File Form 709 for 2011 gifts by April 17, 2012. The due date is April 17, instead of April 15, because April 15 is a Sunday and April 16 is the Emancipation Day holiday in the District of Columbia.

The annual gift exclusion for 2011 remains $13,000. See Annual Exclusion, later.

For gifts made to spouses who are not U.S. citizens, the annual exclusion has increased to $136,000. See Nonresident Aliens, later.

The top rate for gifts and generation- 
skipping transfers is now 35%. See Table for Computing Gift Tax, later.

The unified credit for 2011 is $1,730,800. See Table of Unified Credits, later.

Section 302(d)(2) of the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 (Pub. L. 111-312) mandates that any unified credit allocated to gifts made in prior periods be redetermined using current gift tax rates. See instructions for column C in Schedule B. Gifts From Prior Periods, below, for more details.

The applicable exclusion amount now may consist of a basic exclusion amount of $5,000,000 that, starting in 2012, will be indexed for inflation, and, in the case of a surviving spouse, the unused exclusion amount of a predeceased spouse (who died after December 31, 2010). The executor of the predeceased spouse's estate must have elected on a timely and complete Form 706 to allow the donor to use the predeceased spouse's unused exclusion amount.

The IRS has created a page on IRS.gov for information about Form 709 and its instructions, at www.irs.gov/form709. Information about any future developments affecting Form 709 (such as legislation enacted after we release it) will be posted on that page.