Enter your estate value, deductions, exemption amount, and prior taxable gifts to estimate federal estate tax owed.

How to Use the Estate Tax Calculator

Enter the gross estate value, deductions (debts, funeral costs, charitable bequests), the federal exemption amount, and any prior taxable gifts that count against that exemption. The exemption field is editable on purpose — it's a number that changes by law, not a constant this tool should lock you into.

Taxable Estate = Gross Estate − Deductions
Remaining Exemption = Exemption Amount − Prior Taxable Gifts
Amount Subject to Tax = Taxable Estate − Remaining Exemption

The Exemption Nearly Doubled for 2026

The federal basic exclusion amount was on track to roughly halve at the start of 2026 when a temporary increase from the 2017 tax law expired. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act instead made a $15,000,000 per-person exemption permanent starting January 1, 2026, with inflation indexing beginning in 2027. That's the default loaded into this calculator — but confirm the current figure at irs.gov before relying on it, since a number this consequential is worth double-checking rather than trusting to a default.

The Graduated Bracket Schedule Barely Matters Anymore

Estate tax rates run on a progressive schedule from 18% up to 40%, the same structure that's been in place since 2013 — which sounds like it should behave like the income tax brackets everyone's used to, with different slices of an estate taxed at different rates. In practice, it doesn't work out that way. Because the exemption is so large, almost nothing gets taxed until an estate clears it by a wide margin, and once it does, the amount actually subject to tax is usually already well past where the graduated brackets top out — the schedule reaches its 40% ceiling at just $1,000,000 of taxable amount, which is small compared to how far past a $15,000,000 exemption a genuinely taxable estate tends to sit. The graduated brackets exist on paper; for most estates large enough to owe anything at all, the effective rate lands close to the flat 40% top rate rather than somewhere meaningfully lower.

State-level estate or inheritance taxes are a separate matter entirely, with their own exemptions — often far lower than the federal one — and rates. This calculator only handles the federal side.