The heiress rejects her fortune of more than 4 billion euros

A woman living in Austria, who inherited billions of dollars from her grandparents, told The New York Times in an interview that she was “infuriated” by the huge amount received and promised to pay up to 90% of her will. Inheritance in lines.

Marlene Engelhorn, 30, who has more than 4 billion euros, is the co-founder of Tax Me Now, an initiative by the wealthy to urge the governments of Germany and Austria to tax inheritances. are not earned by heirs and therefore must be democratically redistributed by the state.

“The nightmare scenario is that they’re charging me taxes,” said the young woman, who learned in 2020 about the large inheritance she would receive after her grandmother’s death last September.

The activist family has poured billions of dollars into one of Germany’s most important chemical companies, BASF, founded by Friedrich Engelhorn some 150 years ago. Currently, the family fortune is estimated to be around 4,200 million dollars.

Likewise, the young woman said she is against philanthropy and charity because these reproduce the same power dynamics that perpetuate the systemic inequalities that create social inequality.

According to him, only a new fiscal policy that taxes the super rich can close that gap.

“Of course, with money, I get incredible freedom of action, but it doesn’t match my beliefs. No one should have so much power and tax-free money,” he commented in an earlier interview, questioning the privileges of the rich.

“If I were not poor, you would not be rich,” Engelhorn recalled Bertolt Brecht’s words when criticizing the way social inequalities were normalized and “accepted in democracies.”

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