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King Charles has released his tax payment information, becoming the first British monarch in history to do so. Charles, who pays voluntary income and capital gains tax under an agreement set up by his mother, has been revealed to be among the country's top 100 taxpayers in the 2024-25 financial year. Since Charles became King following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022 he has paid more than £30 million in tax, while the Prince of Wales has made payments of more than £20 million in tax during the same period. #henryriley #kingcharles #royalfamily #taxes #uknews #lbc
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Good evening to you. We start with that breaking news with regards to the royal finances
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You heard a little bit in our news bulletin with Daryl Jackson just there. Let me tell you, the King has made history by becoming the first monarch to release their tax payments
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in which it revealed, again, as you heard in the news bulletin, that he is among the country's top 100 taxpayers, or certainly was for the tax year 2024 to 2025
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He's taken the step of publishing his payments to HMRC in a bid to add clarity and accessibility around royal finances
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Now, we know that the Prince of Wales initially resisted releasing his own tax payments
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when he became the heir to the throne and took on the Duchy of Cornwall
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but he has also released his financial data as a string of royal reports were published
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And I'll be perfectly frank with you, we're sort of learning this together. There is a lot of information to take in, so let me give you a few of the headline numbers
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since Charles became king following the death of Queen Elizabeth II back in 2022
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he's paid more than £30 million in tax, £12.9 million of which was in the most recent tax year that is referenced
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which is 2024 to 2025. And another interesting stat, £99.9 million, which as a journalist I can call that £100 million
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the amount of the sovereign grant the monarchy will receive in two years' time
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i.e. pointing to the cost of the royal family. We also have, I mean, the royal family, without trying to get into the sort of weeds of it
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are not FOI-able, i.e. you cannot submit a Freedom of Information request to find out this information
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So, for instance, we're learning that Prince William's three-day visit to Saudi Arabia
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cost a total of £130,000, including spending on two additional planning trips by staff
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Lots to get into this hour. Let's get more with Jack Royston, who's the chief royal correspondent for Newsweek
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He's also host of the podcast, The Royal Report, and joins me now. Jack, good to have you on again. There's lots of figures here
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Is there any particular one you want? Well, can we start actually with the 99.9 million
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Can we take that to be the sort of cost of the monarchy? Well, ish, because basically the biggest cost of the monarchy is actually the police protection bill, probably, really
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but I also want to throw some additional numbers at you that aren't necessarily in the information
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that's in front of you I'm afraid if you can bear with me so it's really interesting you wind the
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clock back to the last time that there wasn't resurfacing work being done at Buckingham Palace and the cost of the monarchy was 42.8 million pounds at that time it's now going to be 100
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million pounds a year so that's more than doubled in a little over 10 years so that gives you a
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growth rate of about 10% a year on average, which is way beyond wage growth in Britain. Wage growth
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in Britain barely keeps pace with inflation. It's technically under 4% if you don't include bonuses
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But once you take inflation off that, it's about 0.1%. So basically, the public funding that we
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give to the monarchy is growing at more than double the rate of wages and more than double
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the rate of inflation close in fact to triple. So I think a big part of the reason to try to do this and to put all these figures out there particularly the new tax numbers that we getting from the king is to not only give the impression of being transparent but also to try to kind of offset this idea of the monarchy as a symbol of inequality But actually you know
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we're seeing in Charles's own tax figures too, you know, you quoted those two figures, there's
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just a little under 12 million one year and then a little under 13 million the next year. It's a
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difference of 1.2 million so again that is about 10 percent growth in in his tax bill and therefore
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presumably his taxable income so charles's personal wealth is also growing at way beyond
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wages and way beyond the rate of inflation so what might be asked is if his own personal finances are
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growing really well then do we really need the public funding that the monarchy gets to grow so
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much faster than inflation. If you were to take that, I gave you the 42.8 million figure
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from back in 2016 to 2017. I've used the Bank of England calculators to work out what that would be
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in today's money. And if funding had simply grown in line with inflation, they'd be getting a little
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over 60 million now. So in other words, 30 million pounds less than they're going to be getting
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Lots of figures, as you say, on the symbolism of it, the fact that we know Charles when he
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King Charles, when he was Prince Charles, was declaring his tax. I mean, the first time that
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a monarch has done this, just talk us through how significant that is as a gesture towards
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transparency. No, it is hugely significant. I hope that it's an initial step and we're going to have
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more. You mentioned Freedom of Information Act, for example. I hope they start addressing that too
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And there are all of these kind of weird arcane aspects of monarchy that could be resolved
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But it is massive and it is significant. I think it basically, actually, part of the pressure has
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come from a desire within Parliament to push for greater transparency and accountability
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including on royal residences. For example, we had the National Audit Office report recently
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which gave us a lot more detail about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and his peppercorn rent at
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Royal Lodge. That was to feed into a potential future parliamentary inquiry by the Public
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Accounts Committee. So they will be digging too. So I think what's really behind this decision to
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kind of bring greater transparency is to try to head off at the past some of those efforts to
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impose greater scrutiny and impose greater transparency on the monarchy by parliament
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And in terms of the crown estate I read that their profits have basically halved as well the
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sort of property company that is owned by the king. I mean that seems surprising as well is
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that all to do with sort of wind and whatnot the correct the grand estate has had a um it's had a
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you know bumper few years recently because wind uh has wind profits have been soaring green energy
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has been soaring they own the seabed so all of those kind of offshore wind farms and then most
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of the seabed anyway so all of those offshore wind farms you'd be hoping ed milliband's the
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next chancellor by the sound of it well exactly yeah i mean they've to be honest with you they've
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already got it sewn up i think they really need ed milliband to be challenged because they've um
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Yeah, they've got it all. So their profits over recent years have soared
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And that has led to the way that the sovereign grant works When we talk about the public funding for the monarchy we talking about something called the sovereign grant The sovereign grant is calculated based on a percentage of profits from the Crown Estate
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So when the Crown Estate makes money, that potentially increases the amount of money that the royal..
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Is this the 20.5% formula that I read about? Yes, it's changed. It's been different at different points
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So years and years and years ago, more than 10 years ago, it was 15%. Then they needed to do all this refurbishment work at Buckingham Palace
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and it went up to 25%, but it's been at a different rate at different points
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So this year, 2026 to 2027, the monarchy is going to get like £137 million
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as its sovereign grant, its public funding. But they're bringing that down to £100 million
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basically because it was getting embarrassing how much money they had, but also the refurbishment work at Buckingham Palace is now over
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it's going to be over at the end of this year, so it falls back down to £100 million
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but that is still a massive waltz of cash. And also with a dwindling number of royal family members to support
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They don't have to pay for as many people as they were paying for before
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Harry and Meghan were paid for by the Duchy of Cornwall, the Prince of Wales' estate anyway, but William now takes over that
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Basically, as the monarchy slims down and people slip out of that pool
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who were paid for by the Crown of State, the pressure on that money should ease too
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Also significant, I read, is that the King and Queen will not live at Buckingham Palace
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despite the fact we're spending 370 million quid on refurbishment work. We understand that the King has said he prefers
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to live at nearby Clarence House. I mean, people will put the point together and say
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albeit Buckingham Palace is monarchy HQ, but why are we spending 370 million quid on it then
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well it's really interesting debate because the answer is well it's a fantastic public building
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we're spending that money for the public but the the big argument for keeping the monarchy has
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always been that the monarchy brings tourists to britain so you know having the idea that you might
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go to buckingham palace and hope to meet the queen even though you know you know nobody ever does
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meet the monarch when they go visit buckingham palace but the idea that you might is supposed
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to be part of the appeal and it's supposed to be there's you know the whole the monarchy has been pushing for many many years the idea that having a monarchy makes buildings like buckingham palace
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way more attractive and appealing to tourists who might come to britain and spend their money here
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so to then say well actually we don't need to have a king and queen who actually live there and
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wouldn't necessarily be in residence there when a tourist comes does slightly undermine so it's
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almost like they're shifting slightly more to republic's argument because they've been saying
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for years well it doesn't actually matter if we have a real a living royal family or we have a
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functioning monarchy people would go to see buckingham palace whether they were living there
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or not lastly can we finish where we started so that top figure of 99.9 million pounds um based
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on that new formula just explain to us then because there will be i often hear royalists say
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this is proof that the royals don't really cost us anything because they're making so much profit
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on this crown estate and the sovereign grant obviously is a percentage of that is that a fair arguments to say that this idea that it costs us millions and millions is therefore sort of for the birds Well the Crown State is a public asset
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It was created to support the monarchy at a time when the monarchy was the executive branch of government
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So the monarchy isn't the executive branch of government anymore. You know, Parliament and the Prime Minister is
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and Downing Street and the government. But these property portfolios are kind of relics of that era
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when the monarchy was the executive of the government. um they you know it's the crown estate is very definitely a public asset it belongs to us you
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know around about 75 percent of its profits and go to the treasury everything that doesn't go to
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the monarchy goes to the treasury which is the majority of it so if the royals were to get a
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smaller percentage of that money then the public you know that extra money could hypothetically go
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to fund schools and hospitals but the other massive question around that is what about the
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Duchy of Lancaster. So some of Charles's tax bill is fed into by the Duchy and also the Duchy of
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Cornwall, which funds Prince William and his family. You know, those were very similar property
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portfolios originally. Parliament had conversations, you know, hundreds of years ago about making them
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public assets like the Crown of State is. They didn't. Some historians say the only reason they
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didn't is because they weren't very valuable at the time, whereas now they're worth, you know, more than a billion. So should those property portfolios also be considered public assets
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And should we have a situation where all the money goes to the Treasury? And the Treasury
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then just gives the royal family a fair settlement to do the job that they do for Britain
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Thanks very much, as always, Jack. Good to have you with us for taking us through all of those
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that litany of figures. Thank you. That's Jack Royston, who's the chief royal correspondent for
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Newsweek. He's also presenter of the podcast, The Royal Report. So we're just learning these
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figures just to sort of highlight the few that i mentioned so 12.9 million pounds was the amount
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that the king paid in his personal tax bill for the last tax year he's paid 30 million pounds in
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total since he ascended to the throne uh he has a hundred million pounds is the estimated sort of
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yearly cost at the moment as jack was saying the sovereign grant that money that comes out of the
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sort of profits of that vast crown estate portfolio that the royal family have
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I'd like to hear from you this hour. Does this feel like a landmark moment to you in terms of transparency for the royal family
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Are you pleased? Is this what a modern monarchy looks like, that the king is actually being up front, being open
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You can say, oh, well, it took them long enough, didn't it? But ultimately, he is doing it. He's the first monarch to publish his tax details
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Is that a welcome step? is that enough to move towards this transparency, towards a modern monarchy
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0345 6060 973. And part of the thing with the royal family, and I'm not saying this is a good thing
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but part of it is the sort of almost the mystique of it and the haziness of it
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And I wonder if you think, well, if we have all of this transparency, does it in some strange way
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actually take some of the curiosity out of the royal family per se
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0345 6060 973, is this a good move for transparency? Does it represent a modern monarchy
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or are you worried it could back
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