I wish people would understand how the royal money is arranged and stop stating the narrow view re taxpayers.
This is how it works
Back in the 1800s an agreement whereby the king would give to the government all the profits from the Crown Estate (properties and estates owned by the monarch) in return for a grant (now called the Sovereign Grant).
This grant equates to approx 25% of those profits and is approx £80 million.
The annual profits from the crown estate are approx £400 million so the grant is more than covered by the money the government receives from the Crown Estate.
It can be argued that the profits from the estate would be similar if the monarchy kept the profits and then paid tax but that is very difficult to assess. So in a way is coming from tax but without the profits from the Crown Estate, an estate the monarch maintains from the grant, the government wouldn’t be getting that £400 million a year.
This £80 million is for official costs so approx £30 million pays for the upkeep of royals estates, approx £30 million covers the employee costs for the royal office and staff. The rest is distributed amongst all working royals.
The monarch also has a private income which is from the Duchy of Lancaster which she inherited from her father and on those profits she volunteers to pay tax.
The Prince of Wales also has a private income from the privately owned Duchy of Cornwall and again he pays tax on those profits voluntarily.
She was wealthy but her estimated worth including estimates on privately owned estates like Balmoral and Sandringham was recorded as being approx £340 million and Charles’ worth was estimated to be approx £80 million although his worth isn’t easy to estimate.
These are large figures but when you compare it to the wealth of other figures it isn’t massively above on lists.
www.independent.co.uk
