Gift Tax Calculator 2026: Exclusion and Form 709

Almost everyone who searches for a gift tax calculator is worried about a tax bill that will never arrive. For the 2026 tax year, the annual gift tax exclusion is $19,000 per donor per recipient, and gifts above that line do not trigger a check to the IRS. They trigger a form, Form 709, and a reduction of your $15,000,000 lifetime exemption set by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The calculator above shows the reportable amount, meaning the portion of your 2026 gifts above the exclusion that must go on Form 709. What it deliberately does not do is compute estate tax or project whether today’s exemption will exist when your estate is settled. Congress sets those numbers, and no calculator should promise them decades out.

The real planning questions sit around the number: whether to split gifts with a spouse, whether a payment even counts as a gift, what basis the recipient takes, and whether a five-year 529 election makes sense. This guide covers each, and our full guide to the annual limit lives at the gift tax limit page linked below.

For the 2026 tax year, the annual exclusion is $19,000 per donor per donee under Rev. Proc. 2025-32, unchanged from 2025. Every dollar you give one person up to that line is simply invisible to the gift tax system: no form, no exemption used, no tax. The count restarts every January 1 and applies separately to each recipient.

Some transfers never count as gifts at all, no matter the size. Tuition paid directly to a school and medical bills paid directly to a provider are unlimited exclusions under IRC 2503(e). Gifts to a US citizen spouse are unlimited under IRC 2523. Gifts to a non-citizen spouse have their own annual exclusion, $194,000 for 2026.

The direct-payment requirement in 2503(e) is strict. Writing your grandchild a check to cover tuition is a gift; wiring the same amount to the university bursar is not. Same dollars, completely different reporting outcome.

Form 709 is required for any 2026 gift above $19,000 to a single recipient that is not covered by an unlimited exclusion, for any gift-splitting election, and for any 529 five-year election. It is due April 15 of the following year and rides along with your Form 1040 extension if you file one.

Filing is not paying. Reportable gifts first reduce your $15,000,000 lifetime exemption, and only after that entire exemption is exhausted does gift tax, at rates up to 40% under IRC 2502, come due out of pocket. For nearly all filers, Form 709 is a running scorecard, not a bill.

Gift-splitting under IRC 2513 lets a married couple treat a gift made by one spouse as made half by each, doubling the exclusion to $38,000 per recipient in 2026. The catch is procedural: the election requires both spouses to consent on Form 709, so splitting a gift above $19,000 creates a filing requirement even when no exemption is used.

For 2026, the unified lifetime estate and gift exemption is $15,000,000 per person. OBBBA set that base amount and indexed it for inflation going forward, repealing the scheduled TCJA sunset. Reportable gifts made during life reduce the exemption available to your estate later.

Two things this page will not do: calculate your estate tax, and promise the exemption will be there at any future date. Exemption levels are statutory and Congress has changed them repeatedly. What is settled, under the anti-clawback regulations in TD 9884, is that gifts completed under today’s exemption are not retroactively taxed if the exemption later falls.

If your net worth is anywhere near eight figures, the gift tax annual exclusion is a tactic, not a plan. Lifetime gifting strategy, valuation discounts, and trust design belong in a coordinated estate plan with an attorney, with the tax modeling done alongside it.

Section 529 plans allow a special five-year election: contribute up to five times the annual exclusion in one year, which is 5 x $19,000 = $95,000 per donor per beneficiary for 2026, and elect on Form 709 to treat it as made ratably over five years. A married couple can front-load $190,000 per child.

The tradeoffs are specific. The election consumes your annual exclusion for that beneficiary for the full five years, so additional gifts to the same child during that window become reportable. And if the donor dies within the five years, the unallocated portion comes back into the taxable estate pro rata.

Superfunding is covered in depth on our 529 superfunding strategy page; the mechanics of what 529 money can pay for are on the 529 plan tax guide.

Gifts are never taxable income to the recipient under IRC 102, no matter the size. The gift tax system, when it applies at all, is the donor’s problem.

Basis is the trap. Gifted property takes carryover basis under IRC 1015: your child inherits your original cost, and your unrealized gain, along with the asset. Gift $500,000 of stock you bought for $100,000 and the recipient holds a built-in $400,000 taxable gain. Inherited property, by contrast, gets a step-up to date-of-death value under IRC 1014.

That asymmetry drives real planning: cash and high-basis assets are usually better gifts during life, while low-basis appreciated assets are often better held until death. For loss property, a dual-basis rule under IRC 1015 can even strand the loss so that nobody ever deducts it.