King Charles reveals his income tax for the 1st time, but questions remain over royal finances

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Royal finances have always had a murkiness about them. Public and private sources of funds come together and even though there are annual reports laying out lots of numbers, it’s difficult to get a full grasp of the financial reality.

"Royal finances for many people are shrouded in mystery because there is the Sovereign Grant that pays for the expenses of the monarchy, and that's tied to the income of the Crown lands," Toronto-based royal author and historian Carolyn Harris said in an interview.

"But then both King Charles III and Prince William are significant land owners in their own right through the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall."

Given that mystery, there was much interest in the move Thursday by King Charles to reveal for the first time how much income tax he pays, a move that came with the confirmation that he and Queen Camilla will never live in Buckingham Palace. In ways, the numbers that emerged this past week add to the opaqueness around royal finances.

"The release of this information provides greater transparency concerning the income tax and capital gains tax paid by King Charles III and the Prince of Wales, but the disclosures have prompted further questions regarding royal finances," Harris said via email.

"There are now questions being raised about the nature of the private investments held by the King and the Prince of Wales and whether the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall should pay corporation tax."

These disclosures are, she added, "likely the start of a larger public conversation about royal finances rather than the final word about the private income of the monarch and heir to the throne."

The palace said Thursday that since Charles became King in 2022, he has paid more than 30 million pounds ($56 million Cdn). In 2023-24, his tax bill was 11.7 million pounds ($21.9 million Cdn), and 12.9 million pounds ($24.2 million Cdn) the following year.

Income tax figures for Prince William were also revealed on Thursday, with the Prince of Wales paying 8.34 million pounds ($15.6 million Cdn) in 2023-24.

Charles and William receive income from a range of sources, including their private estates. The figures released Thursday don’t offer details of how the final tax tallies were determined.

"While royal finances can sometimes appear complex, the underlying system is clear in principle, structured in law and refined over time to ensure the monarch can serve with independence, accountability and in the long-term interests of the nation," James Chalmers, the keeper of the privy purse, said in a media release.

While there is that stated focus on accountability, the release of the numbers comes at a time when the monarchy has been rocked by the scandal surrounding the former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. It also faces calls for increased transparency and the ever-present challenge of showing relevance in today’s world.

"There are several things behind this move," Craig Prescott, a constitutional expert and lecturer in law at Royal Holloway, University of London, said via email.

"Whenever there is public money, there is an expectation that this is transparent…. The difficulty is that what is private and public with the monarchy can be deeply confusing," he said.

"Clearly, the issues surrounding Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, royal properties and money more generally has fed into this decision, and clearly the intention is to show that they have nothing to hide as regards this." 

For anti-monarchy group Republic, Thursday’s numbers fell short.

"Another hike for Charles, more spin and gloss and more misdirection on taxes. This is the way with royal reporting, the more they reveal the more questions are raised," Republic CEO Graham Smith said in a release.

"If Charles doesn't say what his income is, we have no idea if he is paying the top rate of tax, as he should be."

Overall media reaction to the numbers has been mixed.

"Some voices see it as a positive step given that revelation of how much tax has been voluntarily paid by the King in the last two years places him in the top tier of taxpayers," Judith Rowbotham, a social and cultural scholar and visiting research professor at the University of Plymouth in southwestern England, said via email.

"Others emphasise that the transparency is limited. How exactly that figure has been arrived at remains obscure."

Along with the numbers released Thursday came confirmation that when the 10-year refurbishment of Buckingham Palace is complete, King Charles and Queen Camilla won’t live there, and will instead continue to live a short distance away in Clarence House.

"In some ways, the more fundamental news is that the King and Queen will never live in Buckingham Palace," Prescott said.

"This is perhaps an example of ’slimming down’ and ‘change’ that is often talked about, but is never fully explained — that instead of living in a 775-room palace, the King and Queen will continue to live in the much smaller, although still extremely grand, more homely Clarence House."

The question is, Prescott said, "how can the palace be used most effectively going forward."

Charles and Camilla want the palace to remain the ceremonial centre of royal life and the primary workplace of the royal household, the palace said, along with offering increased opportunities for public access. 

"By choosing to stay living at nearby Clarence House, the King is choosing a visibly more modest residence needing fewer staff who, for state and other ceremonial occasions, could be transferred to work alongside the reduced palace staff," Rowbotham said.

"Equally, [the household of the Prince and Princess of Wales] has long been run on a modest scale — this is of course relative. Nor are the British royals unique in choosing to live away from their official royal residence — think Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, for example."

King Charles won't live in Buckingham Palace after completion of £369M renovation

How much rent should a royal pay?

Smith, of Republic, questioned the decision by the King not to live in the palace.

"The government agreed to spend 369 million pounds [$692 million Cdn] on refurbishing Buckingham Palace, and now Charles doesn't want to use it," he said in the release. "But he'll keep it under lock and key for when he does. Clearly the palace needs to be fully open to the public all year round."

Scrutiny on royal finances goes back centuries, Harris said. But she sees a change in Charles’s reign.

"There's clearly efforts of there being a greater degree of transparency in the current reign, and that follows some larger trends" emerging since he became King.

Harris pointed, for example, to Charles’s encouragement of research into the Crown's connections with transatlantic slavery and his opening up of more royal palaces for public touring.

"Now we're seeing finances being opened up. So there seems to be a very large emphasis on opening things up as much as possible."

For quite some time, there had been curiosity about a major decision looming around Prince George: Where would he go to secondary school?

Might he follow in the footsteps of his father, Prince William, and attend the elite boys school of Eton College, just down the road from Windsor Castle?

Might he go to Marlborough College, the co-educational alma mater of his mother, Catherine, Princess of Wales?

Or maybe somewhere else altogether?

"There's a lot of curiosity because he is a future monarch and the question of what will be the influences on Prince George, how will he come to view the world and his role as monarch — I think there's interest in that," Harris said in an interview.

All those secondary schooling questions were answered the other day with word that come September, the second in line to the throne will be a boarder at Eton, where the annual fee is about 63,000 pounds ($118,000 Cdn).

"Clearly Prince William has very fond memories of his time at Eton. He made lifelong friends there," Harris said.

"He was able to spend a lot of time with his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, who mentored him as Windsor Castle is so close to Eton. So clearly …  Prince William … wants his son Prince George to have the same experience."

Other factors may also have played into the decision by William and Catherine about their elder son’s secondary schooling.

"While Prince William was at Eton, his privacy was respected and that's something that has always been a concern," Harris said.

"William and Catherine are very protective of their children's privacy. So an environment where Prince George will be able to have his secondary school experience without the cameras closing in — that's clearly something that William and Catherine value."

The decision attracted attention on social media, with some comments suggesting he should instead attend a state school or questioning how Eton would offer George an education that would help him connect to a world outside palace walls.

Theoretically, it is a "nice idea" to send George to a state school, said Rowbotham.

"But what would that actually teach him?"

There would also be practical concerns around the security a state school would need to put in place for someone second in line to the throne.

"Security measures would mean that the state school chosen would in practice cease to be an open access state school and part of the community," she said.

At Eton, she said, "George will not be extraordinary. He'll just be George Wales in a way that he couldn't be at a school that was a state school. It would have to be hugely different and he would not have the opportunity to learn some of the constitutional niceties that he's going to need to learn."

Not all members of the Royal Family think of Eton as fondly as George’s father.

"Prince Harry had a much more mixed experience. He describes in [his memoir] Spare some of the academic challenges that he had," said Harris.

"But Charles and Diana felt that their two sons should be together. But William clearly looks back on this as a haven during a very difficult time in his life — his parents divorced, the loss of his mother … and Eton provided stability."

Rowbotham says that reading between the lines ahead of the announcement, there is "a very strong suggestion" that George himself was given a say in where he would go. 

The apprenticeship of Prince George

"While they are extremely protective of their children, it's plain that the Prince and Princess of Wales do listen to their children, do enable them to cultivate their own tastes, their own ideas of what they find enjoyable."

And George has had at least a brief taste of what boarding life may be like.

"From something that William let drop a couple of weeks ago, [George is] being given the chance to see what it's like to board, so he's not being thrown in at the deep end," said Rowbotham. "They are clearly considering how best to give him a positive experience."

Every year around this time, the royal social and ceremonial scene goes into high gear, with the monarch’s official birthday recognition at Trooping the Colour, the traditional Order of the Garter ceremony and a week’s worth of horse racing at Royal Ascot.

While attention focuses on elements such as the fashion on display — particularly the hats — these annual events also offer insight into royal relationships.

"We see some holdovers from an earlier time period of scrutinizing the royal court to see who is in favour in the public realm and who is not," Harris said.

During Royal Ascot, King Charles and Queen Camilla were accompanied in a carriage procession by his nephew, Peter Phillips, and his wife, Harriet Sperling, who were married earlier in June.

"It's known that the King is very fond of his nephew Peter," said Rowbotham, adding that the carriage ride was a sign of royal approval for Harriet.

Absences from the recent royal social scene can also send signals, and notable non-attendees at Ascot this year were Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, the daughters of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

"It's not that Royal Ascot excludes non-working members of the Royal Family," said Harris. 

"We do see some of them present, but those who have been attracting negative publicity while they are still members of the family, it's clear that efforts are being made to avoid situations where they are attracting a great deal of press scrutiny."

In one event, there was also a Canadian connection.

Members of the Royal Family riding in the Trooping the Colour procession were on horses presented by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police over the past 10 years.

The Prince of Wales was riding Darby, Princess Anne was on Noble and Prince Edward was on Sir John. 

"When we shine a light on the remarkable, yet often unseen, work the hospices do to help children and their families live as fully as possible, we can break down one of the greatest barriers families often face: the fear that reaching out means giving up hope or that care only begins at the very end."

— Catherine, Princess of Wales, in a message to mark Children’s Hospice Week.

King Charles has given a symbolic show of support for the Afghan women's cricket team, which is now in exile and, because of the Taliban regime's ban on women's sport, is not allowed to represent its country. [BBC]

A former health-care worker has been cautioned over the deliberate misuse of the Princess of Wales’s private medical records and offering to disclose them for financial gain. [ITV]

The Prince of Wales arrived on an electric bus for an event about tackling climate change and protecting the environment. [BBC]

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be visiting the U.K. next month for the one-year countdown to the Invictus Games, which are being held in Birmingham. They are believed to be bringing their son, 7, and daughter, 5, for the first time in four years. [ITV]

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