New York N. Carolina N. Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Penn. The federal estate tax provides a credit that effectively exempts a certain amount of property from the tax. This same credit is used for gift taxes, too. So, unless the uncle gave away a lot of assets while he was living there won't be any federal estate taxes to pay. You didn't indicate what state the uncle lived in at the time of his death.
Most states have an estate tax, too.
Without going into the details of what that means, the botton line is that with a pick up tax if there is no federal estate tax due, then there is no state estate tax due either. But, some states use a different estate tax, in which case there may be a tax due. In addition, a number of states impose inheritance taxes. The rules on these vary quite a bit between the states, and can be imposed even on fairly small estate amounts. You said that the uncle didn't work last year.