Applicable Unified Credit

The unified credit is the amount of estate tax credit that is available to your estate to eliminate the estate tax your estate would pay on the applicable exclusion amount, which includes the basic exclusion amount (i.e., $5 million, indexed, of taxable estate (loosely, assets) and the deceased spouse’s unused exclusion amount. The applicable credit amount is $1,730,800 on the basic exclusion amount and 35% (the marginal tax rate) multiplied by the amount of your deceased spouse’s unused exclusion.