Annual gift tax filings — required when gifts exceed the annual exclusion, and a key component of lifetime estate planning strategy.
Form 709, the United States Gift (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return, is filed when an individual makes gifts that exceed the annual gift tax exclusion or otherwise require reporting. Filing this return doesn't necessarily mean tax is owed — it means the gift is being reported and, if it exceeds the annual exclusion, applied against the lifetime exemption.
The annual gift tax exclusion for 2026 is $19,000 per recipient — unchanged from 2025. The unified lifetime estate and gift tax exemption is $15,000,000 per individual under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which permanently raised and indexed this amount. The scheduled sunset that would have reduced the exemption has been repealed.
Taxable gifts made during a person's lifetime reduce the federal estate tax exemption available at death. With the exemption now permanent at $15 million and indexed for inflation, the urgency around "using up" exemption before a sunset is gone — but tracking cumulative gifts remains important for accurate estate planning.
Gifts within the $19,000 annual exclusion generally do not need to be reported. There is no limit on how many recipients you can give the annual exclusion amount to. Married couples can split gifts, effectively doubling the exclusion to $38,000 per recipient — but gift splitting requires a Form 709 filing even if no tax is owed.
If the decedent made taxable gifts in the year of death, a final Form 709 must be filed. We coordinate this with Form 706 as part of an integrated estate filing.