The news caused a stir. Marlene Engelhorna rich Austrian heiress present this week at the Davos forumwill give up more than 27 million dollars to denounce the “failure” of governments to curb growing inequalities.
“I have inherited a fortune and with it a power, without ever having done anything to deserve it. And the State does not even want me to pay the inheritance tax,” denounced this 31-year-old Austrian, descendant of Friedrich Engelhorn, founder of the German chemical giant BASF.
This activist with short dark hair, who can be seen this week militating at the meeting of business and political elites in Davos, has been demanding for a long time to pay more taxes. Following the example of hundreds of American “patriotic millionaires”, he founded the initiative ”Tax me now” in the German-speaking world. And, after the death of his grandmother in September 2022, he took action.
Marlene’s family is the founder of BASF, one of the most important chemical companies in the world.
He has come up with an original solution: this month he sent 10,000 letters to randomly selected Austrian citizens from whom 50 names will be selected in the end. His mission will be to propose ideas “beneficial for society as a whole” with which to redistribute 90% of his inheritance, about 25 million euros. Between March and June, all-expenses-paid work sessions will be organized in the city of Salzburg.
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Marlene Engelhorn will have no say in the outcome of the debates. Only if there is no consensus will she withdraw this considerable sum of money, for which she promised to find another method of redistribution in that case. Scandalized by the fact that those who “struggle to make ends meet despite having a full-time job pay taxes” in Austria, a very conservative country that abolished the inheritance tax in 2008, this young heiress decided to take action. affair.”Given the failure of the government, it is up to us to repair the injusticessays Engelhorn, who did not immediately respond to an interview request from AFP.
The activist asked for more taxes on large fortunes from the Davos Economic Forum
In Austria, remember, a country without a minimum wage, “there is also no real wealth tax.” At the beginning of the Davos forum, the NGO Oxfam once again denounced the “obscene inequalities” around the world, demanding more taxes to increasingly rich billionaires.
Within the Eurozone, the disparities are especially flagrant in Austria, especially in terms of real estate wealth, according to the Viennese economist Emanuel List, who is based on recent estimates from the European Central Bank (ECB). “The top 5% of households The rich own 54% of the wealth, while the most disadvantaged 50% barely own 4%,” he told AFP, praising his compatriot’s “innovative” initiative. Only Latvia is worse off in terms of disparity.
The issue divides the Austrian political class a few months before the general elections. While the Social Democrats are in favor of reinstating the inheritance tax, the conservative party ÖVP, in power, and the far-right FPÖ have rejected the proposal, fearing that it would weaken the dynamic network of family SMEs.
But for Marlene Engelhorn it is simply a matter of “giving money back to society”, as she declared in an interview with the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel. A former student of German literature, the rich heiress who will soon be deprived of most of her resources now has to think for the first time about finding a job. “Going from the category of the richest 1% of society to the least rich 99% Some would see it as a setback, but I see it as progress in democratic society. I come out of this dynastic ghetto of the rich“, he says, ensuring that he will not regret his decision.
JCM/fl