Disney heiress Abigail Disney is calling for a tax on the richest people in the U.S., saying it’s crazy for billionaires to hold on to their wealth. She is also a major philanthropist who’s donated tens of millions of dollars over the years. She’s among a group of ultrawealthy individuals who have made a commitment to give away their vast fortunes. While many of the world’s wealthiest people make an effort to share their fortunes, some do not—at least to the extent more generous peers wish they would. Abigail Disney, one of the heiresses to the Walt Disney fortune who said in 2019 she’s worth about $120 million, recently shared her feelings about how much of their wealth billionaires should be willing to share. “I am of the belief that every billionaire who can’t live on $999 million is kind of a sociopath,” Disney told the Guardian in an interview published on Monday. “Like, why? You know, over a billion dollars makes money so fast that it’s almost impossible to get rid of.”
Disney has begrudgingly disclosed her net worth in the past only to make a point about how important it is to her to give away the vast fortune bestowed upon her by being a part of one of the major family dynasties in the U.S. The Financial Times even called her a “class warrior” for how vocal she’s been about how much the wealthiest should be taxed. “The need to tax rich people like me has never been so dire,” Disney wrote in a 2024 op-ed titled, “World leaders have a chance to raise taxes for rich people like me. I’m begging them to take it,” published by the Guardian. “Extreme wealth concentration in the hands of a few oligarchs is a threat to democracy the world over.” Disney was also behind a 2019 letter signed by financier George Soros and Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes calling for a “moderate wealth tax on the fortunes of the richest one-tenth of the richest 1% of Americans—on us.” The Disney heiress and filmmaker in 1991 also founded the Daphne Foundation, a New York City–based nonprofit that invests funds for causes like fighting poverty, violence, and discrimination. The organization had donated about $70 million as of 2019.
Although Disney has said she’d given away about a third of her net worth, it came “back to me as quickly as I’ve given it away,” referencing how investments can grow wealth. “By just sitting on your hands, you become more of a billionaire until you’re a double billionaire,” Disney told the Guardian. “It’s a strange way to live when you have objectively more money than a person can spend.” Billionaires who have given away their wealth Other ultrawealthy people have been giving vast amounts of their fortunes away. One prime example is MacKenzie Scott, who’s donated more than $19 billion of her $34.3 billion fortune. The five-year donation spree by the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has been “transformational” for nonprofits, according to a study by the Center for Effective Philanthropy.
