Gift Tax Calculator

Most people who ask "will I owe gift tax" already know the answer: almost certainly not. The federal gift tax system is built around two separate numbers, and understanding which one applies to your situation matters more than the tax rate itself:

• The annual exclusion — the amount you can give any one person, per year, with zero paperwork and zero effect on anything else. This resets every calendar year.
• The lifetime exemption — a much larger, cumulative amount. Gifts above the annual exclusion don't trigger tax; they simply use up a slice of this lifetime total. Only after the entire lifetime exemption is exhausted does actual gift tax become due.

This calculator has a mode for each question: "This Year's Gift" checks a single gift against the annual exclusion, and "Lifetime Exemption Tracker" runs a cumulative total against the $15 million lifetime figure. All calculations run in your browser — nothing you type is sent to a server.

Set by Revenue Procedure 2025-32 and, for the lifetime figure, by statute under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act:

The $15 million lifetime figure is unusually durable. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act had temporarily doubled the exemption, with a scheduled reversion to roughly $7 million on January 1, 2026. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 2025, made the higher figure permanent instead — so the widely-discussed "2026 sunset" did not happen.

The annual exclusion is per donor, per recipient — with no cap on the number of recipients. A parent with three children and six grandchildren can gift $19,000 to each of the nine, for $171,000 total, entirely outside the estate and with no reporting required.

One common use of the annual exclusion: "superfunding" a 529 college savings plan by contributing five years of exclusions at once ($95,000 per donor per beneficiary in 2026) under a special election. See our income tax pages for how a gift interacts with your broader annual tax picture — gift tax and income tax are separate systems, and receiving a gift is not itself taxable income to the recipient.

These are two different thresholds, and conflating them is the single most common source of confusion:

Filing Form 709 (United States Gift Tax Return) is required once a gift to one person exceeds the annual exclusion in a calendar year, or whenever a married couple elects gift-splitting — even a $0-tax-owed split requires both spouses' signatures on the form. Filing simply records the excess against your lifetime exemption; it is not a tax payment.

Owing actual gift tax only happens once your cumulative lifetime taxable gifts — the running total of every excess-over-exclusion amount you've ever reported — exceeds the $15 million exemption. For the overwhelming majority of people, this never happens in a lifetime.

Two exclusions apply outside the annual/lifetime system entirely and never require a return:

• Tuition paid directly to a school — unlimited, but only if paid straight to the institution, not to the student, and only tuition itself (not room, board, or books).
• Medical expenses paid directly to a provider — the same direct-payment rule applies.