Gift Tax Calculator

For 2026, the projected per-recipient annual gift tax exclusion is $19,000. That is the same figure the IRS set for 2025 in Rev. Proc. 2024-40, and the official 2026 number publishes in Rev. Proc. 2025-32 each fall. The exclusion is per donor, per recipient, per calendar year, so a single donor can give $19,000 to as many separate people as they like in one year with no gift tax consequence and no Form 709 to file. Married couples who split gifts can together give $38,000 per recipient. The exclusion does not roll over: any unused amount disappears on December 31 and does not bank for next year, which is why year-end gifting is so common.

The lifetime gift tax exemption and the federal estate tax exemption are a single unified credit under IRC Section 2010, projected at roughly $14 million per individual for 2026. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed in July 2025, replaced the scheduled TCJA sunset (which would have dropped the exemption to about $7 million) and kept the high exemption in place, indexed for inflation. Every dollar of taxable gift you make during your lifetime (gifts above the annual exclusion) reduces the exemption available to your estate at death. So a couple who together give away $5 million in taxable lifetime gifts leaves only about $23 million of combined exemption ($28M minus $5M) to shield assets from the 40% federal estate tax when the second spouse dies.

Gift splitting (IRC Section 2513) lets a married couple treat a gift made by one spouse as if each spouse gave half, doubling the effective annual exclusion to $38,000 per recipient for 2026. The donor spouse uses their own funds and the non-donor spouse consents on Form 709, Schedule A. Both spouses must be US citizens or residents at the time of the gift, must be married for the entire calendar year (no mid-year divorce), and they must consent to split every gift made by either spouse that year (you cannot pick and choose). Splitting requires filing Form 709 even when the doubled exclusion would otherwise have made it unnecessary, which is a small paperwork cost for what is often a much larger transfer.

You must file Form 709 (United States Gift and Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax Return) whenever you give more than the annual exclusion ($19,000 for 2026) to any single recipient in a calendar year. Filing is required even if no tax is owed, because the IRS uses the form to track lifetime exemption usage. Other triggers: any gift to a non-citizen spouse above the $190,000 (projected 2026) special exclusion, any gift of a future interest regardless of amount, and any couple that elects gift splitting. The form is due April 15 of the following year and is filed separately from your Form 1040 (it goes to a different IRS address). An extension on your 1040 also extends Form 709, but it does not extend the time to pay any tax owed.

Almost no state taxes gifts directly. Connecticut is currently the only US state with a standalone gift tax, with rates of 11.6% to 12% on transfers above the state's $13.99 million exemption (which mirrors the federal lifetime exemption). Every other state repealed or never enacted a gift tax, so federal Form 709 is the only filing most donors face. Several states do still tax estates (Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, New York, and a dozen others), with thresholds well below the federal $14 million, so very large gifts can shrink the estate enough to dodge a state estate tax later. The flip side: lifetime gifts in Connecticut consume both the federal and state exemption, so big in-state gifts can trigger state tax that federal gifts in other states would not.