Updated August 10, 2026. Quick answer. The federal estate tax exemption base
of $15 million per person is already law, made permanent by the One Big
Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), effective for deaths in 2026 and after. 2027 is the
first year that base gets an inflation adjustment — indexed forward from
2025 — and the IRS has not yet published the exact indexed 2027 figure.
What’s actually settled, vs. still open
Settled: the exemption is $15 million per person (effectively $30 million for
a married couple using portability) starting with 2026 deaths, and it does not revert to a lower,
pre-2018 level the way the prior law was scheduled to — that sunset was repealed. This is
current law, not a projection.
Ten published figures, and one that does not exist yet. Each solid bar is the basic exclusion amount for a person dying in that year, taken from the revenue procedure that published it — $5,490,000 in 2017 (Rev. Proc. 2016-55) through $15,000,000 in 2026 (Rev. Proc. 2025-32). The 2018 step is Pub. L. 115-97 §11061, which Rev. Proc. 2018-18 describes as a temporary increase to $10,000,000 “effective for estates of decedents dying after December 31, 2017, and before January 1, 2026” — the scheduled reversion this page says was repealed. It was: §2010(c)(3)’s own amendment record shows Pub. L. 119–21 §70106(a)(3) struck that subparagraph out, and the section as it now reads carries no end date at all. The 2027 bar is drawn open because no 2027 figure exists yet: §2010(c)(3)(B) increases the $15,000,000 base for deaths in calendar years after 2026 by a cost-of-living adjustment “(if any)”, rounded to the nearest $10,000, so the floor is provable and the exact figure is not. Every bar is per person; the $30,000,000 a married couple is often quoted is two of these, and it requires the portability election under §2010(c)(4)–(5)(A). CC BY 4.0.
Open: the exact inflation-indexed 2027 figure. Because 2026 was the first year
of the new $15M base, 2027 is the first year that base moves at all — and the IRS typically
publishes the indexed figure via Revenue Procedure in the fourth quarter of the prior year, the
same cycle as the income-tax bracket adjustments.
The $15 million base is permanent now, so the planning question has moved.
For years the work was timing a sunset that has since been repealed. What is left is the slower question of how an estate is structured underneath a number that is now settled: trusts, lifetime gifting, portability elections and basis. None of that is deadline-driven, which is exactly why it gets postponed.
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The 2027 figure is not late — its input was still being measured. 26 U.S.C. §2010(c)(3)(B) increases the $15,000,000 base for a decedent dying in a calendar year after 2026 by the cost-of-living adjustment under §1(f)(3), read “by substituting ‘calendar year 2025’ for ‘calendar year 2016’”. §1(f)(3)(A) takes the C-CPI-U for the preceding calendar year — 2026 — and §1(f)(6)(B) defines any year’s C-CPI-U as the average over “the 12-month period ending on August 31 of such calendar year”. So the 2027 amount is a function of the twelve months ending August 31, 2026, measured against the twelve months ending August 31, 2025. On August 10, 2026, the date this page itself carries, that second window still had about 22 days to run. This chart deliberately shows no announcement date: the statute fixes when the input closes, not when the IRS publishes. CC BY 4.0.
Why this matters to fewer people than the
headline suggests
At $15 million per person ($30 million per couple), federal estate tax now affects a very
small share of estates. For most households, the more relevant numbers are state-level: several
states apply their own estate or inheritance tax at exemption levels far below the federal
figure. See state estate tax by state for the numbers that
actually apply to a typical estate.
Sources
One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), the provision making the $15 million exemption permanent
and effective 2026. The exact 2027 inflation-indexed figure has not yet been published by the
IRS as of this page's last update.
Every projected figure above is attributed to the organization that published it and is explicitly not yet announced by the government body that sets it. This page will be updated with the official figure the day it is announced, and the projection will be struck through rather than deleted, so the record of what was projected vs. what actually happened stays visible. See the full current-numbers register for every figure this site tracks, dated and sourced. General information, not tax or legal advice.
The exact 2027 exclusion is not published, but a floor is provable from the statute. Your 2027 numbers carries that floor and the date the indexed amount arrives.
