Daniel Wildenstein

More than 20 years after the death of billionaire art dealer Daniel Wildenstein, his estate has settled with a dispute with the IRS. The family will have to pay some $17 million in taxes. Wildenstein was the heir to an important family of art collectors and dealers who founded the gallery Wildenstein & Co. in 1875. A dispute over the family’s assets, including thousands of works of art, embroiled them in many tax lawsuits in their native France. The IRS had been involved in the settling of Daniel Wildenstein’s estate after filing for an owed tax deficiency in 2018. It argued that the estate tax the Wildenstein family originally paid upon the death of Daniel was inaccurate, as it only accounted for a small portion of Wildenstein’s assets in the U.S. The IRS once believed that they were owed some $200 million in taxes, but the settlement’s conclusions have the Wildenstein family paying $17 million in taxes after the US Tax Court ascertained that 258 works of art worth $30,969,660 counted as residing in the US. The family will also pay $557,627 in fines.