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What is the Federal Estate Tax?
The Federal estate tax is a tax on the right to transfer property at death. The tax, reported on Form 706, United States Estate (and Generation Skipping Transfer) Tax Return, is applied to estates for which at-death gross assets, the "gross estate," exceed the filing threshold. Included in gross estate are real estate, cash, stocks, bonds, businesses, and decedent-owned life insurance policies. Deductions are allowed for administrative expenses, indebtedness, taxes, casualty loss, and charitable and marital transfers. The taxable estate is calculated as gross estate less allowable deductions.
For information about selected terms and concepts, a description of the data sources and limitations, and links to recent revisions of Form 706, please visit Estate Tax Study Metadata.
The IRS Estate Tax page provides further information concerning the estate tax.
Here's what you can expect to find under Estate Tax Statistics. Use the links below to skip to information on this page.
SOI Estate Tax Data Tables, Filing Years
The data included in these SOI tables are for returns filed during a single calendar year. Because of the relatively long filing period, estate tax returns filed in a single calendar year may be for decedents who died in several different years.
Data tables are available in Excel version 4.0. A free Excel viewer is available for download, if needed.
The data included in these SOI tables are for returns filed for decedents who died in the same year and whose estates would have been subject to the same tax law and similar economic conditions. These files are in Excel 4.0.
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Estate Tax Returns
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| By tax status and size of gross estate, value for tax purposes |
| Included Items: |
Gross estate, type of property, deductions, taxable estate, estate tax and tax credits |
| Year of Death: |
2004 2001* 1998 1995 1992
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| By tax status and size of gross estate, date of death value |
| Included Items: |
Gross estate and type of property |
| Year of Death: |
2004 2001* 1998 1995 1992 1989
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| For decedents who made charitable bequests |
| Included Items: |
Gross estate, charitable bequest, type of charity, marital status |
| Year of Death: |
2004 2001* 1998 1995 1992 1989
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| For male decedents by age and marital status |
| Included Items: |
Gross estate, tax |
| Year of Death: |
2004 2001* 1998 1995 1992 1989
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| For female decedents by age and marital status |
| Included Items: |
Gross estate, tax |
| Year of Death: |
2004 2001* 1998 1995 1992 1989
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| By tax status and size of net worth |
| Included Items: |
Gross estate, type of property, deductions, tax computation |
| Year of Death: |
1995 1992 1989 |
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| By state of residence |
| Included Items: |
Gross estate, type of property, deductions, tax computation |
| Year of Death: |
2004 2001* 1998 1995 1992 1989 |
*Data files revised October 2007
This table is in Excel 4.0. The file is updated annually.
Taxable Estate Tax Returns as a Percentage of Adult Deaths, Selected Years of Death
Published as: SOI Bulletin Historical Table 17
Tax Year: 1934-2004
These articles, also published in the quarterly SOI Bulletin, focus primarily on estate tax decedents who died in a particular year. These articles are currently available in .pdf format. Excel data tables for returns by calendar year filed are available separately. Excel data tables for selected years of death are also available.
Bulletin articles and research papers are available in Adobe PDF format, which requires the free Adobe Acrobat reader to view and print these files.
Federal Estate Tax Returns:
These articles present basic estate tax data, including assets, deductions, charitable bequests, tax computation and summaries of significant law changes for the calendar years indicated. Each article focuses on decedents who died in the first year of the 3-year group.
2004-2006 2001-2003* 1998-2000 1995-1997
*This article has been updated to reflect data revised in October 2007.
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The Estate Tax: Ninety Years and Counting
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This article provides a brief history of the estate tax and its impact on the U.S. budget. It also examines the ways in which the economic behavior of the affected population has changed over time in response to market, technological, and political stimuli.
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The following are research papers written by SOI analysts. The papers below are in .pdf format.
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Creativity and Compromise: Constructing a Panel of Income and Estate Tax Data for Wealthy Individuals
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Authors:
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Barry W. Johnson and Lisa M. Schreiber
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Statistics of Income, IRS
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Panel data consisting of income reported by wealthy taxpayers provide important opportunities to study the ways in which income changes over time. When paired with wealth data from Federal estate tax returns, the resulting data set provides a rare opportunity to learn more about the relationship of wealth to realized income, which is an important consideration in many public policy debates, and about changes in income that occur as people near the ends of their lives.
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Federal Taxation of Inheritance and Wealth Transfers
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Authors:
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Barry W. Johnson and Martha Britton Eller
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Statistics of Income, IRS
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This paper provides a broad overview of the Federal Estate tax with an emphasis on the tax law applicable to 1998 decedents. Includes extensive data on the demographic and financial characteristics of 1998 decedents.
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These statistical projections are made by IRS’s Office of Research and published by SOI. The Calendar Year concept used in these projections is equivalent to the Filing Year concept used in selected tables above.
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