Federal Estate Tax Exemption for 2027

$15,480,000 per decedent, set by the IRS in Rev. Proc. 2026-35 §3.44 on November 5, 2026. That is $480,000 above the $15,000,000 that applies to anyone dying during 2026. Estates below the exclusion owe no federal estate tax at all, though a return may still be worth filing to preserve a surviving spouse's portability.

Because 2026 is the statutory starting line. OBBBA (P.L. 119-21, §70106) rewrote IRC §2010(c)(3)(A) to state the exclusion as a flat $15,000,000 figure, and the indexing clause in §2010(c)(3)(B) only bites "in the case of any decedent dying in a calendar year after 2026", measured from a 2025 base year. The IRS said as much in its own words in Rev. Proc. 2025-32: the amount "will be adjusted for inflation for calendar year 2027 and future years". So 2027 is the first year the number moves, and it moves by ordinary inflation rather than by legislation.

Up to $30,960,000, but only if the paperwork is done. Portability is not automatic — the executor of the first spouse to die must file a complete Form 706 and affirmatively elect to transfer the unused exclusion, even when that estate is far too small to owe anything. Skip the election and the unused half is simply lost, which is the single most common and most expensive omission in this area.

No, and this is a frequent misunderstanding. Under §2010(c)(4) the deceased spousal unused exclusion is frozen at the exclusion in force when the first spouse died — a DSUE captured from a 2026 death stays worth $15,000,000 of shelter, not the $15,480,000 available to someone dying in 2027. Only the survivor's OWN basic exclusion keeps indexing. A couple who plan on two full inflating exclusions, rather than one inflating and one frozen, will overestimate what they can pass on.

40% at the top of the §2001(c) schedule. No inflation clause attaches to it, so it is the same in 2027 and will not move unless Congress acts. Only value above the exclusion is exposed, and because the unified credit absorbs the graduated lower brackets, what an estate actually faces is a flat 40% on the excess.

Yes. IRC §2631(c) defines the GST exemption as equal to the basic exclusion amount, so it tracks it exactly — $15,480,000 for 2027, and §3.44 of the revenue procedure says the basic exclusion amount is used to determine it. One important difference in practice: the GST exemption is not portable between spouses. Each person's must be allocated during life or at death by their own executor, so a couple relying on portability for estate tax still needs separate GST planning.

No — states that levy their own estate or inheritance tax set their own thresholds, and several are dramatically lower than the federal figure. An estate can owe nothing federally and still face a substantial state bill, which is why residency and property location matter as much as the headline federal number. Our state estate tax calculators cover the states that impose one.

Yes. The IRS released it on November 5, 2026, with the rest of its 2027 inflation adjustments (news release IR-2026-133). What governs any particular estate is the amount in force on the date of death, so the figure applies to decedents dying from January 1 to December 31, 2027.