Marlene Engelhorn called it 'Grotesque' Der Spiegel that she does not have to pay a cent of inheritance tax on the millions of dollars she received from her grandmother. In an interview in the German weekly last year, Engelhorn said: “Families can pass on money as if they were noble dynasties. How does that fit in a democracy?” In Austria, where Engelhorn lives, no inheritance tax is levied.
Engelhorn inherited a fortune because one of her ancestors founded the chemical company BASF. On Wednesday, Engelhorn, 31 years old, announced that she is giving away 25 million euros. A citizens' council of fifty randomly selected Austrians must decide how the money is spent. “I have this money because it is not taxed,” Engelhorn said when announcing her plan. “I have this money because the government has failed to fulfill its mission to distribute wealth in society in such a way that it does not end up exclusively and completely unjustly with me, just because I happened to be born in this family with this surname.” The 25 million euros that Engelhorn is now giving away includes approximately 90 percent of her inheritance.
Marlene Engelhorn grew up in Vienna and attended private schools. She noticed that the opulence that surrounded her was not self-evident during her studies in German studies at the University of Vienna. she told me Der Spiegel. Her fellow students worked alongside their studies, and she read about inequality and ideas for redistribution in novels and nonfiction books.
Sixty wealthy people
She has already made it known that Engelhorn is not satisfied with the tax policy in Austria with her initiative 'Taxmenow', a collective of about sixty wealthy people in German-speaking countries who advocate the redistribution of money. In Germany, the collective states, the poorer half of the population owns only 1.2 percent of all wealth. In Austria, the richest 1 percent own an estimated 50 percent of the wealth.
Engelhorn previously announced that she wanted to give away her money, she was just looking for the right way. She presented the plan on Tuesday. First, 10,000 randomly selected Austrian citizens will receive a letter asking for their interests and some information. A group of fifty people is then selected from interested parties who are a reasonable reflection of society. That 'Good Council for Redistribution', like the company will then be called, can then determine how the money will be spent with the help of experts but without involvement of Engelhorn.
Marlene Engelhorn's plea for higher inheritance taxes goes diametrically against the views of many of her ancestors, who successfully avoided paying taxes for decades.
The founder of BASF, Friedrich Engelhorn, sold his shares while he was still alive and used the money to buy the pharmaceutical company Boehringer in Mannheim, which, among other things, produced malaria drugs. Four generations later, Curt Engelhorn sold the Boehringer company to the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche for 19 billion German marks. The German state did not see a cent of this, because the family and the company were registered in Bermuda. “Mr Waigel will be annoyed,” Curt Engelhoorn said at the time Der Spiegel about the then Minister of Finance Theo Waigel (CSU). Other family members were convicted of tax evasion, or they live in Switzerland.
#Austrian #heiress #BASF #family #million #euros
