Updated August 4, 2026. Quick answer for Nebraska: Nebraska taxes by relationship class, and the thresholds moved a great deal for deaths on or after 1 January 2023. Close family now pay 1% above $100,000. And there is a rule almost nobody publishes: anyone under 22 is exempt in the two outer classes.
This is not the estate tax, and the difference decides who pays
An estate tax is charged to the estate on its whole value before anything is distributed. An inheritance tax is charged to each beneficiary on what they personally receive, at a rate set by how they were related to the person who died. Two people inheriting equal shares of the same estate can owe completely different amounts. The full comparison, and which states levy which, is on inheritance tax by state.
The three classes, from the statute
| Immediate relatives — 1% above $100,000 | Neb. Rev. Stat. §77-2004 — father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, brother, sister, son, daughter, legally adopted children, any lineal descendant, a person to whom the deceased stood in the acknowledged relation of a parent for not less than ten years and their lineal descendants, and the spouse or surviving spouse of any of those. |
|---|---|
| Remote relatives — 11% above $40,000 | Neb. Rev. Stat. §77-2005 — uncle, aunt, niece, or nephew related by blood or legal adoption, or other lineal descendant of the same, or the spouse or surviving spouse of any of such persons. |
| Everyone else — 15% above $25,000 | Neb. Rev. Stat. §77-2006 |
Each threshold is per person, on the clear market value each beneficiary receives — not on the estate as a whole.
For decedents dying on or after January 1, 2023, one percent of the clear market value of the property received by each person in excess of one hundred thousand dollars.
— Neb. Rev. Stat. §77-2004
The under-22 exemption
any interest passing to a person described in subsection (1) of this section who is under twenty-two years of age shall not be subject to tax.
— Neb. Rev. Stat. §77-2005(2), and identically at §77-2006(2)
A niece, nephew or family friend under 22 pays nothing at all — whatever the amount. The provision sits in the remote-relative and other-transfer sections, and it is the kind of thing an estate can be arranged around deliberately.
What the 2023 change actually did
Before 1 January 2023: 1% over $40,000 (immediate), 13% over $15,000 (remote), 18% over $10,000 (other). Changed by Laws 2022, LB310.
Every class got a lower rate and a higher exemption at once. If you are reading anything published before 2023 — and most of what is online is — the numbers in it are wrong in both directions.
What actually reduces this
Inheritance tax is charged on what passes to a beneficiary, so the levers are about who receives and how, not about shrinking the estate at the last minute. Assets with a named beneficiary or a survivorship feature still count in most of these states — do not assume a transfer-on-death designation escapes it. The instruments themselves: transfer-on-death deeds by state, and the beneficiary-designation mistakes that cost the most. If probate is the live question rather than the tax, what probate costs in Nebraska is the arithmetic on that side.
Rates and exemptions read at the state’s own revenue department or statute and cited above, not legal or tax advice. Inheritance tax turns on a relationship and a date of death this page cannot see, and legislatures change these figures — check the current year before you act on a number. We sell nothing on this page and earn nothing from it.