{"id":83823,"date":"2025-10-16T07:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T07:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/83823\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T07:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T07:14:10","slug":"heiress-donates-90-of-e25-million-inheritance-to-charities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/83823\/","title":{"rendered":"Heiress Donates 90% of \u20ac25 Million Inheritance to Charities"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Marlene<\/p>\n

Photo: Martin Kraft via Wikimedia Commons<\/a> (CC BY-SA 4.0)<\/a><\/p>\n

Marlene Engelhorn is the Austrian-German heiress to a multimillion-euro fortune, inherited from her grandmother, who passed away in 2022. This fortune stems from Friedrich Engelhorn, who founded BASF, today\u2019s largest chemical producer, and an ethically controversial company.<\/p>\n

Initially, the heiress wanted the Austrian government to apply a 90% tax on the inheritance. However, Austria got rid of its inheritance tax in 2008; so, instead, she donated it. She planned to randomly select 50 Austrians and let them decide where the money should go.<\/p>\n

After emailing over 10,000 random Austrians, she selected 50 who demographically best represented Austria, and from them, the \u201cGood Council for Redistribution<\/a>\u201d was born. Engelhorn had only three restrictions on how they could use the money: for-profit ventures; groups with inhumane, unconstitutional, or extremist affiliations; and the members themselves or their associates could not be given the money.<\/p>\n

In 2024, after six weeks of deliberations for which each member was compensated, they decided to divide the \u20ac25 million (almost $30 million) between 77 different organizations, covering a wide range of social issues. The largest donation of \u20ac1.7 million (nearly $2 million) went to the Austrian Society for Nature Conservation.<\/p>\n

Back in 2021, Engelhorn co-founded the Tax Me Now movement as she believes it\u2019s unjust for some to come upon such grand amounts of money simply because they \u201cwon the birth lottery,\u201d as she puts it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany people struggle to make ends meet with a full-time job and pay taxes on every euro they earn from work,\u201d she explains. \u201cI see this as a failure of politics, and if politics fails, then the citizens have to deal with it themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tax Me Now movement has gained support from other wealthy heirs like Abigail Disney. Engelhorn continues to be an advocate for socioeconomic justice.\n<\/p>\n

Marlene Engelhorn inherited millions before she was 30. When the Austrian government wouldn\u2019t tax her inheritance, she found others who would help her distribute it.
\n\"Marlene<\/p>\n

Photo: Jan Zappner via Wikimedia Commons<\/a> (Public domain)<\/p>\n

50 people were chosen who best represented Austria\u2019s demographics and divided the \u20ac25 million between 77 different organizations.
\n\"Marlene<\/p>\n

Photo: Jan Zappner via Wikimedia Commons<\/a> (Public domain)<\/p>\n

Today, she is an advocate for decreasing the wealth gap, taxing the rich, and is a co-founder of the Tax Me Now movement.
\n\"Marlene<\/p>\n

Photo: Martin Kraft via Wikimedia Commons<\/a> (CC BY-SA 4.0)<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: Why a millionaire heiress gave away her $27 million inheritance to strangers<\/a>
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Lottery Winner Vows To Donate Portion of $4M Winnings to Animal Welfare<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Martin Kraft via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) Marlene Engelhorn is the Austrian-German heiress to a multimillion-euro…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,3221,54088,176,54089,61,60,5034,174,175],"class_list":{"0":"post-83823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-charity","10":"tag-donate","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-heiress","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-millionaire","16":"tag-personal-finance","17":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}