Estate value calculator: what's in your estate and what will it owe?

• Use the Add Asset and Add Liability buttons to build the list. Each row gets a type, a description, and a dollar value entered in that row's Value or Amount field, so the totals start at zero until you add rows.
• Net estate value is every asset added together, minus every liability added together.
• Federal estate tax applies only to the amount above the exemption this calculator uses, doubled if you are married, since portability lets a couple combine their exemptions.
• State estate tax applies on top of that in the 12 states and the District of Columbia that tax estates, each with its own exemption and rate. Most states have none: pick that option if yours is not listed.

A home worth $500,000, investments of $300,000 and a retirement account of $200,000 add up to $1,000,000 in assets. A $150,000 mortgage balance brings the net estate to $850,000. That is well under this calculator's federal exemption, so federal estate tax comes out to $0, and it is also under every state exemption in the tool's list, so state estate tax is $0 too. For the overwhelming majority of households, this is the actual outcome: no federal or state estate tax, because the exemption is so far above what most estates are worth.

• The federal exemption used is $15 million per person, the figure for deaths in 2026 (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32), and $30 million for a married couple. State exemptions and rates in the tool are approximate and change often, so confirm your state's current figures.
• State figures are for deaths in 2026. The tool applies each state's own graduated schedule, the same one the inheritance tax tool uses, so one estate gets the same state tax in both. New York taxes the whole estate once it passes 105% of its exemption.
• This is estate tax, a tax on the estate itself before distribution. It is separate from inheritance tax, a tax some states charge the person receiving an inheritance, which this tool does not calculate.
• The suggested strategies are general education, not legal or tax advice, and do not account for your specific situation, existing trusts, or how your state actually applies its exemption.

Finance Quest is educational. It is not financial advice, and no calculator here knows your full situation.

The federal exemption is high enough that most people, even those who feel wealthy on paper, owe nothing at the federal level. The mistake runs the other way too: someone with a large estate concentrated in one state that does tax estates can owe state tax with an exemption far below the federal one. Check both federal and state separately, because they use different numbers.

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