For example, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have both pledged to give away the vast majority of their fortunes. Jeff Bezos is now making plans for his philanthropy. This happens in Europe too, but is less common.
I was looking to see if there were any specific plans for Mr. Kamprad’s wealth, but unfortunately did not see anything.
We believe more in structuring society, government, welfare, healthcare, funding, etc, such that they're not needed.
>Much has been written about IKEA's remarkably effective retail formula. The Economist has investigated the group's no less astonishing finances.
>What emerges is an outfit that ingeniously exploits the quirks of different jurisdictions to create a charity, dedicated to a somewhat banal cause, that is not only the world's richest foundation, but is at the moment also one of its least generous. The overall set-up of IKEA minimises tax and disclosure, handsomely rewards the founding Kamprad family and makes IKEA immune to a takeover. And if that seems too good to be true, it is: these arrangements are extremely hard to undo. The benefits from all this ingenuity come at the price of a huge constraint on the successors to Ingvar Kamprad, the store's founder (pictured above), to do with IKEA as they see fit.
Lack of philanthropic giving in Europe is not due to a lack of wealth, but due to a desire for dynasty.
This may be true for small- to mid-sized fortunes, but not for the really large ones. Ikea in particular is a counter-example for this. They operate a super-tight network of companies, funds and trusts in multiple countries apart from Sweden like the Netherlands and some off-shore tax paradises and perform any possible trick, including the usual fake self-licensing tactics, to reduce their tax burden to next-to-nothing.
The difference to Amazon and Co. is mostly that Ikea is privately-owned, thus you can't simply invest some money in them to at least reap some of the profits of these tactics for yourself. The profits all pile up in private vaults of the owner, which is basically the Kamprad family (with exact ownership stakes being unknown of course, another difference from the publicity requirements that public companies are required to meet).