Updated August 6, 2026. Quick answer: the largest change affecting this site’s readers in 2026 is the federal basic exclusion rising to $15,000,000 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Most of the rest of the year is indexation rather than legislation. Every entry below is dated, sourced, and wired to the page that carries the detail — and the sections we cannot cover are named at the bottom rather than filled in thinly.
The change that actually matters
The federal estate and gift basic exclusion is $15,000,000 for 2026, set by Rev. Proc. 2025-32 §4.14 implementing IRC §2010(c)(3) as amended by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Pub. L. 119-21). This is a statutory change, not an inflation adjustment, and it is the single figure most likely to change whether an estate plan needs restructuring — and the state exemptions it does not affect.
Note what did not change: the annual gift exclusion stayed at $19,000 per recipient. It is listed below because readers expect a movement there every year and this year there was none — a figure holding still is a finding, and publishing it prevents the assumption that it rose. The gift exclusion in detail.
Federal figures in effect for 2026
Every row is carried in this site’s claims register with a primary source and a retrieval date, which is what lets the 2027 edition regenerate rather than be rewritten.
| Figure | 2026 | Source of record |
|---|---|---|
| Federal estate & gift basic exclusion | $15,000,000 | Rev. Proc. 2025-32 sec. 4.14 |
| Annual gift exclusion, per recipient | $19,000 | Rev. Proc. 2025-32 sec. 4.42 |
| Standard deduction, single | $16,100 | IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32 sec. .14 |
| Standard deduction, married filing jointly | $32,200 | IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32 sec. .14 |
| Standard deduction, head of household | $24,150 | IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32 sec. .14 |
| Additional standard deduction, single 65+ | $2,050 | IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32 sec. .14 |
| Additional standard deduction, married 65+ | $1,650 | IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32 sec. .14 |
| Social Security wage base | $184,500 | SSA |
| Earnings test, below full retirement age | $24,480 | SSA |
| Earnings test, year of full retirement age | $65,160 | SSA |
| HSA contribution limit, self-only | $4,400 | Rev. Proc. 2025-19 sec. 2.01 |
| HSA contribution limit, family | $8,750 | Rev. Proc. 2025-19 sec. 2.01 |
| Special-use valuation cap (§2032A) | $1,460,000 | Rev. Proc. 2025-32 sec. 3.41 |
| Deferred-tax 2% portion base (§6601(j)) | $1,940,000 | Rev. Proc. 2025-32 sec. 3.51 |
| Child tax credit, refundable portion | $1,700 | Rev. Proc. 2025-32 sec. 3.05 |
| Dependent care credit, one qualifying person | $3,000 | IRS Topic no. 602 |
| Dependent care FSA exclusion | $7,500 | 26 U.S.C. §129(a)(2)(A), as amended by Pub. L. 119-21 §70404(a) |
| Household employee FICA threshold | $3,000 | IRS Topic no. 756 |
| Household employee FUTA quarterly threshold | $1,000 | IRS Topic no. 756 |
State estate-tax exemptions are tracked separately — thirteen jurisdictions levy one and their 2026 figures are registered individually, several of them indexed annually. The state table.
Benefits rules: what changed, and when it actually changed
Two rules in this class are widely described as recent and are frequently mis-dated. Both are stated here with the date the regulation itself carries.
SSI in-kind support and maintenance — amended 2024, and narrower than the popular account. The sections carry amendment histories at 89 FR 21209/21210 (March 2024). The valuation is now shelter-only: 20 C.F.R. §416.1140 does not mention food at all. But meals still decide which valuation rule applies, because §416.1131 conditions the one-third reduction on the household providing all of them. Writing that says food no longer matters is as wrong as writing that still values it — the sections quoted in full.
Medicare general enrolment — changed for 2023, and still under-reported. Coverage now begins the first day of the month after enrolment (42 U.S.C. §1395q(a)(2)(C)) rather than being held until the following July. The wait is much shorter than older writing describes; the late-enrolment penalty is unchanged — where this decides a real decision.
State-level changes we have verified
Iowa’s inheritance tax is gone. The Iowa Department of Revenue states that “Iowa inheritance tax is not applicable for deaths occurring on or after 1/1/25”. Older writing — including current writing — still lists Iowa among the inheritance-tax states and still warns unmarried partners about its top bracket. For a 2026 death that is simply wrong. The Iowa page.
Broader state tax movements for the year are tracked on their own page, which this scorecard does not duplicate — state tax changes for 2026.
One finding that is not a change but behaves like one. 20 C.F.R. §416.1246 still states a flat 24-month transfer penalty, with an amendment history running 1983–1990 — predating the statutory move to a formula capped at 36 months. The agency applies the statute. The published regulation is out of date and unreconciled, which is worth knowing if you are quoted the regulation’s number — where it bites.
The 2027 forward section
A small number of 2027 figures are already announced and verified. The HSA contribution limits rise to $4,500 self-only and $9,000 family, both carried in the register as successors to their 2026 values.
The full set of announced 2027 figures is maintained as its own tracker, which updates as more are published — retirement figure changes for 2027. Only four 2027 figures exist as of this writing because only four have been announced; that page says so in a section of its own, and we are not going to imply a fuller picture here than exists there.
What this scorecard does not cover, and why
A scorecard that quietly omits a category reads as complete. This one does not cover state adoption tracking for estate-law instruments — electronic wills, the Uniform Power of Attorney Act, transfer-on-death deed adoptions, and the durability-reversal class. We do not own that data. The trackers that would have supplied it were planned and never built, and rather than assemble a half-sourced adoption map we are naming the gap.
What we do own on the probate side is the small-estate and real-property picture, which is published as its own ranked asset — where you can skip probate.
Methods
What this is. A synthesis of changes and figures this site has already verified and registered, each wired to the page that owns the detail. No new legislative research was done for this page. An entry exists only where a primary source and a retrieval date are already on record; a rumoured or pending change is not an entry.
Dates are the regulation’s, not ours. Where a change is commonly described as recent, we give the date its own instrument carries — which is why the SSI and Medicare entries above are stamped 2024 and 2023 rather than folded into “this year”.
Why it can be regenerated. Every figure is a register entry, so the 2027 edition is a rebuild from the same infrastructure rather than a rewrite. Figures that are frozen rather than indexed are marked as such in the register so they are not chased.
Sources
Rev. Proc. 2025-32 and Rev. Proc. 2025-19 (IRS); SSA Cost-of-Living Increase and Other Determinations; 20 C.F.R. §§416.1130, 416.1131, 416.1140 and 416.1246 and 42 U.S.C. §1395q(a)(2)(C) at the Legal Information Institute; the Iowa Department of Revenue. Per-figure citations and retrieval dates are held in this site’s claims register. All read 2026-08-06.
Honest gaps. Estate-law adoption tracking is not owned and is named above. Only two of the four announced 2027 figures are currently carried in our register, so the forward section defers to the tracker page rather than restating it. Reuse this table freely with attribution and a link.
See methodology and corrections. General information about published law, not tax or legal advice. No affiliate links, nothing sold.
How this page is kept current
What moves it. Two different clocks. Federal figures indexed for inflation move on an annual announcement cycle and are carried in this site’s claims register with their effective years. Statutory and regulatory changes move only when Congress or an agency acts, so they are added when the enacting instrument is read, not when a summary of it appears.
What we do not promise. There is no automated watcher behind this page. What exists is a dated register of changes we already know are coming, checked at every batch close rather than waited on, plus a re-read whenever we touch the page for another reason. We would rather describe that plainly than claim a monitoring cadence we do not run — a tracker that overstates its own maintenance is the thing this page class exists to avoid.
Cite this scorecard
Suggested citation: “The 2026 Retirement and Estate Law Scorecard,” Clear Money Guide, 2026, clearmoneyguide.com/2026-retirement-and-estate-law-scorecard/.
Per-figure citations and retrieval dates are held in this site’s claims register. Free to reuse with attribution under CC BY 4.0.