Estate Tax Calculator
Federal estate tax on the taxable estate above the 2026 exemption, with portability and prior-gift tracking.
Your Estate Tax Calculator Result
Generated from the inputs below — a record you can revisit, or share with anyone helping you plan.
Your detailsInput Parameters
Estate
Total date-of-death value of everything owned or controlled: real estate, bank and brokerage accounts, retirement accounts, business interests, and life insurance you owned.
Deductions
Fully deductible under the unlimited marital deduction — this amount is never taxed at the first spouse's death.
Portability
If your spouse died first and their estate elected portability on a timely Form 706, their unused exemption carries over to you.
Lifetime Gifts
Cumulative taxable gifts already reported on past Form 709s — reduces the exemption available at death. 0 if none.
Your taxable estate of $2,980,000 is fully covered by your $15,000,000 exemption.
Gross estate less debts/administrative expenses, charitable bequests, and the unlimited marital deduction.
Per individual for 2026, under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. A surviving spouse can add a deceased spouse's unused exemption via portability (Form 706, filed within 5 years) — toggle that above if it applies.
19.9% of your exemption is used by this estate.
Taxable estate after federal estate tax, plus amounts already passing tax-free to a spouse or charity. State estate/inheritance tax, if your state has one, is not included — see the note below.
Analysis
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Open calculatorWhy Almost Nobody Actually Owes Federal Estate Tax
The federal estate tax has one number that matters more than any other: the $15,000,000 per-person exemption for 2026. A married couple can shelter $30,000,000 combined using portability. Because of that exemption, the Tax Policy Center estimates fewer than 1 in 500 estates owe any federal estate tax at all.
This calculator estimates federal estate tax only. It does not include state estate or inheritance tax — as of 2026, twelve states plus D.C. impose a separate estate tax, and six states impose an inheritance tax, each with its own (often much lower) exemption. If you live in one of those states, check your state's rules separately; federal exemption size tells you nothing about state exposure.
Related: if you're gifting during your lifetime rather than at death, the Gift Tax Calculator uses the same $15M exemption, since gift and estate tax share one unified lifetime limit.
How the Taxable Estate and Exemption Are Calculated
Total Exemption = $15,000,000 + DSUE (if any) − Prior Taxable Gifts
Federal Estate Tax = 40% × max(0, Taxable Estate − Total Exemption)
Worked example (this calculator's own defaults): a $3,000,000 gross estate, $20,000 in debts/funeral/admin expenses, no charitable bequests, nothing passing to a spouse. Taxable estate = $2,980,000. That's well under the $15,000,000 exemption, so federal estate tax owed = $0, with $12,020,000 of exemption still remaining. Nothing changes until an estate's taxable value actually exceeds $15M for a single person.
The unlimited marital deduction means anything passing to a U.S.-citizen spouse is fully deductible and never counts toward the taxable estate — check the "Amount Passing to Spouse" field if that applies. That amount is deferred, not eliminated: it becomes part of the surviving spouse's own estate later, which is exactly why portability exists.
Portability lets a surviving spouse add their late spouse's unused exemption (the "DSUE") to their own, but only if the deceased spouse's estate filed Form 706 electing portability within 5 years of death — even if that estate owed zero tax. Skipping that filing forfeits the DSUE permanently.
Prior taxable gifts reduce the exemption available at death, because gift and estate tax draw from one shared lifetime limit. Use the Gift Tax Calculator to track lifetime gifts as they happen, so this field stays accurate.