Sheltering the Estée Lauder Fortune

Ronald S. Lauder, an heir to the Estée Lauder fortune, recently donated his personal artwork, including works by Van Gogh, Cezanne and Matisse, to his private foundation, the Neue Galerie, a museum of Austrian and German art, for display during a charity event. This is not the first time Mr. Lauder, who has a net worth of over $3.1 billion, has donated his art for his private foundation’s use. In fact, over the years, Mr. Lauder has qualified for deductions worth tens of millions of dollars as a result of his donating his artwork to the Neue Galerie.

This type of charitable deduction is just one of the sophisticated tax strategies the Lauder heir uses to preserve his fortune. For decades, Mr. Lauder has utilized off-shore trusts and tax-sheltering stock deals to take advantage of numerous tax breaks. Many of the tax breaks favored by Mr. Lauder are the same tax breaks that billionaires like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates claim add to the budget deficit.

For more information on Ronald Lauder and tax breaks available to the super-wealthy, see David Kocieniewski, A Family’s Billions, Artfully Sheltered, The New York Times, Nov. 26, 2011.

Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) and Ann Murphy (Associate Professor of Law, Gonzaga University School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.