Enter your estate's value, the federal exemption, and the tax rate above it to see the taxable estate, estimated tax, and what's left for heirs.
For 2026, an individual can pass $15,000,000 to heirs before any federal estate tax applies — $30,000,000 for a married couple, since a surviving spouse can claim any unused portion of the first spouse's exemption. Only the value above that line is ever taxed; the exemption itself is never touched.
What makes 2026 different from every prior year this decade: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made this exemption permanent. Under the prior law, the exemption was scheduled to roughly halve at the start of 2026 when the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act's temporary doubling expired — a cliff that drove a wave of urgent lifetime-gifting in 2024 and 2025 to lock in the higher amount before it possibly vanished. That cliff no longer exists. The exemption stays at $15,000,000 going forward and will resume being indexed for inflation from 2027.
A $20,000,000 gross estate against the 2026 exemption of $15,000,000 leaves a $5,000,000 taxable estate. At this calculator's flat 40% simplification, that is an estimated $2,000,000 in federal estate tax, leaving $18,000,000 to heirs — an effective rate of 10% on the gross estate, even though the marginal rate on the taxable slice is 40%.
Federal estate tax is genuinely graduated, from 18% up to 40% under IRC section 2001(c) — but the entire graduated table is compressed into the first $1,000,000 of taxable amount, and every dollar of taxable estate above that is taxed at a flat 40% regardless. Since the exemption itself is $15,000,000, essentially every real taxable estate is many times larger than that $1,000,000 transition point, so the graduated brackets barely matter in practice.
The IRS's own rate table puts the tax on exactly $1,000,000 of taxable amount at $345,800 — against $400,000 under a flat 40% assumption. That $54,200 gap is a fixed dollar amount, not a percentage: it is the maximum by which this calculator's flat-rate simplification can ever overstate the true federal liability, for a taxable estate of any size once it clears $1,000,000. On the $5,000,000 taxable estate above, the true graduated liability is $1,945,800 against this calculator's $2,000,000 — a difference of exactly that same $54,200, which is 2.7% of the estimate and shrinks in relative terms as the estate grows larger.
The federal estate tax exemption is the amount an estate can pass to heirs before any federal estate tax applies at all. For 2026 that exemption is $15,000,000 per person, made permanent by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and indexed for inflation again from 2027. Only the portion of an estate's value above the exemption is potentially subject to tax — the exemption itself is never taxed.
Several states levy their own estate or inheritance tax with exemption thresholds far below the federal level — in some states as low as $1 million. This calculator covers federal estate tax only. If you live in or own property in a state with its own estate or inheritance tax, check that state's specific rules separately, since they can apply even to estates well under the federal exemption.
Common planning strategies include making lifetime gifts under the annual gift tax exclusion, setting up irrevocable trusts, making charitable bequests, and holding life insurance outside the taxable estate. Which strategy makes sense — if any — depends heavily on individual family circumstances, so this is a general note rather than a recommendation: work with a qualified estate planning attorney or tax professional before acting.
No — there is no federal inheritance tax paid by the person who receives assets from an estate. Any federal estate tax owed is paid by the estate itself, before assets are distributed to heirs. A handful of states impose a separate inheritance tax directly on recipients, which is a distinct tax from estate tax and follows its own rules.
Planning your broader retirement and legacy picture? See the Retirement Calculator.