Royals took more than £1bn income

[ladykale]

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2023/apr/05/revealed-royals-took-more-than-1bn-income-from-controversial-estates-king-charles-queen-duchies-cornwall-lancaster

I just don't understand how high earners are taxed to death in this country and the average population still wants them to pay more and more tax, yet most are in favour of the Royal Familh whose income increased x16 during the Queen's reign and they took £1bn of income,

I don't know how they've successfully brainwashed the people of britain to continue supporting them.

I find it so ridiculous.

I do feel that the RF does seem like a scape goat for all the wealth and income inequality in the country even though they are only moderately rich. Society is definitely not just or fair. Tearing down the RF won’t change that or even improve it.

No wonder their affairs are opaque. Of course we have the right to pick over how the money is spent, the millions, whether we get value for money, taxes paid,

Have you read the article and what is being looked into?

It's all about accountability of public servants. Which is what they are.

Moderately rich?

Ye gods

@L3ThirtySeven I understand that view, and I do think the individuals suffer a lot for something they just essentially inherited and that their world is built on. But as they’re at the top of society so to speak, with enormous influence, I think it’s inevitable. They could help themselves by being more transparent, really making their assets work so as to reduce the sovereign grant, and gift some of those assets back to the people. I think I read Charles may gift balmoral to the Scottish people? Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Value for money? You do know every penny of sovereign grant they spend is accounted for and published. We have no right to know about their private money that is not from public service. No public servant even has to account for their wages to such a degree! You’re being weirdly invasive.

The trouble with Charles paying tax on his income (from the Duchy of Cornwall previously and now the Duchy of Lancaster) is that as it is a voluntary arrangement, presumably he could decide not to pay if he so wished.
I'm not saying this is at all likely, I mean the optics would be terrible, but the fact that he may have the ability to end the arrangement is shocking. That should change.
(And with Prince William and the Duchy of Cornwall too. It should not be voluntary.)

Yes, in 2022 the Queen was #372nd richest in the U.K.
371 others in the U.K. were richer than her.
She was around the Beckham level.

King Charles will be around the same level now.

They aren’t even billionaires.

We have no right to know about their private money that is not from public service. Normally that would be true but he gets special exemptions because of who he is, he volunteers to pay tax on income only. He is exempt from inheritance tax, not using creative means to avoid it but exempt. It gets tricky.

To me it is still true. He can’t help who he was born to.
He is only exempt from inheritance tax on what he inherited from his mother. He’s not blanket exempt.

Oh, and he doesn’t “pay tax on income only”
He still pays all the other taxes too.

What 'all other taxes'?

They are not legally liable to pay inheritance tax corporation tax or income tax.

They do not release information about their private wealth or where it has come from so you cannot quote to me their worth but bear in mind Charles now has a stamp collection worth over 100 million, let alone his art collection, and much much more, calling them moderately wealthy' is hilarious.

The person where I live round the corner with the massive house and grounds is more than 'moderately wealthy' I imagine. I used to know someone seriously loaded, CEO of a well known Company, £10m in bonuses one year, they will pale into significance compared to Charles.

You call me 'weirdly invasive'. Bearing in mind where their wealth has come from I take that as a compliment

I think I read Charles may gift balmoral to the Scottish people? Wouldn’t that be amazing? No

Another article which shows a complete lack of transparency. It even touches on where the money for Andrew's pay off came from.

A very interesting article on the Duchies and their wealth and opacity.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2023/apr/05/revealed-royals-took-more-than-1bn-income-from-controversial-estates-king-charles-queen-duchies-cornwall-lancaster

They pay income tax and inheritance tax (only exception is monarch to monarch). Their businesses pay corporation taxes if they own any businesses. They also pay capital gains tax and VAT. They pay the council tax on all their properties. They pay self-employed rates of NIC for their health care.

That’s all the other taxes.

They release as much as if not more information about their private wealth than do the other rich people around them. It’s not hilarious to call someone is is well below being a billionaire and is at last analysis, the 372nd richest in the U.K. “moderately wealthy”. Do you know the exact sources of the Beckham wealth? They are actually £30m richer than King Charles. He is at £350m and they are at £380m. How much do you know about the Peltz family and where their £3bn comes from? Or Dyson and his £11bn?

You are obsessed with the private wealth of one family only because they happen to have historic titles. If you want to know what they spend on official duties, it’s all their published line by line. You can look up the council tax for Buckingham Palace too.

The Duke of Westminster has £10bn. His private wealth is 30x more than the RFs…why aren’t you kicking up a fuss about his private finances? You do know he dodged billions in inheritance tax when his dad died a few years ago?

Another article. I didn’t realise this whole arrangement, Cameron certainly was very generous!

*King Charles III’s public rejection of a pay rise potentially worth as much as £250m a year in extra taxpayer money has laid bare the extraordinarily generous funding arrangement introduced by the former prime minister David Cameron.
The sovereign grant deal, ushered in by Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, in 2011, has already resulted in a sharp rise in public money going to the monarchy over the last decade.

In the first financial year of the deal – 2012-13 – the budget to fund the monarchy was set at £31m. Last year, the monarch received £86.3m, including a substantial amount to refurbish Buckingham Palace. According to the terms of the sovereign grant prescribed in legislation, Charles would potentially be in line for future payments in excess of £330m a year.

Against the backdrop of a cost of living crisis, the new king has signalled he will forgo some of the cash windfall so it can be spent on the “wider public good”.
However, a delayed review of royal financing has been postponed until after the king’s coronation in May amid scrutiny over Cameron’s funding settlement.
The palace is now refusing to be drawn on the specifics of the king’s financial request, and the Treasury is stalling on whether to release documents relating to the king’s announcement.
At the heart of the problem: the terms of Cameron’s deal with the palace, the most radical shake-up of royal financing in 250 years. The sovereign grant re-established the link between the public funding of the monarch and the profits of the crown estate, which is essentially a state-controlled real estate portfolio that generates revenues for the Treasury.*

Sovereign Grant

why aren’t you kicking up a fuss about his private finances? Because this thread is about the royal family.

As I have said before, we don't know the extent of the wealth of the RF. We just do not KNOW. It is shrouded in secrecy.

As far as I know, the Duke of Westminster isn't funded by taxpayers. He isn't a public servant. It does not make dodging taxes right of course.

It’s not hilarious to call someone is is well below being a billionaire and is at last analysis, the 372nd richest in the U.K. “moderately wealthy”. Do you know the exact sources of the Beckham wealth? They are actually £30m richer than King Charles. He is at £350m and they are at £380m.

See my post above.

The article is being naughty. The arrangement was set as 25% of Crown Estate profits become the sovereign grant. It is usually 15%, but increased to 25% short term to fund refurbishing of Buckingham Palace which the RF do not own but are tenants. We are their landlords. Over covid, their income went down because the Crown Estates suffered losses like everyone else. Now things are getting better so the projected amounts look better.

But the sovereign grant (budget to fund the monarchy) was never set at £31m. The article is playing loose and fast with the facts.

The article is playing loose and fast with the facts

On all of the rest of the article?

Public servant has nothing to do with it. Do you know the personal and private wealth of say, Jacob Rees Mogg? Or Boris Johnson? Or Suella Braverman? They are public servants too. Being a public servant doesn’t give the public the right to dig through their private affairs. You are treating the RF differently from all other public servants.

Other posters have pointed out similar issues upthread regarding that particular Guardian article. I think you missed those posts.

The former prime minister now acknowledges that the sovereign grant that he and Osborne introduced in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis – and amid cuts to public sector in the name of “austerity” – turned out to be a “generous settlement” for the royal family.

So austerity for the rest of us while the royals got a boost?

When the new mechanism was approved by MPs, Osborne said the arrangement pegged royal funding to the profits of a “large, conservatively run property company”, which would reflect how well the economy as a whole was performing, or, as he put it, the royal family “will do as well as the economy is doing

Except not really because:

A “golden ratchet” clause in the deal ensured that while funding for the monarchy could increase in line with crown estate profits, it was guaranteed never to fall. If the crown estate profits dipped, the Treasury was legally required to top up the shortfall to ensure that, at a minimum, the monarch would be paid the same as the preceding year. This clause has kicked in twice, ensuring that in the two most recent rounds of public funding, the Treasury has topped up the amount of money being given to the monarchy with an extra £27m over the two years.

You are treating the RF differently from all other public servants.

I mean, they are different.