A new poll found that 75% of Brits support corporate and capital gains tax on the Royals' private estates.
It follows the Mirror with Dispatches and Sunday Times investigations of King Charles III's Duchy of Lancaster and Prince William's Duchy of Cornwall. According to the research, the King and his heir receive millions of pounds in NHS and other public rent. It also found that one in seven Duchy of Cornwall houses have the poorest F and G energy efficiency ratings, putting renters at risk of fuel poverty and cold, damp, and moldy homes.
After subtracting official expenses, the Royals voluntarily pay income tax on their £50m profit from the £2bn Duchies. However, the estates are free from capital gains tax, which the government just raised, because sales revenues are reinvested. They are exempt from corporation tax, which has increased substantially, and inheritance tax, therefore hundreds of royal farms and tens of thousands of hectares of farmland are unaffected by the controversial recent inheritance tax reforms.
Since the investigation, more than 150,000 people have signed a 38 Degrees petition urging the Royals to give a discount rate to public services or charities like the RNLI using their land and properties, speed up work to fix their substandard living conditions, and voluntarily pay corporation and capital gains tax like they do income tax.
A separate Survation for 38 Degrees study indicated that half of Brits (50%) think the Royals should not be permitted to profit from renting their land to public agencies and charity, while 35% think they should.
More than 75% say they should "voluntarily pay corporation tax and capital gains tax on the profits made on their estates" compared to 15% who disagree. Over-65s are most likely (86%) to think the Royals should pay these taxes, while 18-24s are least likely (57%).
Over 6,800 38 Degrees fans wrote King Charles Christmas cards urging him to "do the right thing".
Matthew McGregor, CEO at 38 Degrees, stated: "This polling shows that the vast majority of people think that, if the Royals are profiting from a vast property empire, then they should be paying corporation and capital gains tax on the profits generated. Why should they have some kind of special arrangement?"
He added, "The British public are well known for their innate sense of fairness - so it's no surprise that after the revelations about the Royal family making profit from public services and charities emerged, they jumped into action in their hundreds of thousands - from signing petitions to sending thousands of individual Christmas cards to Buckingham Palace. "
Corporation and capital gains tax on the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall would raise millions of pounds for the Treasury at a time when the Government is taxing pensioners and farmers to support public services. Both Duchies now make most of their money from commercial deals, not tenant farms and property rentals, according to the research.
This year, 69% of Lancaster's £35m sales came from commercial activity, up from 59% in 2011. The estate's worth has doubled to £830m, up 50% after inflation.
Since 2011, Cornwall's commercial earnings have climbed 115% to approximately £21m, accounting for more than half of its revenue. It earned £3.3m annually from property sales from 2010 to 2020. In the last four years, this climbed to £44m, or over £11m a year.
It sold a Milton Keynes warehouse it bought a few years earlier for around £30m. These deals have raised the Duchy's value to approximately £1.3 billion, up 73%, or twice the rate of inflation.
It pays no capital gains tax, which the Government hiked to at least 24% this week, because "the vast majority of its property holdings are held for the long term as core holdings" and all capital gains from property sales are reinvested. Prince William "voluntarily" pays income on Duchy surplus profits even though he does not have to.
Business Times has reached out to Buckingham Palace for comments.
