A King’s Ransom: The eye-watering amount British taxpayers need to pay to let Charles III live in style

How much should British taxpayers pay to keep the royal family living in the style they’re accustomed?

It’s a question few in the UK have considered, largely because assessing the true cost of the monarch’s finances is a murky business, both opaque and highly secretive, with a myriad of rules and customs serving to stifle public debate.

Financial accounts show the sovereign grant that supports King Charles III and his family in carrying out their official duties increased by 53% in the last financial year. It now stands at £132 million ($174 million). That’s a big leap — more than quadruple the £31 million of the initial grant when it was introduced in 2012, despite promises by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of the day that it would provide better value for money than the old civil list system.

While the crown’s finances are subjected to occasional official audits (the last one was two years ago and before that in 2013), the royals are not covered by freedom of information legislation. There seems little incentive to keep costs down. And secrecy and labyrinthine structures mean there’s minimal public discussion about the monarchy’s money or much thought given to whether royal duties could be provided in a better, more efficient way. (A spokesperson for the royal family said there was “government oversight of all expenditure.”)

The campaign group Republic, which seeks the abolition of the monarchy, estimates the true annual cost is closer to £510 million, once security, travel and other expenses are factored in. The former Liberal Democrat minister Norman Baker, who investigated the royals’ finances in depth for his book And What Do You Do? also puts the figure at around half a billion pounds.

That would put the real price tag for the monarchy at about £7 for every person in the UK, not a huge amount, perhaps, especially given some estimates, including one by the Regional Studies Association, claim the royals’ annual contribution to the UK economy from tourism, trade and other benefits approaches a couple of billion a year.

Then there’s the diplomatic lure the monarch offers, encapsulated recently by US President Donald Trump’s ecstatic response to an invitation to tea with Charles, which seems to have helped win the UK a more favorable tariff and trade deal.

And most Brits are sanguine about footing the bill — an Ipsos poll released this month found 48% considered the royals good value for money, while 25% thought they weren’t worth it and the rest were unsure.

But is the public being shortchanged? Baker points out that other monarchies manage to operate on a far less grand scale: The next most costly European royal family, headed by the Netherlands’ King Willem-Alexander, rings in at around £46 million ($61 million) a year.

Other countries’ famous palaces — from Beijing’s Forbidden City to France’s Versailles — seem to be thriving and pulling in tourist dollars long after their royals were sent packing. As Baker told me: “I’m sure the soft power draw of the royal family is real — but why does it have to be so lavish?”

Lavish it certainly is. As well as their private estates of Sandringham, Balmoral and Highgrove, the royals have seven official residences, including Windsor Castle and St James’ Palace, plus nearly 300 “grace and favor” properties, to house members of the family and their flunkies, with the bill for upkeep picked up by the public.

Indeed, the mega hike in this year’s sovereign grant is largely down to a £369 million 10-year upgrade to Buckingham Palace, the king’s official London residence, which led to an adjustment to the complicated formula for calculating the rate of the grant.

The sovereign grant can go up by significantly more than inflation but not down. It’s overseen by a small group made up of the prime minister of the day, their chancellor and a senior courtier, with minimal debate in parliament — by convention, royal matters are generally not discussed very much in the House of Commons.

That’s ironic, given the UK parliament building is itself literally falling apart. MPs have for decades avoided signing off on a refurbishment plan similar to that nodded through for Buckingham Palace out of fear it wouldn’t please taxpayers at a time when hundreds of public hospitals and schools are also in dire need of repair.

The lack of rigor in keeping down the royal family’s spending means there are occasional objections when a more egregious item becomes known — such as the disgraced Prince Andrew’s penchant for taking helicopters to play golf at public expense — but this is rare. There’s little public discussion either about the vast fortunes the royals have accrued from centuries of perks, such as relief from inheritance tax and other taxes, and the income and commercial profits derived from the royal estates of Lancaster and Cornwall, which they treat as their private property.

Anyone who dies in the vast duchy landholdings without a will has their estate gobbled up by senior royals, who also receive fees from the use of the land for activities such as hospital parking and rents and levies from thousands of residential homes, charities and other public and private bodies including prisons, wind farms and even the British army, an investigation by Channel 4 and the Sunday Times found last year.

While Queen Victoria paid income tax as soon as it was reintroduced under Robert Peel in 1842, the Windsors have been more reluctant. The late Queen Elizabeth II finally gave into public pressure to pay income tax in 1993 (but not inheritance and corporation tax), but under Charles this remains a “voluntary” arrangement, and there is nothing to stop a future, less altruistic monarch from closing their purse.

Charles, who is estimated to be worth £640 million, deducts millions from the tax bill on his income from the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster by claiming expenses that have included stabling for his horses and wages for his footmen, according to Baker’s book. Millions more have been shielded via investments in offshore funds including in the Cayman Islands, a secret arrangement that only emerged with the publication of the Paradise Papers in 2017.

Royalists argue the current system is good value for money, given the significance of both the monarch’s constitutional rule and cultural importance. Brits do indeed seem happy with their constitutional monarchy. But that doesn’t mean they should be required to write a blank check.

Giving one of the richest people in the world a huge pay rise at a time when government departments will shortly unveil billions of pounds in spending cuts is unseemly. Cutting a palace or two, or perhaps a dozen or so racehorses, might be a nice gesture. At minimum, we should be given the information so we can at least talk about it.