California charges no estate or inheritance tax. What is left is the federal estate tax, and it starts at 15 million dollars.
Treatment
-
Exclusion applied
-
Taxable estate
-
Effective rate
-
Federal estate tax due
-
Estimate based on the 2026 basic exclusion amount of 15 million dollars and the 40 percent top rate. Enter the gross estate less debts, funeral costs and administration expenses. Lifetime gifts above the annual exclusion use up part of the same allowance and are not accounted for here. California adds nothing of its own, though the property tax reassessment rules under Proposition 19 can cost an inheriting child far more than any estate tax would. A return on Form 706 is required whenever the estate exceeds the exclusion, or whenever a surviving spouse wants to carry the unused amount forward.
Almost no estate owes a dollar of federal tax. What every estate needs is a will that says who gets what. Our generator walks you through one, question by question.
Create your will nowCalifornia levies neither an estate tax nor an inheritance tax, despite proposals that resurface every few years. Whatever your heirs receive, the state takes no share of it. The only death tax that can reach a californian estate is the federal one, and it is aimed at a very small number of families.
Two other bills are sometimes confused with an inheritance tax and are worth separating out. The estate may owe income tax on income earned after the death, filed on Form 1041. And an inherited retirement account is still taxed as ordinary income to the person who withdraws from it, which for most families is the far larger number.
For deaths in 2026 the basic exclusion amount is 15 million dollars per person, set by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and confirmed by the IRS in Revenue Procedure 2025-32. It replaced the 13.99 million that applied in 2025 and, unlike the old rule, it does not expire. Inflation indexing resumes in 2027.
Above that line the rate is a flat 40 percent in practice. The statute has a graduated table running from 18 percent upward, but the unified credit already absorbs everything below the exclusion, and the table reaches 40 percent at one million dollars, so every taxable dollar in a real estate falls in the top bracket.
Two deductions come off before any of that. Anything left to a surviving spouse who is a US citizen passes free of tax, in any amount. Anything left to a qualified charity is deducted in full as well.
When the first spouse dies, whatever part of their 15 million exclusion goes unused can be transferred to the survivor. Two exclusions stacked make 30 million dollars, which puts the federal estate tax out of reach for all but a handful of families.
The catch is procedural. The deceased spousal unused exclusion has to be claimed by filing a Form 706 estate tax return after the first death, even though no tax is owed and no return would otherwise be required. Skip that filing and the exclusion is simply gone. The deadline is nine months, extendable to fifteen, and a simplified late relief procedure runs for five years afterwards.
If your estate is under 15 million dollars, and the overwhelming majority are, federal estate tax is not the question your will has to answer. The questions that matter are who inherits, who raises your children, and who is in charge of settling everything.
Die without a will in California and the state answers all three for you, using an intestacy statute that splits property between a spouse and children in proportions most people would not choose. A handwritten will costs nothing and settles it.
Answer a few simple questions and get a draft tailored to your situation, instantly as PDF, Word and OpenOffice.
Create your will nowPersonalized · Legally sound · Download instantly