Austrian Heiress Marlene Engelhorn Is Giving Away Her $27 Million Fortune
If you inherited $27 million dollars, what would you do? For Austrian heiress Marlene Engelhorn, 31, she's determined to give it all away.
"I have inherited a fortune, and therefore power, without having done anything for it," she said in a statement, per BBC. "And the state doesn't even want taxes on it." (In 2008, Austria got rid of its inheritance tax.)
Engelhorn is descended from Friedrich Engelhorn, a German industrialist who, in 1865, founded BASF, a chemical and pharmaceutical company. Engelhorn's grandmother, Traudl Engelhorn-Vechiatto, was estimated to have a net worth of around $4.2 billion.
This week, Engelhorn began inviting people to take part in her initiative for the public to decide what to do with her fortune. Called the Good Council for Redistribution, Austrians can register online or by phone, with 50 people being chosen.
"If politicians don't do their job and redistribute, then I have to redistribute my wealth myself," she said. "Many people struggle to make ends meet with a full-time job, and pay taxes on every euro they earn from work. I see this as a failure of politics, and if politics fails, then the citizens have to deal with it themselves."
In 2021, Engelhorn co-founded Tax Me Now, which the Washington Post describes as "a collective of wealthy people in German-speaking countries, to address extreme inequality resulting from tax policies."
It's unclear how much of her fortune Engelhorn will keep, though it is understood she will keep some of it.
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