Laws were passed a couple of years ago that permanently set the federal tax exclusion amount on estates at $5,000,000. The law also stipulated the exclusion amount should be indexed for inflation each year. The exclusion amount for 2014 is $5,340,000. This means there is no federal estates taxes if the deceased has an estate less than $5,340,000 and no federal estate tax return needs to be filed.

The recently enacted 2012-2013 budget that Gov. Kasich signed into law includes a provision that eliminates the Ohio estate tax. Before this repeal, Ohio taxed anyone who died with assets above $338,333 at a tax rate of up to 7%. This was the lowest exemption amount of any state in the United States.