriate gain. If she hasn't become the shareholder of record yet, then it can be a bit of a mess.  Your wife's father saying ""Merry Christmas; I'm giving you 500 shares of AAPL"" doesn't transfer ownership to you.  Him calling up the brokerage and transferring them into an account with her name (or her name and his name) does. Is your wife's father's estate settled yet?  If not, then sorting all of this out is part of the fun.  If it is, and this asset was left dangling out there, then that's beyond anything I know about." I don't know the legal framework for RSUs, so I'm not sure what is mandatory and what is chosen by the company issuing them. I recently reviewed one companies offering and it basically looked like a flat purchase of stock on the VEST date. So even if I got a zillion shares for $1 GRANTED to me, if it was 100 shares that vested at $100 on the 1st, then I would owe tax on the market value on the day of vest. Further, the company would withhold 25% of the VEST for federal taxes and 10% for state taxes, if I lived in a state with income tax. The withholding rate was flat, regardless of what my actual tax rate was. Capital gains on the change from the market value on the VEST date was calculated as short-term or long-term based on the time since the VEST date. So if my 100 shares went up to $120, I would pay the $20 difference as short term or long term based on how long I had owned them since the VEST. That said, I don't know if this is universal. Your HR folks should be able to help answer at least some of these questions, though I know their favorite response when they don't know is that you should consult a tax professional. Good luck. "It's called ""dilution"". Usually it is done to attract more investors, and yes - the existing share holders will get diluted and their share of ownership shrinks. As a shareholder you can affect the board decisions (depends on your stake of ownership), but usually you'll want to attract more investors to keep the company running, so not much you can do to avoid it. The initial investors/employees in a startup company are almost always diluted out. Look at what happened to Steve Jobs at Apple, as an example." Not knowing the US laws at all, you should worry more about having the best stock portfolio and less about taxes. My 0,02€ My take is that he can avoid a big tax hit by leaving it as and giving   the untouched fund to the heirs. 100% correct. By withdrawing now he'll be subjected to the income tax on the gains. Since his gains are almost the whole value of the account, he'll actually find himself in the highest bracket, not the lowest as Joe suggests. Not only that, but his SS income will become taxable as well. Capital gains are included in the AGI. By leaving as is, the heirs will get stepped up basis, and the whole 700K will not be taxed (its below the estate tax threshold, and the basis for the heirs will be the value at death). Here's a different take:  Look through the lists of companies  that offer shareholder perks. Here's one from Hargreaves Lansdown.  See if you can find one that you already spend money with with a low required shareholding where the perks would actually be usable.  Note that in your case, being curious about the whole thing and based in London, you don't have to rule out the AGM-based perks, unlike me. My reason for this is simple: with 3 out of 4 of the companies we bought shares in directly (all for the perks), we've made several times the dividend in savings on money we would have spent anyway (either with the company in which we bought shares or a direct competitor).  This means that you can actually make back the purchase price plus dealing fee quite quickly (probably in 2/4 in our case), and you still have the shares. We've found that pub/restaurant/hotel brands work well if you use them or their equivalents anyway. Caveats: It's more enjoyable than holding a handful of shares in a company you don't care about, and if you want to read the annual reports you can relate this to your own experience, which might interest you given your obvious curiosity. Putting your money in the same account as a parent could cause many problems, with very few benefits. One of you would have to claim the dividends and capital gains that the fund might earn during the year. That person might have to pay taxes on those earnings. You would have to find some way of figuring out how to split the costs, and somebody would have to reimburse the other. If one person wanted to sell, figuring out which shares to sell would be much more complex. If these are retirement accounts, which have maximum limits based on income, and the use of other retirement accounts, there is no way to co-mingle the funds. Even if it was possible to combine the funds, the reality is that two people decades apart have different investment goals, and risk tolerances, so the types of investments that a great for one, are very poor for the other. The only benefit is that an existing account would already have more than the minimum investment, so some investments would be easier to make. Also some investments have lower fees if you meet specific investment thresholds. If the fund increases in value by 10% in a year, it doesn't make a difference if the value at the start of the year was 10K or 100K. The rate is the same. The benefits are minor and few; the drawbacks are many; and some situations make it impossible to co-mingle the funds. "All transactions within an IRA are irrelevant as far as the taxation of the  distributions from the IRA are concerned. You can only take cash from an IRA, and a (cash) distribution from a Traditional IRA is taxable as ordinary income (same as interest from a bank, say) without the advantage of any of the special tax rates for long-term capital gains or qualified dividends even if that cash was generated within the IRA from sales of stock etc. In short, just as with what is alleged to occur with respect to Las Vegas, what happens within the IRA stays within the IRA. Note: some IRA custodians are willing to make a distribution of stock or mutual fund shares to you, so that ownership of the 100 shares of GE, say, that you hold within your IRA is transferred to you in your personal (non-IRA) brokerage account. But, as far as the IRS is concerned, your IRA custodian sold the stock as the closing price on the day of the distribution, gave you the cash, and you promptly bought the 100 shares (at the closing price) in your personal brokerage account with the cash that you received from the IRA. It is just that your custodian saved the transaction fees involved in selling 100 shares of GE stock inside the IRA and you saved the transaction fee for buying 100 shares of GE stock in your personal brokerage account. Your basis in the 100 shares of GE stock is the ""cash_ that you imputedly received as a distribution from the IRA, so that when you sell the shares at some future time, your capital gains (or losses) will be with respect to this basis. The capital gains that occurred within the IRA when the shares were imputedly sold by your IRA custodian remain within the IRA, and you don't get to pay taxes on that at capital gains rates. That being said, I would like to add to what NathanL told you in his answer. Your mother passed away in 2011 and you are now 60 years old (so 54 or 55 in 2011?). It is likely that your mother was over 70.5 years old when she passed away, and so she likely had started taking Required Minimum Distributions from her IRA before her death. So, You should have been taking RMDs from the Inherited IRA starting with Year 2012. (The RMD for 2011, if not taken already by your mother before   she passed away, should have been taken by her estate, and distributed to her heirs in accordance with her will, or, if she died intestate, in accordance with state law and/or probate court directives). There would   not have been any 10% penalty tax due on the RMDs taken by you on the grounds that you were not 59.5 years old as yet; that rule applies to owners (your mom in this case) and not to beneficiaries (you in this case). So, have you taken the RMDs for 2012-2016? Or were you waiting to turn 59.5 before taking distributions in the mistaken belief that you would have to pay a 10% penalty for early wthdrawal?  The penalty for not taking a RMD is 50% of the amount not distributed; yes, 50%. If you didn't take RMDs from the Inherited IRA for years 2012-2016, I recommend that you consult a CPA with expertise in tax law. Ask the CPA if he/she is an Enrolled Agent with the IRS: Enrolled Agents have to pass an exam administered by the IRS to show that they really understand tax law and are not just blowing smoke, and can represent you in front of the IRS in cases of audit etc," Of course, you've already realized that some of that is that smaller estates are more common than larger estates.  But it seems unlikely that there are four times as many estates between $10 and $11 million as above that range.   People who expect to die with an estate subject to inheritance tax tend to prepare.   I don't know how common it is, but if the surviving member of a couple remarries, then the new spouse gets a separate exemption.  And of course spouses inherit from spouses without tax.  In theory this could last indefinitely.  In practice, it is less likely.  But if a married couple has $20 million, the first spouse could leave $15 million to the second and $5 million to other heirs.  The second spouse could leave $10 million to a third spouse (after remarrying) and another $5 million to children with the first spouse.  All without triggering the estate tax.   People can put some of their estate into a trust.  This can allow the heirs to continue to control the money while not paying inheritance tax.  Supposedly Ford (of Ford Motor Company) took that route.   Another common strategy is to give the maximum without gift tax each year.  That's at least $14k per donor and recipient per year.  So a married couple with two kids can transfer $56k per year.  Plus $56k for the kids' spouses.  And if there are four grandchildren, that's another $112k.  Great-grandchildren count too.  That's more than a million every five years.  So given ten years to prepare, parents can transfer $2 million out of the estate and to the heirs without tax.   Consider the case of two wealthy siblings.  They've each maxed out their gifts to their own heirs.  So they agree to max out their gifts to their sibling's heirs.  This effectively doubles the transfer amount without tax implication.   Also realize that they can pretransfer assets at the current market rate.  So if a rich person has an asset that is currently undervalued, it may make sense to transfer it immediately as a gift.  This will use up some of the estate exemption.  But if you're going to transfer the asset eventually, you might as well do so when the value is optimal for your purpose.   These are just the easy things to do.  If someone wants, they can do more complicated things that make it harder for the IRS to track value.   For example, the Bezos family invested in Amazon.com when Jeff Bezos was starting it.  As a result, his company could survive capital losses that another company might not.  The effect of this was to make him fabulously rich and his parents richer than they were.  But he won't pay inheritance tax until his parents actually transfer the estate to him (and I believe they actually put it in a charitable trust).  If his company had failed instead, he still would have been supported by the capital provided by his parents while it was open (e.g. his salary).  But he wouldn't have paid inheritance tax on it.   There are other examples of the same pattern:  Fred Smith of FedEx; Donald Trump; Bill Gates of Microsoft; etc.  The prime value of the estate was not in its transfer, but in working together while alive or through a family trust.  The child's company became much more valuable as a result of a parent's wealth.  And in two of those examples, the child was so successful that the parent became richer as a result.  So the parent's estate does count.  Meanwhile, another company might fail, leaving the estate below the threshold despite a great deal of parental support.   And those aren't even fiddles.  Those children started real companies and offered their parents real investment opportunities.  A family that wants to do so can do a lot more with arrangements.  Of course, the IRS may be looking for some of them.   The point being that the estate might be more than $11 million earlier, but the parents can find ways to reduce it below the inheritance tax exemption by the time that they die. "Securities and ETFs are also subjected to Estate Tax.  Some ways: Draft a ""Transfer on Death"" instruction to the broker, that triggers a transfer to an account in the beneficiary's name, in most cases avoiding probate. If the broker does not support it, find another broker.  Give your brokerage and bank password/token to your beneficiary. Have him transfer out holdings within hours of death.  Create a Trust, that survives even after death of an individual.  P.S. ETF is treated as Stock (a company that owns other companies), regardless of the nature of the holdings.  P.S.2 Above suggestions are only applicable to nonresident alien of the US." Since you reference SS, I surmise you are in the US.  Stock you inherit gets a stepped up basis when it's inherited. (so long as it was not contained within a tax deffered retirement account.) When you sell, the new basis is taken from that day you inherited it. It should be minimal compared to your desire to diversify. "It becomes ""yours"" when it leaves the trust. Until that point the Trust owns the shares attributable to your account. There are some different arrangements out there, in the cases of some of the smaller 401(k) providers, where the assets are held in annuity products, or even individual annuities in the case of 403(b) plans.  To further answer the question, the trust and  trustee own and hold the account before you take a distribution. In a lot of cases the 401(k) recordkeeper has a trust company that they use to serve as the custodian (person or entity who retains the assets). In some plans you have an individual Trustee or a Corporate Trustee. Those setups are not good for that person or company because they are ultimately responsible for backing the assets in the plan, and as you can imagine, leaving that responsibility to one person is not safe for that individual.  Hope that helps, glad to answer any other questions you have!" "Most states have a ""cap"" on the amount a ""heir finder"" can charge for retrieving the property.  It is generally around 10%.  Even if the state does not have a particular statute you can usually negotiate the rate with the company.  Thirty-percent is extortion, if they won't do it for less, someone else will."