Inheritance Tax Calculator (All 50 States, 2026)

Inheritance tax and estate tax are two different taxes that get confused constantly, and the difference determines whether this calculator returns $0 or a real number. An estate tax is assessed against the total value of everything a deceased person owned, before any distribution, regardless of who inherits it — that is what the estate tax calculator computes, and it applies at the federal level (above a $13.99 million exemption in 2026) plus in twelve states and D.C. that still tax large estates. An inheritance tax is a completely separate tax, assessed against each individual beneficiary, based on what THEY personally receive and their RELATIONSHIP to the decedent — a spouse might owe $0 while a cousin inheriting the identical dollar amount from the identical estate owes thousands, because the tax cares about the relationship, not the estate's total size.

There is no federal inheritance tax at all. Only five states levy one: Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Maryland, Kentucky, and New Jersey. (Iowa repealed its inheritance tax for deaths on or after January 1, 2025, and is intentionally excluded from this list — if you're seeing older content that includes Iowa as a sixth inheritance-tax state, it's out of date.) If the decedent lived in any of the other 45 states or the District of Columbia, and did not own real property in one of the five taxing states, you owe $0 in inheritance tax — full stop, regardless of whether you inherited $10,000 or $10 million. This calculator selects the decedent's state and your relationship to them, and only runs real per-state tax math when one of the five taxing states is selected; every other state returns $0 with an explanation, exactly as the underlying law requires.

This calculator is a genuine router, not a static lookup table: it dispatches your state and relationship-category selections to the same underlying tax-math engine that powers each individual state calculator below, such as the Pennsylvania inheritance tax calculator.

### Computational Execution Steps 1. Check for a universal exemption first. Charitable and government transfers are exempt from inheritance tax in every one of the five states that levies one, so this category always returns $0 without even needing a state lookup. 2. Check whether the decedent's state levies an inheritance tax at all. Only Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Maryland, Kentucky, and New Jersey do. Every other selection short-circuits to $0. 3. If the state is one of the five, map your general relationship category to that state's own specific beneficiary class. Each state defines classes differently — for example, Kentucky exempts nieces and nephews (as of a 2026 law change) while New Jersey taxes them at 15%–16% with no exemption at all — so the same "niece or nephew" selection can produce a $0 result in one state and a five-figure tax bill in another. 4. Apply that state's actual statutory rate schedule (flat-rate-per-class for Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and Maryland; progressive brackets for Kentucky and New Jersey) to the amount you inherited.

1. Scenario: a niece inherits $100,000. The amount and relationship are identical in every version of this example — only the decedent's state changes.
2. If the decedent lived in Texas (or 44 other non-taxing states): Texas has no inheritance tax. Result: $0.
3. If the decedent lived in Pennsylvania: a niece is an "other" beneficiary, taxed at a flat 15% with no exemption. $100,000 × 15% = $15,000.
4. If the decedent lived in Kentucky, and died on or after January 1, 2026: nieces and nephews were reclassified into exempt Class A by a 2026 law change. Result: $0 — identical to the no-tax states, purely because of Kentucky's own 2026 statutory reform.
5. If the decedent lived in Maryland: a niece is a "collateral heir," taxed at 10% above a $1,000 exemption. ($100,000 − $1,000) × 10% = $9,900.
6. The takeaway: the exact same inheritance — same amount, same relationship — ranges from $0 to $15,000 depending entirely on which of the 50 states the decedent happened to live in.

• Any state's separate estate tax, which is assessed against the total estate before distribution and applies in twelve states plus D.C., independent of whether that state also has an inheritance tax (Maryland is the only state with both) — see the estate tax calculator for that computation.
• Federal estate tax, which applies only to estates above $13.99 million per decedent in 2026 and has nothing to do with beneficiary relationship.
• Real property located in a different state than the decedent's primary residence — inheritance tax generally follows where real property sits, not just where the decedent lived, so a Florida resident who owned a vacation home in Pennsylvania could still expose Pennsylvania-based heirs to Pennsylvania inheritance tax on that specific property.
• Life insurance proceeds paid to a named beneficiary, which are generally exempt from inheritance tax in all five taxing states regardless of relationship.
• Any state-specific relief programs (agricultural exemptions, small-estate procedures, early-payment discounts) that are unique to one state's statute — see that state's own calculator for those details.

• Confusing inheritance tax with estate tax. These are legally, administratively, and financially different taxes; conflating them leads to double-counting or entirely missing a real liability.
• Assuming every state without an inheritance tax also has no estate tax, or vice versa. The two taxes are independent — a state can have neither, either, or (in Maryland's case) both.
• Forgetting that Iowa repealed its inheritance tax. For any death on or after January 1, 2025, Iowa charges $0 — some older sources still list it among the taxing states.
• Applying one state's beneficiary-class rules to another state. "Niece" means something different in Kentucky (exempt as of 2026) than in New Jersey (taxed at 15%–16% with no exemption) — always check the specific state.
• Basing the calculation on where the beneficiary lives instead of where the decedent lived (or owned property). Inheritance tax follows the decedent's residence and property location, not the recipient's.

• Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, Inheritance Tax: pa.gov/agencies/revenue.
• Nebraska Revised Statutes §§ 77-2004 to 77-2006; Nebraska Department of Revenue: revenue.nebraska.gov/PAD/inheritance-tax.
• Maryland Code, Tax-General Title 7, Subtitle 2; Maryland Register of Wills: registers.maryland.gov/main/taxes.html.
• KRS Chapter 140; Kentucky Department of Revenue: revenue.ky.gov/Individual/Inheritance-Estate-Tax.
• N.J.S.A. 54:34-1 et seq.; NJ Division of Taxation: nj.gov/treasury/taxation/inheritance-estate.
• [estate tax calculator](/estate-tax-calculator): For the separate federal and state estate tax computation.