A German heir inheriting billions of dollars from her extremely wealthy grandparents said she was “annoyed” by the incoming fortune and desires nearly all of it to be taxed away.
The surprising response from Marlene Engelhorn, of Austria, got here after her grandmother died last month — forsaking the large sum of cash that got here from the family’s centuries-old chemical company.
“The dream scenario is I get taxed,” the 30-year-old told the Latest York Times.
Last 12 months, in a profile by Vice News, Engelhorn told the outlet in German that “no person should have that much tax-free money and power.”
Engelhorn is the co-founder of a gaggle called Tax Me Now, an initiative of affluent individuals who want wealth to be redistributed through greater taxes on the wealthy in Germany and Austria.
The heir specifically advocates for prime taxes on inherited wealth because, she says, the cash isn’t earned by the inheritor and will thus be democratically allocated.
Austria, where Englehorn resides, opted to abolish its inheritance tax in 2008.
“I’m the product of an unequal society,” Engelhorn said in a speech at a Millionaires for Humanity event in late August in Amsterdam. “Because otherwise, I couldn’t be born into multimillions. Just born. Nothing else.”
Her family’s multibillion-dollar fortune comes from Friedrich Engelhorn’s founding of the chemical company BASF in 1865. The family’s net price is estimated to be $4.2 billion, in accordance with Forbes.
Englehorn grew up in a mansion in Vienna and attended French-language schools, in accordance with the Times.
She said she lived a privileged life that provided a “very, very narrow view of the world.”
In college, she gained a latest perspective and in 2020, she began to take into consideration wealth redistribution upon learning she could be a partial inheritor to her grandmother’s fortune when she died.
“I don’t think that I needs to be in power or in charge the best way that I could possibly be if I take advantage of my wealth accordingly,” Englehorn told the Times.
She said inherited money needs to be taxed reasonably than donated to a reason for one person’s interests.
“I would love tax justice to take this not possible decision off my hands,” she said.