The family of Samsung Electronics former chairman, Lee Kun-hee, will pay more than ₩12tn (about $10.8bn) in inheritance taxes.
The payment is for the late chairman’s estate and donation of his vast private art collection to state curators, the family stated on Wednesday.
According to the Lee family, the inheritance taxes will amount to more than half the value of the late chairman’s total estate.
The amount is equivalent to three to four times the Korean government’s total estate tax revenue in 2020, the family stated, even as the Yonhap News Agency reported that the tax would be the biggest ever in South Korea’s history.
“It is our civic duty to pay all taxes,’’ the family said, promising to pay the amount in six instalments over five years starting from April 2021.
In the statement, the Lee family also stated that it would donate ₩1tn “to help overcome infectious diseases, childhood cancer’’ as well as some 23,000 art pieces, including works by Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet.
It, however, did not disclose how it intended to share the inheritance, which included shareholdings in Samsung Electronics.
Analysts have said the family would likely use loans and dividends from both their own and Lee’s shares to pay the tax.
Financial Street gathered that Lee’s shareholdings included a 4.18 per cent stake in Samsung Electronics, 0.08 per cent of Samsung Electronics’ preferred shares, 20.76 per cent of Samsung Life Insurance, 2.88 per cent of Samsung C&T, and a 0.01 per cent stake in Samsung SDS.
Lee’s assets were estimated to be worth more than ₩25tn when real estate is counted, according to the Yonhap News Agency.
