At the WEF in Davos, there are the ultra-rich who want to pay ever less taxes. And there are those who want to pay more; like the 33-year-old Austrian multimillionaire, Marlene Engelhorn, who hit the headlines in 2024 for having redistributed her inheritance of 25 million euros to various organizations, this for greater fairness with those who do not have had his chance.
But her peers take a dim view of her, because she is now campaigning for the richest people on the planet to be taxed more. “My peers ignore me. They are here to network and lobby to continue paying as little as possible – which is the exact opposite of what I am here for. My goal is to draw attention to the need for fair taxation, including for the rich,” she explains.
And remember that according to the NGO Oxfam, the fortunes of billionaires soared last year by 2,000 billion dollars, or three times more than in 2023, to reach 15,000 billion. “This concentration of money among the powerful creates a feudal system, as in the times of kings and dukes. However, we live in a democracy and we must control the aristocracy of money through taxes,” she says.
-“Today’s billionaires decide without any democratic control what they consider to be charitable and who they want to support or not,” she notes. “For taxes it’s different, we all participate in the decision on how the money should be spent. It’s by far what I prefer.”
So what does his ideal tax world look like? “I wish the rich would be proud to pay taxes,” she replies. “My dream is that the annual list of the 300 richest will be replaced by the list of the 300 top taxpayers. The rich should want to lead and celebrate the fact that they are the greatest contributors to the common good.”
