Two separate numbers control how much you can give away — while alive or after death — without owing federal gift or estate tax, and 2026 brought a significant jump to one of them. * The annual gift tax exclusion stayed flat at $19,000 per recipient for 2026, the same as 2025. That means you can give up to $19,000 to as many individual people as you want in a single year — a child, a grandchild, a friend — without it counting against your lifetime exemption or requiring a gift tax return at all. Married couples who agree to split gifts can combine their exclusions, giving up to $38,000 per recipient tax-free. * The bigger change is the lifetime estate and gift tax exemption, which rose to $15 million per individual for 2026, up from $13.99 million in 2025. This is the total amount you can give away over your lifetime plus leave at death before federal estate tax applies at all. For a married couple, that means $30 million can pass to heirs completely free of federal estate tax. * That $15 million figure is now permanent under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, rather than scheduled to expire and drop back down as it was under prior law — though it will keep adjusting upward for inflation each year. One more detail worth knowing: gifts to a spouse who isn't a U.S. citizen don't qualify for the unlimited marital deduction that citizen spouses get, but they do get their own higher annual exclusion, which rose to $194,000 for 2026.