Chairman Lee Kun-hee, the richest man in South Korea, left his children a monumental fortune when he died in October, along with a tax tab reported to be more than US$10 billion.

The group’s flagship subsidiary Samsung Electronics said it would give a “one-time special cash dividend” to shareholders on top of the regular payment — and more than four times higher — as part of its full-year results.

It also announced a new increased three-year shareholder return programme.

Analysts say the plan will help the Samsung heirs — including Samsung Electronics vice-chairman and de facto leader Lee Jae-yong — pay the gargantuan tax bill.

Under South Korean law, Lee Kun-hee’s estate is taxed at 50% — plus a 20% surcharge on stocks he held as the largest shareholder in a firm.

Reports have estimated that around US$10.2 billion in inheritance taxes will be due on the late patriarch’s stock assets alone.

“Samsung C&T is one of the biggest shareholders of Samsung Electronics and Lee Jae-yong is the biggest shareholder of Samsung C&T,” said Kim Dae-jong, a business professor at Sejong University.

“Around 2,000 won per share is an astonishing amount and it will greatly ease the burden of inheritance tax,” he added.

Samsung reported a 26% jump in fourth quarter net profit from a year earlier, but warned of ongoing uncertainties over the pandemic, and lower profits in the first quarter of 2021 owing to falling prices.

Lee Jae-yong is currently in prison after he was sentenced to two and a half years last week in a retrial over a sprawling corruption scandal, a ruling that analysts say could complicate the decision-making process for the world’s biggest maker of smartphones and memory chips.