States With Estate Tax or Inheritance Tax in 2026: Full List

The estate-tax list: 12 states and DC

An estate tax is paid by the estate, on the value that is left after debts, expenses and the marital and charitable deductions. The table gives, for each jurisdiction, the 2026 figure, the top rate, whether the schedule has a cliff, whether a late spouse’s unused exclusion carries over, and whether gifts are pulled back. “None found” means the sections we read contain no such rule, not that we proved there is none.

We have a full page on eight of them, each built from the statute and the department’s own forms: Washington (three rate schedules in 12 months), Oregon (the failed SB 1511), New York (the cliff, solved to the dollar), Minnesota (the three-year gift add-back), Illinois (the 28.57% slope), Maryland (estate and inheritance tax together), plus New Jersey and Pennsylvania below. The federal side, including the $15,000,000 exclusion and portability, is in our federal estate tax exemption guide.

Where the rest of the table comes from. Connecticut’s schedule applies 12 percent to the excess over the federal basic exclusion amount, and the same section caps the tax at fifteen million dollars (Conn. Gen. Stat. 12-391). DC’s Office of Tax and Revenue states that estates of decedents who died in 2026 “have an exclusion amount of $4,988,400.00” and prints a table that starts at 11.2% and ends at 16.0% above $10,000,000. Hawaii’s schedule runs from 10% to 20% on the Hawaii net taxable estate, and the statute ties the exclusion to the federal amount “as if the decedent died on December 31, 2017”, which the Form M-6 puts at $5,490,000 for the portable amount. Maine Revenue Services publishes $7,160,000 for 2026 and $7,000,000 for 2025, although the statute copy we saved (36 M.R.S. 4102) still prints $5,600,000; we used the figure on the department’s form. Massachusetts and Rhode Island both run the old federal state-death-tax credit table and subtract a fixed credit, $99,600 in Massachusetts and $87,940 in Rhode Island for 2026, which is why tax starts at zero near $2,000,000 and $1,838,056 and not with a jump (our arithmetic). Vermont’s statute is one line: nothing under $5,000,000 and 16 percent of the excess.

The inheritance-tax list: five states

An inheritance tax is paid by each heir on what that heir receives, and the rate depends on the relationship. A spouse and children are usually free; a niece, a friend or a business partner is not.

The Kentucky change is new. KRS 140.070 was amended by 2026 Ky. Acts ch. 198, effective April 27, 2026, and the Legislative Research Commission note says the amendment applies to estates of decedents who died on or after January 1, 2026. The Class A paragraph now lists “nephew, niece, or a nephew or niece of the half blood” beside brothers and sisters, and a Kentucky state budget report from fiscal years 2008 to 2010 shows nephews and nieces in Class B. A niece who would have paid Class B rates before now sits in the class that the state budget report calls totally exempt. The pages that still show Kentucky’s old classes, including our own federal guide’s sentence that a niece and a daughter can owe very different inheritance tax in Kentucky, should be read with this in mind.

Our deep pages on the others: Pennsylvania has the asset-by-asset rules and the 67-county valuation factors, New Jersey the waiver forms for real estate, and Maryland how the inheritance tax paid is subtracted from the estate tax. Nebraska’s statutes put the nonresident rule in plain words: property passes by will or intestacy from a resident, “or, if the decedent was not a resident, any part of the property within this state”.

If you live in one state and own a rental or fund shares in another

The question a landlord asks first is whether a state that is not their home can tax a building inside it. For nearly every state on this page the answer is yes for real property. Fund shares are the harder question, because a share of a fund is intangible property and many statutes tie intangibles to where the owner lived. We include a row only where the text we read is clear.

Two warnings. First, a nonresident usually still files in the home state too, and the credit for tax paid to another state differs by state; the arithmetic in the “same estate” section below assumes everything sits in one state. Second, who owns the building matters: a rental held through an LLC can be treated as the building itself in Minnesota, Maine and Connecticut, and as an intangible in Washington. Our deep pages work those cases for Washington, Minnesota, Illinois and Oregon.

The same $6 million estate in each state: the tax owed

All the figures below are our arithmetic from each statute’s own table, for a $6,000,000 taxable estate (what is left after debts, expenses and the marital and charitable deductions) of a single resident with all property in the state, no taxable gifts and a 2026 death. We only computed states where we have the full table.

The spread is $542,500 between Oregon and the three states with no tax at this size, on identical assets. Washington and Minnesota land on the same $390,000 by different routes. Our federal guide shows that no federal tax is due at any of these sizes, because the federal exclusion is $15,000,000.

For the five inheritance-tax states the estate size matters less than the heir. The same $6,000,000, left to one heir:

A real household would use the marital deduction and usually has several heirs, and the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Nebraska and Kentucky rates apply to each heir’s share separately, so one heir is the worst case.

What changed in 2025 and 2026

• Washington cut the top rate from 35% back to 20% for deaths on or after July 1, 2026 (Chapter 209, Laws of 2026), and the exclusion went from $3,000,000 to $3,076,000 on January 1, 2026 and back to $3,000,000 on July 1, 2026, per the Department of Revenue tables. Our Washington page works the three dates.
• Kentucky moved nephews and nieces into Class A (above).
• Massachusetts now excludes out-of-state real and tangible property from the computation for deaths on or after August 1, 2025 (2025 Mass. Acts ch. 9, sec. 35), according to the Department’s Form M-706 instructions; the copy we saved is marked draft as of October 17, 2025.
• Oregon’s SB 1511, which would have raised the threshold to $2,500,000 for 2027 deaths, sat in the House Committee on Revenue in the Legislature’s record; the League of Women Voters reports it did not pass out of committee. The Oregon page has the bill’s rate table.
• Hawaii adopts the federal code as of December 31, 2024 for 2025 and later deaths (HRS 236E-3), so changes made by the July 2025 federal law are not automatically in its base (our reading); its exclusion has its own formula.
• Indexed figures move every January 1: New York ($7,160,000 for 2025), Maine ($7,000,000), Rhode Island ($1,802,431) and DC ($4,873,200) each published a different 2025 number, so the 2027 numbers will differ from the table above.
• Repealed: the Delaware estate tax (Sections 1501 through 1507 of Title 30, repealed by chapter 52 of the Delaware session laws, House Bill 16 approved July 2, 2017, for estates of decedents dying after December 31, 2017), Iowa’s inheritance tax (“not applicable for deaths occurring on or after 1/1/25”, Iowa Department of Revenue) and New Jersey’s estate tax (“No New Jersey Estate Tax is imposed on the estates of decedents who die on or after January 1, 2018”). New Jersey still has its inheritance tax, described on our New Jersey page.

We did not read the statute books of the other 34 states; the list rests on the 17 jurisdictions above, each read from its own statute or revenue department, and on the three repeals we confirmed.

What a reader can do with this

• Find your exposure by two facts: where you were living when you die, and where each building sits. Someone who lives in a state with no death tax and owns a rental in Massachusetts, Oregon or Maryland is in the nonresident table; a resident of Oregon with a rental in Arizona is in the Oregon column for the whole estate, less the out-of-state share.
• Measure the margin to the line. If your estate is within a few hundred thousand dollars of an exclusion, the arithmetic in the “same estate” section shows how sharply the bill grows above it; in New York the credit disappears above $7,717,500.
• Check the heir, not just the estate, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Nebraska, Kentucky and Maryland, where a niece or a friend can owe a six-figure bill on the same bequest that costs a child nothing.
• Check the gift window. In New York and Minnesota a gift within three years of death saves nothing; in Vermont the window is two years and in Maine one.
• Check portability. Only Maryland and Hawaii carry a late spouse’s unused exclusion, so in the other states a couple’s first exclusion can be lost if the first spouse leaves everything to the survivor. A bypass trust is a drafting job for an estate-planning attorney, not a calculation on this page.
• Get the filing deadlines in front of you: the estate tax return is due 9 months after death in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Washington, 10 months in DC and 8 months for the New Jersey inheritance tax.

The decision, and who makes it. The plan is drafted by an estate-planning attorney admitted in the state of residence and in any state where you own real estate, and the returns are prepared by that attorney or a CPA who files estate returns. Appraisals of buildings and fund interests come from credentialed appraisers. A financial adviser’s part is the liquidity plan for a bill that can reach six figures within nine months. Nothing here is a recommendation to give, bequeath or move anything. For the income-tax side of an inherited rental see our step-up in basis guide, and for what probate does to the property, our probate guide.

This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.

FAQ

Sources, read and saved on October 21, 2026: Connecticut General Statutes chapter 217 (12-391); D.C. Code 47-3701, 47-3702 and 47-3703 and the Office of Tax and Revenue 2026 D-76 instructions and computation worksheet; Hawaii Revised Statutes 236E-2, 236E-3, 236E-6, 236E-7 and 236E-8 and Form M-6 (Rev. 2025); Maine 36 M.R.S. 4102, 4103 and 4104, Maine Revenue Services Estate Tax (706ME) page and the 2026 Form 706ME instructions; the Massachusetts Department of Revenue guide to estate taxes (copy updated October 25, 2024) and the Form M-706 instructions for deaths on or after August 1, 2025 (copy marked draft as of October 17, 2025); Rhode Island General Laws 44-22-1.1, ADV 2025-27 (December 30, 2025), Form RI-706 (revised 11/2025) and its 2025 instructions; Vermont 32 V.S.A. 7402 and 7442a; Kentucky KRS 140.070 (as amended April 27, 2026), the Kentucky Office of State Budget Director report on the inheritance and estate tax and 103 KAR 2.030; Nebraska Revised Statutes 77-2001, 77-2002, 77-2004, 77-2005 and 77-2006; the Iowa Department of Revenue inheritance tax page; Delaware chapter 52 (House Bill 16, 2017); and the sources listed on our Washington, Oregon, New York, Minnesota, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania pages, which we reused after reading them. We could not load KRS 140.080 or the Kentucky nonresident statute, and we did not read the statute books of the other 34 states. The $6,000,000 examples, the shares of the estate and the counts are our arithmetic. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.