All You Need to Know About the Estate Tax

The ‘death tax’ sounds scary, but high exemptions and smart planning mean it rarely applies.

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You’ve heard that the only things that are certain in life are death and taxes. And sometimes they seem to come at you at the same time in the form of the estate tax, which is sometimes referred to as the “death tax.”

The federal estate tax is levied on the total fair market value of a person’s assets upon death before anything can be transferred to heirs. Some states also have their own estate tax.