The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act roughly doubled the federal estate and gift tax exemption starting in 2018, but wrote the increase into the statute as temporary, with a sunset at the end of 2025 that would have reverted the exemption to its pre-TCJA level, indexed for inflation, somewhere around $7 million per person. That scheduled cliff drove a genuine wave of urgency across the estate planning industry from 2023 through 2025: use-it-or-lose-it gifting campaigns, spousal lifetime access trusts, and other irrevocable structures built specifically to lock in the higher exemption before it disappeared.

The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed the outcome entirely rather than simply delaying it. It made the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act's individual income tax rates permanent, and separately raised, not just preserved, the estate and gift tax exemption to $15 million per person starting in 2026, indexed for inflation in future years. The scheduled reduction was removed from the law entirely rather than postponed.

For most households in the $1 million to $5 million range that make up the bulk of pre-retiree and retiree planning conversations, the federal estate tax was never really the operative threat, since even the reduced roughly $7 million sunset level would have exceeded most of these estates. For the smaller subset of households closer to or above that old sunset threshold, structures built in a hurry during 2023 through 2025 specifically to beat the deadline may now be more complexity than the situation requires, worth revisiting with the estate attorney who built them rather than unwinding unilaterally.

Portability is worth a direct reminder here. A surviving spouse's ability to inherit a deceased spouse's unused exemption, elected by timely filing an estate tax return even when no tax is owed, means most married couples don't need bypass trusts purely for federal estate tax purposes anymore. Trusts still serve other real purposes, asset protection, blended-family planning, providing for minor or disabled beneficiaries, and state-level considerations, but the estate-tax-avoidance rationale for many older trust structures has largely evaporated.

Permanent still deserves a periodic check rather than a permanent shelving of the topic. Congress can amend the exemption at any point with new legislation, and a household whose net worth is growing steadily over a 20-to-30-year retirement, through investment growth, a business sale, or real estate appreciation, could approach the $15 million per person, $30 million per couple threshold well before the law would need to change again. This belongs on the multi-year plan review, not filed away as permanently solved.

It's also worth separating this from two related but distinct issues. Arizona has no estate or inheritance tax at all, so state-level exposure isn't a factor for Arizona residents regardless of what happens federally. And the SECURE Act's 10-year rule on inherited pre-tax retirement accounts, an income tax issue rather than an estate tax issue, remains untouched by any of this and is the far more common 'death tax' most Singh PWM households actually encounter.

The annual gift tax exclusion is a separate tool that didn't depend on the sunset resolution one way or the other and still works the same regardless of where the lifetime exemption ends up. For 2026, an individual can gift up to $19,000 per recipient, $38,000 for a married couple splitting gifts, without touching the lifetime exemption or filing a gift tax return at all. For households doing ongoing lifetime giving to children or grandchildren, this annual exclusion is usually the more relevant, more durable planning lever year to year than the lifetime exemption most households will never approach.

If you rushed into large lifetime gifts, spousal lifetime access trusts, or other irrevocable structures in 2024 or 2025 specifically to beat the sunset, it's worth a conversation with your estate attorney about whether that structure still fits your goals now that the exemption was raised rather than cut, not necessarily to undo it, but to confirm it still makes sense.

If your net worth is on a growth trajectory that could approach $15 million per person over your retirement, keep the exemption on your periodic plan review rather than assuming today's number is permanent.

If you haven't touched your estate documents since before OBBBA passed, treat this as a natural prompt to review them alongside your CPA and estate attorney rather than waiting for the next scheduled milestone.

• Continuing to plan around the old use-it-or-lose-it-by-2025 urgency that no longer reflects current law.
• Assuming the federal estate tax is the primary death-tax risk for a $1 million to $5 million household, when the SECURE Act's 10-year rule on inherited pre-tax accounts is the more common and more plannable exposure.
• Treating permanent as meaning it can never change again and skipping periodic review as assets grow.
• Confusing the federal exemption with state-level rules, Arizona has no estate or inheritance tax, but other states where your heirs live might.