Updated September 29, 2026. Quick answer. The federal gift tax annual exclusion (what you can give any one person in a calendar year without touching your lifetime exemption or filing Form 709) is $19,000 per recipient for 2026, unchanged from 2025. The 2027 figure is not officially announced yet: the IRS sets it every October or November inside the same revenue procedure that sets the standard deduction and dozens of other inflation-indexed amounts, and this page does not state a projection.
More on the 2026 tax figures: the 2026 gift exclusion for a noncitizen spouse and the 2026 GST tax exemption.
More on the 2027 tax figures: the 2027 gift exclusion for a noncitizen spouse and the 2027 GST tax exemption.
Form 709 (gift tax return), read line by line: Form 709 Part I lines 1 to 21, Form 709 Schedule B, Form 709 Schedule C and Form 709 Schedule D.
Form 706 (estate tax return), read line by line: Form 706 Parts IV and V, Form 706 Schedule A real estate, Form 706 Schedule B stocks and bonds and Form 706 Schedule C mortgages, notes and cash.
More IRS forms and schedules, read line by line: Form 1098-T instructions.
State by state, whether a gift is taxed by the state itself: gift tax by state.
The return that reports gifts above it, and how couples combine it: who must file Form 709, Form 709 gift splitting and what Form 709 reports versus the annual exclusion.
Related figures and codes: ACA Affordability 2027, Adoption Credit 2027 and Defined Benefit Plan Limit 2027.
What is the gift tax annual exclusion for 2027?
The 2027 figure is not yet announced. The exclusion is $19,000 per recipient for 2026, unchanged from 2025, and the IRS sets the next figure in October or November. A married couple can combine exclusions by gift-splitting to give $38,000 to one person.
What’s actually settled, vs. still open
Settled: $19,000 per donee is the number in force right now, confirmed directly from the IRS’s own release: “For tax year 2026, the annual exclusion for gifts remains at $19,000.” A married couple can still combine exclusions via gift-splitting to give $38,000 to one person (both spouses consent on Form 709) without any of it being a taxable gift. The exclusion for gifts to a non-U.S.-citizen spouse is a separate, larger figure: $194,000 for 2026.
Open: the 2027 figure. The exclusion is set by 26 U.S.C. §2503(b), which starts from a $10,000 base and adds a cost-of-living adjustment measured against calendar year 1997, then rounds the result down to the nearest $1,000, the same “round down, never up” rule that has occasionally held the exclusion flat year over year, as it did from 2025 to 2026. That rounding rule is exactly why no one, including CMG, states a 2027 number here: whether inflation clears the next $1,000 line is set by the 12-month CPI period ending August 31 (26 U.S.C. §1(f)(4)) and is not yet published by the IRS.
The numbers, year by year
| Year | Annual exclusion per donee |
|---|---|
| 2018–2021 | $15,000 |
| 2022 | $16,000 |
| 2023 | $17,000 |
| 2024 | $18,000 |
| 2025 | $19,000 |
| 2026 | $19,000 (no change) |
| 2027 | not yet announced |
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Source: WiserAdvisor’s service descriptionWhy this figure also sets the ABLE account limit
26 U.S.C. §529A(b)(2)(B)(i), the statute governing ABLE accounts for people with disabilities, is written to track this exact exclusion: it uses “the amount in effect under section 2503(b)” as its own base. Through 2025 the two figures were identical every year. They split for the first time in 2026: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed the ABLE statute’s own base year, so the ABLE limit is now $20,000 while the plain gift exclusion stays at $19,000. See the ABLE contribution limit page for that figure and the base-year mechanics behind the split.
Sources
2026 figure: IRS, “IRS releases tax inflation adjustments for tax year 2026,” read at irs.gov on 2026-09-04, quoting Revenue Procedure 2025-32. Statute and rounding rule: 26 U.S.C. §2503(b), read at law.cornell.edu on 2026-09-04. ABLE cross-reference: 26 U.S.C. §529A(b)(2)(B), same reading. Re-verified September 29, 2026 against irs.gov (newsroom index and Rev. Proc. 2025-32): no 2027 figure is published by the IRS as of that date.
This page is updated the day the official figure is announced, and any projection above will be struck through rather than deleted, so the record of what was projected vs. what actually happened stays visible. See the 2027 numbers hub for every figure this program tracks, projected vs. official. General information, not tax or legal advice.
Related 2027 figures: AMT Exemption 2027, Foreign Earned Income Exclusion 2027, FSA Contribution Limit 2027, Kiddie Tax Thresholds 2027, QCD Limit 2027, Saver’s Credit 2027 and SIMPLE IRA Contribution Limit 2027.
This exclusion is also the building block for the 529 plan’s own five-year gift-tax election, 5x this exclusion.
For your own numbers, run the AUM Fee Calculator 2026: 1% Advisor Fee in Dollars.
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