The 2026 Estate Tax Exemption: What the New $15 Million Limit Means for Your Plan

The 2026 estate tax exemption is $15,000,000 per person, up from $13,990,000 in 2025, according to the IRS’s fall 2025 inflation adjustments for tax year 2026. A married couple who plan properly can potentially shelter up to $30,000,000 combined. The number itself is simple. Less simple is why it moved this much, and why so many families spent the last two years planning a deadline that never arrived.

For nearly a decade, the elevated exemption created by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was scheduled to roughly cut in half at the start of 2026, a reversion often called the estate tax “sunset.” The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025, replaced that scheduled reduction with a permanent increase instead, and the IRS has since confirmed the 2026 dollar figures that flow from it.

This article covers what the 2026 exemption is, what changed under the new law, how portability and the generation-skipping transfer tax exemption fit in, and where a higher number still leaves planning questions open for a Naples-area estate.

What Is the 2026 Estate Tax Exemption?

The federal estate tax exemption, formally the “basic exclusion amount,” is the dollar value an individual can transfer during life or at death before the 40 percent federal estate and gift tax applies. For decedents who die in 2026, the IRS has set that amount at $15,000,000, up from $13,990,000 in 2025. The exemption is unified: taxable gifts made during life reduce the exclusion available at death, and the same figure governs the generation-skipping transfer tax discussed below.

The annual gift tax exclusion — the amount that can be given to any one person each year without touching the lifetime exemption at all — remains $19,000 per recipient for 2026, unchanged from 2025. A married couple who both make gifts can effectively give $38,000 to one recipient in 2026 without using any lifetime exemption. Our overview of 529 plans as a gifting vehicle covers one common way that annual exclusion capacity gets put to use for education-focused giving.

What the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act Actually Changed

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 roughly doubled the estate and gift tax exemption starting in 2018, but wrote that increase expires after 2025. Absent new legislation, the exclusion was on track to fall to roughly $7,000,000 per person on January 1, 2026. The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act eliminated that scheduled drop. A Congressional Research Service explainer published on Congress.gov confirms the higher exemption was made permanent, and increased further to $15 million for 2026, by that legislation.

Two features matter for planning. First, there is no expiration date attached to the $15,000,000 figure, unlike the temporary exemption that drove years of “use it or lose it” planning around the prior sunset. Second, the amount is indexed for inflation going forward, so it is expected to rise again for 2027 and beyond.

How Portability Lets Married Couples Use Both Exemptions

Each spouse has an individual exemption; nothing automatically combines them into $30,000,000 for a married couple. The mechanism that allows a surviving spouse to use a deceased spouse’s remaining exemption is called portability, and it is not automatic. It requires filing a complete, timely federal estate tax return, Form 706, according to the IRS. That return is generally due nine months after death, though a six-month extension is available.

The trade-off is administrative. Many smaller estates are not otherwise required to file Form 706 at all, so electing portability means filing a return solely to preserve the option. Executors who skip that step, or who miss the deadline without qualifying for relief, can permanently lose a deceased spouse’s unused exclusion. IRS Revenue Procedure 2022-32 does allow certain estates that were not required to file to make a late portability election within five years of death, but that relief carries its own conditions and is not a substitute for filing on time.

The Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax Exemption Moved With It

Grandparents and other family members who want to transfer wealth directly to grandchildren, or into certain multi-generational trusts, face a separate generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax, layered on top of the estate and gift tax at the same 40 percent top rate. The GST exemption is unified with the basic exclusion amount, so it also rose to $15,000,000 per person for 2026, per the Congressional Research Service. Because GST exemption allocation involves its own technical rules and is not automatically portable between spouses in every circumstance, this piece is typically handled with an estate attorney directly involved. Our overview of estate planning within a broader wealth preservation strategy walks through how trust structures fit into that coordination.

Where Florida Fits In

Florida does not impose a separate state estate tax. The Florida Department of Revenue confirms the state’s estate tax was effectively eliminated for deaths occurring after December 31, 2004, when the federal credit it relied on was phased out. That means a Naples-area estate generally faces only the federal exemption threshold described above, without a second, lower state-level exemption layered on top — a meaningful difference from states such as New York or Massachusetts that maintain their own estate tax with exemptions well below the federal figure.

Hypothetical Illustration

Hypothetical, for illustration only. Not a projection of any actual client outcome, and not a guarantee of any tax result.

Assume a married couple, both U.S. citizens, with a combined $20,000,000 estate in 2026, no prior taxable gifts, and a timely filed Form 706 electing portability at the first death. Their combined $30,000,000 exclusion would exceed the $20,000,000 estate, so no federal estate tax would be owed at the second death — assuming none of those inputs change. Change any one assumption and the outcome changes with it.

Planning Approaches at a Glance

A general comparison of common approaches, not a recommendation for any individual’s circumstances.

When a Higher Exemption Is Not the Full Answer

A larger exemption changes the arithmetic, but it does not resolve several other questions:

• It is not permanent in the sense of never changing again. A future Congress can still amend Internal Revenue Code Section 2010; current law removes a scheduled reduction, not the possibility of a different one later.
• It does not replace basis planning. Assets passing at death typically get a step-up in cost basis; lifetime gifts carry over the donor’s original basis. A higher exemption can shift how much lifetime gifting still makes sense.
• It does not address non-tax reasons for trusts. Creditor protection, blended-family planning, special-needs beneficiaries, and control over distributions are reasons families use trusts well below the exemption threshold. Our piece on the architecture of generational wealth covers structures like GRATs.
• It does not extend beyond federal law. Non-citizen spouses, non-U.S. situs assets, and state-level estate or inheritance tax each introduce rules this article does not cover.
• Portability is a one-time, carefully timed election, and remarriage can affect a surviving spouse’s ability to rely on a previously received DSUE amount.

Coordinating between a client’s estate attorney, CPA, and wealth manager tends to matter more than the headline exemption figure by itself. Our guide to estate planning for high-net-worth families describes how that coordination typically works.