The British royal family bid 2024 farewell without regret. In the past twelve months, King Charles III and Kate, Princess of Wales, announced they had cancer, and Prince Andrew was involved in a espionage affair for the benefit of China. The latest controversy, the financial profits reaped by the sovereign and his eldest son via their duchies, which provoked harsh comments across the Channel.
In 1265, King Henry III established the Duchy of Lancaster to provide himself with regular financial revenues and thus consolidate his influence over England. In 1337, King Edward created the Duchy of Cornwall for himself to ensure the financial future of his son and heir. Since then, these two duchies with a respective surface area of 18,481 and 52,450 hectares have been automatically transmitted from generation to generation to the English sovereign and his heir, at the same time bearing the title of Duke of Lancaster and Duke of Cornwall.
“King Charles and Prince William continue to lecture us”
In 2023, daily life The Guardian had calculated that between 1952 and 2022, Queen Elizabeth II and her son Charles had received respectively 739 million euros and 728 million euros in income from the exploitation of their duchies. Without further details. But the weekly The Sunday Times continued the investigation for several months, and recently revealed that a significant part of these sums came from rents paid by public services, despite being in the midst of budgetary restrictions, installed in the territory of these two duchies.
Revelations described as “shocking” by the tabloid The Daily Mailwhile an editorialist from the weekly The Observer note that “despite their enormous untaxed income from their duchies, King Charles and Prince William continue to lecture us ».
And the weekly multiplies the examples. For the rental of an ambulance hangar, a hospital paid 13 million euros over 15 years. The Ministry of Justice paid €1.8 million annually for Dartmoor prison. To moor its boats on a river where it trains its recruits, the Ministry of Defense paid 1 million euros over twenty years. In Dorset, the rental of a fire station brought in 740,000 euros over 125 years…
Tax-free profits
These revenues are somewhat disorderly at a time when the king is calling for more social cohesion and solidarity, as he did again in his televised Christmas message of December 25. Especially since the profits generated by the two duchies are not taxable, under an agreement with Parliament dating from the 13th century, and always renewed since. In 2022, Charles nevertheless decided to pay taxes voluntarily, but at an effective rate of around 25%. In other words, at a level close to the lowest tax bracket.
For more than a century and a half, elected officials from all sides have contested the exclusive enjoyment of these two duchies by the sovereign and his heir. But despite the controversy arising from these revelations, there is nothing to suggest that the situation could change in the short term. For the majority of deputies, as for a large part of the population, touching the royal family remains simply unthinkable.
