Updated August 1, 2026. Quick answer: the 2026 basic exclusion amount is $15,000,000 per person — $30 million for a married couple with portability. It covers gifts made during life and the estate at death as a single running total, and above it the rate is 40%. The generation-skipping transfer exemption is separately set at $15,000,000 for 2026 as well.
What the statute actually says
“Section 70106 of the OBBBA amends section 2010(c)(3) by increasing the basic exclusion amount to $15,000,000 for calendar year 2026. The basic exclusion amount is a component of the applicable exclusion amount described in section 2010(c)(2) and is used in determining the applicable credit amount against estate tax described in section 2010(c)(1) and the applicable credit amount against gift tax described in section 2505(a)(1).”
IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32, section 2.14
And on what happens after 2026:
“These numbers are adjusted for inflation for taxable years beginning after December 31, 2026. The basic exclusion amount will be adjusted for inflation for calendar year 2027 and future years.”
On “permanent”, stated precisely
For years this figure came with a scheduled cliff, and a great deal of planning was built around beating it. The published document sets the amount for 2026 and provides for inflation adjustment in 2027 and later years. It states no expiry date.
That is the whole of what can responsibly be said. “Permanent” in tax means “until Congress changes it”, and every exclusion in this area has been changed repeatedly. What has genuinely gone is the scheduled reduction — the deadline that was forcing decisions. Anyone still being told to act before a sunset should ask which sunset is meant.
One exclusion, two taxes
The commonest misunderstanding here is thinking there are two allowances. There is one. Gifts above the annual exclusion during your life reduce the same pot that shelters your estate at death, which is why lifetime gifting does not, by itself, save estate tax at these levels — it moves the same exclusion earlier.
What gifting does move out of the estate is everything the asset earns or appreciates after the gift. That is the actual mechanism, and it is why the assets people give away are usually the ones expected to grow.
A couple gets double, but only if someone files
$30 million for a married couple is not automatic. The unused portion of the first spouse’s exclusion transfers only if the estate elects it on a timely filed Form 706 — and that return is required for the election even when the estate is far below any filing threshold and would otherwise never file at all.
It is the single most expensive piece of paperwork not to file in American tax administration, and the election, the deadline and the late-relief route are worth reading before the nine-month clock matters.
The threshold that will actually affect you
Very few estates approach $15 million. Far more meet a state estate or inheritance tax, and those thresholds are lower by an order of magnitude — some start near $1,000,000. Which states levy one and at what level is the more relevant question for most families, and inheritance tax is a different tax again, charged to the recipient rather than the estate.
For the giving side of the same exclusion, the $19,000 annual exclusion operates entirely outside it: gifts within the annual amount never touch the $15 million at all.
2026 basic exclusion, GST exemption and indexation language from IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32 section 2.14, which names its authority inline as section 70106 of the OBBBA amending IRC section 2010(c)(3). Rate from IRC section 2001(c). Read August 1, 2026. General information, not tax or legal advice.