King Charles has disclosed he paid £12.9m in tax for 2024-2025 – becoming the first monarch to reveal their tax bill.
The level of tax paid by the King puts him in the top 100 of UK taxpayers.
The Prince of Wales declared he paid £7.76m tax over the same period, the figures in the annual royal report and accounts show.
It has also been revealed the King and Queen Camilla will continue to live in Clarence House and not move into Buckingham Palace.
The accounts show the main source of annual public funding for the Royal Household, the Sovereign Grant, is rising to just under £100m for the year 2027-28.
The accounts also show the King paid £11.7m in tax for 2023-24, while Prince William paid £8.34m for the same period.
The publication of how much tax the King and Prince William voluntarily pay was a personal decision made by both men, according to their offices.
Buckingham Palace described the move as increasing transparency and aimed to “encourage wider understanding of our accountability.”
Since the King became monarch in 2022 and William the Prince of Wales, the combined tax bill of father and son paid to HM Revenue and Customs has been more than £50m.
While the new figures show the monarch paid the highest rate of tax, they do not give any detailed breakdown of how the tax has been calculated.
Dan Neidle, founder of Tax Policy Associates, said this makes the King’s disclosure “highly opaque”.
“We don’t know how much of that is capital gains tax, how much is income tax,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“Very importantly, we don’t know what expenses he’s deducted to come up with the figure on which he pays the tax.”
The King receives an annual income from his Duchy of Lancaster estate set up to give the monarch an independent source of money for official and private expenditure.
It is a portfolio of land, investments and properties. It provides the King with an annual income which in 2025-26 was £25.2m.
Other sources of income, liable for tax, include the King’s own investments and savings alongside money generated by his private estates, Balmoral and Sandringham.
Initially, the Prince William did not release his tax payments when he became heir to the throne – but in line with his father, he has now made his payment of income and capital gains tax public.
Prince William receives an income from the Duchy of Cornwall – a billion-pound 130,000 acre hereditary estate which also includes the Oval cricket ground in London – which funds official duties, his office and private family life.
“Prince William pays income tax at the highest rate on any net surplus after those costs have been met. Those costs are independently audited to ensure that any deductions are appropriate,” said the prince’s private secretary Ian Patrick.
“The prince recognises the interest in these arrangements and the importance of appropriate transparency.”
The tax payable for 2025-2026 is still being audited and will be made public next year.
The income or any detail on private investments for both the King and Prince William has not been disclosed.
Prince William has also announced he will no longer personally benefit from the £1.5m annual rent generated by the abandoned Dartmoor Prison.
He has asked for the sum to be removed from the income of the Duchy Of Cornwall with the money instead spent on supporting the local community particularly in the rural community of Princetown close to the prison.
Dartmoor has been empty since 2024 due to high levels of the toxic gas, radon, discovered within the building.
The publication of the annual royal accounts also reveal:
- The most expensive overseas royal visit was Prince William’s three-day trip to Saudi Arabia in February this year costing just over £130,000
- This was just ahead of the £126,946 in travel costs for the King and Queen’s four-day state visit to Italy in April 2025
- The King’s trip on the royal train to Lancaster in June 2025 costing £48,460. The train is due to be taken out of service by 2027 to save money.
- Some 177 helicopter journeys were made by Royal Family over the past year costing £733,063
Meanwhile, under a new formula for calculating the Sovereign Grant, the Royal Household will receive £99.9m a year from 2027-2028. Three years ago the figure was £51.8m.
The grant provides public funding for the running costs of the monarchy. This includes core staff costs, running expenses of the King’s official household including receptions, maintenance of palaces in England and travel costs for royal engagements.
The higher figure was decided upon by Royal Trustees – Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and the King’s keeper of the Privy Purse and treasurer James Chalmers.
The extra money will be used pay for the upkeep of historic buildings, strengthen cyber security at royal residences and support the transition to green energy with £11m earmarked to replace boilers at Windsor Castle.
Chalmers insisted the funding was “not a blank cheque” and there were strict checks to ensure the grant was value for money.
“Expenditure is governed by the same standards and disciplines as any publicly funded body, with strict value-for-money requirements, detailed planning, multi-year strategies, independent audit, and Treasury oversight,” he said.
For the past 10 years, the Sovereign Grant has been at a higher level than its core sum to cover the costs of the major refurbishment of Buckingham Palace which will be complete by the end of 2027.
With the work finished, the annual figure will fall from £137.9m to a core funding of £99.9m – a sum that will be unchanged for the next five years when it will next be reviewed but is significantly higher than previous years.
“It is important to emphasise that the Sovereign Grant does not provide personal income to members of the Royal Family,” Chalmers said. “It funds the work of the institution – not private lives or private wealth.”
The decision of the King and Queen to continue living in Clarence House, where they have been based since 2005, has been taken to allow greater public access to Buckingham Palace, officials said.
Refurbishments on the palace totaling just under £370m are set to be completed in March next year.
It is hoped it will also allow the landmark to generate more income.
It will mark the first time since Queen Victoria’s reign that a monarch has chosen to reside away from Buckingham Palace.
Historian Anna Whitelock told BBC News the King revealing his tax bill puts him “front and centre as a very rich man”.
She said the disclosure was a direct response to calls for greater accountability and financial transparency in the monarchy, particularly in recent weeks and months.
“I do think this is very much a sign of the times, and it’s an attempt by the monarchy to try and get on front foot and before they were absolutely pushed to try and show they are responsive and not reactive.”
Norman Baker, former Lib Dem Home Office minister and a critic of royal funding, told BBC News Buckingham Palace visitor ticket sales should go to the Treasury and not the Royal Family.
“They bring in millions every year, so what should happen is if they’re not living in Buckingham Palace, [they] should open it to the public and all the money from visitors 12 months of the year should go to the Treasury to help pay for refurbishment,” he said.
He added the tax payments show the source of income for both the King and Prince William are “enormous” and it needs to be explained why they are “so expensive”.
“If Charles is talking about slimming down the monarchy and William as well, we want slimmed down costs, not just fewer people on the Buckingham Palace balcony.”
It has also been revealed operating profits at the Crown Estate, which oversees the Royal Family’s property holdings and is an independently-run commercial business with profits going to the Treasury, slumped over the past year.
The Sovereign Grant is based on a percentage of the profits of the Crown Estate. The grant is not from the Crown Estate, it comes from the Treasury, but the Crown Estate is used as a benchmark.
The operating profits fell to £1.2bn in the year to March, compared with £1.4bn last year.
Figures showed the drop was primarily linked to offshore wind, as a previous boost from fees linked to offshore wind faded away, with projects now entering construction.
Earnings had spiked to record levels in the past two years thanks to option fees – payments made by companies to reserve a part of the seabed to eventually build their wind turbines on.
Source: BBC
