Most estates owe nothing: the 2026 federal exemption is $15,000,000 per person, but a dozen states start taxing well below that line.
Enter an estate value to see an instant federal-plus-state estimate.
Current 2026 federal and state figures, all in your browser.
Federal + state estate tax with 2026 exemptions and deductions.
Run my estimate →The $19,000 annual exclusion, your lifetime exemption balance, and any gift tax owed.
Run my estimate →How much capital gains tax the date-of-death basis reset spares your heirs.
Run my estimate →The 12 states and DC that tax estates, with exemptions, top rates and a downloadable dataset.
Browse the dataset →Most estates owe nothing at all. The 2026 federal basic exclusion amount is $15,000,000 per person (about $30,000,000 for a married couple using portability), per IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32, so an estate has to clear that line before any federal tax applies. State estate taxes are a separate, lower-threshold question: a dozen states and Washington, D.C. start taxing well below the federal line, several beginning at $1,000,000 to $2,000,000. Use the tools above to check both at once.
Settling a parent's estate is a different job than planning your own, and this site treats them differently. If you're an executor or trustee with a number in hand (a house, a brokerage account, a life insurance payout), start with the Estate Tax Calculator. It totals the gross estate, applies the $15,000,000 federal exemption, and layers on the estate tax for any of the 12 states plus D.C. that still charge one.
If you're the one still alive and doing the planning, the order flips. Check the Gift Tax Calculator first: it tells you how much you can move to kids or grandkids this year using the $19,000 annual exclusion before anything touches your lifetime exemption. Then, if you're weighing whether to gift an appreciated asset now or leave it at death, the Step-Up in Basis Calculator answers the question that actually matters, which is how much capital gains tax your heirs avoid by inheriting instead of receiving a lifetime gift. Assets you leave at death get their cost basis reset to fair market value on the date of death. Assets you gift while alive keep your original basis, taxes and all.
Not sure whether your state even has an estate tax? That's the By State page. Twelve states and the District of Columbia currently do, and the exemption in some of them is a fraction of the federal one, so a mid-sized estate that owes nothing to the IRS can still owe a state. Maryland is the sharpest example, the only state with both an estate tax and a separate inheritance tax; the Maryland estate tax calculator estimates both at once.
Every figure on this site traces back to a named source. The federal exemption and the 40% top rate come from IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32. State exemptions and rates are pulled from each state's own revenue department or, where noted, from the state's enabling statute. The calculators assume you're working with a single decedent's gross estate: the fair market value of everything owned at death, before subtracting debts, funeral costs, or estate administration expenses, which a real estate tax return (Form 706) would deduct. That means the estimate here tends to run slightly high compared with the final number an attorney or CPA would file.
The tools also assume no prior taxable gifts have already used up part of the lifetime exemption, since that number is specific to each person's gifting history and isn't something a calculator can guess. If you've made large gifts in past years, plug the remaining exemption balance into the Gift Tax Calculator rather than assuming the full $15,000,000 is still available. And portability, the rule that lets a surviving spouse use a deceased spouse's unused exemption, only applies if an estate tax return was filed to elect it. Skip that filing and the unused exemption is gone.
The most common mistake is assuming state and federal estate tax work the same way. They don't. A number of the states that tax estates, Oregon and Massachusetts among them, start well under $2,000,000, so an estate that clears the federal bar with room to spare can still generate a real state tax bill. Check both, not just the one with the bigger headline number.
The second mistake is confusing the annual gift exclusion with the lifetime exemption. The $19,000 you can give any one person each year, tax-free and unreported, is separate from the $15,000,000 lifetime figure. Giving $19,000 to ten different people in one year doesn't touch your lifetime exemption at all. Giving $100,000 to one person does, but only the $81,000 above the exclusion counts against it, and no check gets written to the IRS until the entire lifetime exemption is used up.
The third is treating a lifetime gift and an inheritance as tax-equivalent moves. They usually aren't, because of basis. Gift an asset during your lifetime and your heir inherits your original cost basis, so if you bought stock at $10,000 and it's worth $200,000 when you give it away, your heir's basis is still $10,000. Leave that same stock at death instead and the basis resets to $200,000, erasing the capital gain entirely under current law. For appreciated assets, that difference can be worth more than the estate tax question itself.
One honest caveat: this site estimates using current federal and state rules, but estate and gift tax law changes, sometimes retroactively within a filing year, and state figures in particular can shift with a new legislative session. Treat every number here as a starting point for a conversation with an estate planning attorney or CPA, not a final answer.