The 2026 gift and estate tax exemption is $15,000,000 per individual, or $30,000,000 for a married couple, up from $13,990,000 in 2025. The increase comes from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which both extended the higher exemption past its scheduled 2025 sunset and raised it further for 2026, according to the IRS.
TL;DR
- The 2026 federal exemption is $15,000,000 per person ($30,000,000 married), a $1,010,000 jump from 2025, and it is now permanent and indexed for inflation.
- The 2026 annual gift exclusion stays at $19,000 per recipient ($38,000 with gift-splitting), and most state estate tax thresholds did not move with the federal number.
- Firms should re-check old gifting records, formula clauses, and portability elections now that clients have an extra $1 million-plus of room to work with.
What Is the 2026 Gift and Estate Tax Exemption?
The 2026 gift and estate tax exemption is the combined lifetime amount an individual can transfer, through lifetime gifts or at death, before the 40% federal transfer tax applies. It is a single, unified number that covers gift tax, estate tax, and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax under Internal Revenue Code Section 2010(c)(3).
For calendar year 2026, that basic exclusion amount is $15,000,000 per person, per the IRS. A married couple can shield up to $30,000,000 through portability and coordinated planning, and the exemption will now adjust annually for inflation going forward instead of facing another scheduled reduction.
How Much Did the Exemption Increase From 2025 to 2026?
The exemption rose by $1,010,000 per person, from $13,990,000 in 2025 to $15,000,000 in 2026. That is on top of the fact that the OBBBA also canceled the drop back to roughly $7 million that was scheduled to happen automatically at the end of 2025 under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Here is how the basic exclusion amount has moved over the last several years, based on the IRS table for year of death:
| Year | Basic Exclusion Amount |
|---|---|
| 2022 | $12,060,000 |
| 2023 | $12,920,000 |
| 2024 | $13,610,000 |
| 2025 | $13,990,000 |
| 2026 | $15,000,000 |
Nelson Mullins' February 9, 2026 estate and gift tax update notes this gives clients who had already used up their prior exemption an extra $1,010,000 of fresh capacity for 2026 gifting, without needing new legislation to unlock it.
What Is the 2026 Annual Gift Tax Exclusion?
The 2026 annual gift tax exclusion is $19,000 per recipient, unchanged from 2025. A donor can give this amount to any number of people each year without touching the lifetime exemption and without filing Form 709, as long as no gift-splitting or valuation election is involved.
For a married couple, that exclusion effectively doubles to $38,000 per recipient through gift-splitting, but electing to split gifts still requires a timely filed federal gift tax return. This is separate from the reporting rules bookkeepers track on the payment side, like the 1099-K threshold for 2026, so do not let clients confuse the two when they ask what they need to report.
Does the 2026 Exemption Increase Affect State Estate Taxes?
No. The OBBBA only changed the federal exemption; it did nothing to the roughly seventeen states plus Washington, D.C. that impose their own estate, inheritance, or gift tax, and most of those thresholds sit far below $15,000,000.
That gap is the real planning trap for 2026: a client can be completely clear of federal estate tax and still owe a state-level tax on the same estate. Wealthspire's 2026 estate and gift tax cheat sheet lists several examples worth flagging for clients:
| State | Tax Type | 2026 Exemption |
|---|---|---|
| Oregon | Estate | $1,000,000 |
| Massachusetts | Estate | $2,000,000 |
| Rhode Island | Estate | $1,838,056 |
| Washington, D.C. | Estate | $4,988,400 |
| New York | Estate | $7,350,000 |
| Connecticut | Estate & Gift | $15,000,000 |
If your client base skews toward states like Oregon or Massachusetts, this is worth its own conversation separate from the federal number, especially while you are already reviewing other OBBBA changes like 100% bonus depreciation that landed the same year.
How Does Portability Work Under the 2026 Rules?
Portability lets a surviving spouse use a deceased spouse's unused exemption, and the mechanics did not change for 2026. It still requires a timely filed Form 706 for the deceased spouse's estate, even when no federal estate tax is owed, and it still cannot transfer unused GST exemption.
Nelson Mullins' February 2026 update flags this as one of the most common gaps firms find on review: clients assume portability is automatic, and it is not. The IRS does offer limited relief for late portability elections in specific circumstances, but that relief should never be the plan going in, per the IRS.
What Should Firms Check Before This Filing Season?
Firms should re-run the numbers on any client whose estate plan was built around the old exemption levels, since a $1,010,000-per-person increase can change whether a formula clause, trust funding amount, or gifting schedule still does what it was designed to do. This is the same discipline you would apply to any deadline-driven client review, similar to how you'd walk through 2026 estimated tax due dates or a BOI reporting requirement change with a client.
A practical checklist for review season:
- Pull each client's cumulative adjusted taxable gifts and confirm it against the new $15,000,000 ceiling.
- Flag clients in low-threshold states (Oregon, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, D.C., New York) for a separate state-level conversation.
- Confirm any surviving-spouse client actually filed a timely portability election on the first spouse's Form 706.
- Revisit formula clauses in older wills and trusts that reference the exemption amount by formula rather than a fixed dollar figure.
If your firm is still doing this kind of client review manually every filing season, it is worth stepping back and asking whether the intake and document-chasing process itself needs a rebuild, which is exactly what a good operations audit for accounting firms is built to surface.
How AI Helps With Gift and Estate Tax Reviews This Year
An AI assistant can read through a client's prior Form 709 filings and trust documents and build a running total of lifetime exemption used to date, then flag anyone who now has fresh room under the $15,000,000 cap. That single task, done manually across a book of estate clients, is often several hours of pulling old returns per file; an AI assistant can do the first pass in minutes and hand you a short list to verify.
It can also cross-check each client's state of residence against thresholds like the ones in the table above and flag anyone living in a low-exemption state such as Oregon or Massachusetts, so that conversation does not get missed just because the federal number looks safe. For clients with a deceased spouse, it can check whether a Form 706 was filed and whether the portability box was checked, catching a missed election before it becomes a costly amendment.
It can draft the client outreach too: a short, accurate email explaining the $1,010,000 increase, the $19,000 annual exclusion, and a request for updated gifting records, so your team is editing instead of writing from scratch. The catch is that every firm's mix of estate clients, software, and staff time is different, and the right combination of these AI wins depends on your specific setup, which is exactly what a free CloseRadar operations audit is designed to identify.