New York Times Saturday Profile, She’s Inheriting Millions of Euros. She Wants Her Wealth Taxed Away.:

By the time her extraordinarily wealthy grandmother died last month, Marlene Engelhorn already knew who she wanted to be the ultimate beneficiary of the enormous inheritance coming her way: the tax man.

“The dream scenario is I get taxed,” said Ms. Engelhorn, the co-founder of a group called Tax Me Now.

Ms. Engelhorn, a 30-year-old who grew up in Vienna, is part of a growing movement of young, leftist millionaires who say they want governments to take a much larger share of their inherited wealth, arguing that these unearned fortunes should be democratically allocated by the state.

For more than a year, Ms. Engelhorn has been campaigning for tax policies that would redistribute her eight-figure windfall — and anyone else’s.

“I am the product of an unequal society,” Ms. Engelhorn said in a speech at a Millionaires for Humanity event in late August in Amsterdam, where activists were calling for wealth taxation. “Because otherwise, I couldn’t be born into multimillions. Just born. Nothing else.”

Her family is no stranger to giving away huge sums. Her grandparents poured a chunk of their fortune into supporting young scientists. Her great-uncle gave millions to an archaeology center. His cousin pledged nearly $140 million to classical music.

But in Ms. Engelhorn’s view, it shouldn’t be the wealthy who get to decide which personal interests and passions deserve their inherited millions.

“There’s no need for another foundation,” she said as she sat by a canal in Amsterdam and ate a loaf of bread she had brought in her backpack. “What’s really needed is structural change.”

Philanthropy to her only replicates the same power dynamics that have created the systemic inequalities she wants to see dismantled, with new tax policies for the super rich an essential aspect of that vision.