$1 billion: Staggering cost of the royal family exposed
As the UK suffers through the worst cost of living crisis in decades, the spiralling cost of the monarchy has been revealed.
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About a cup of coffee. The instant stuff. That’s how much the British people are told the royal family costs them each a year. See? Just suuuuper value. For less than a mug of weak Nescafe will set them back, Brits get a full bells-and-whistles working monarchy with most of its original moving parts, defrocked, pal-of-a-pedophile prince sold separately.
Only that number could be way off, with a leading investigator of the royal family’s finances claiming that the true cost of the royal family is now $1 billion a year.
That works out at Crown Inc hitting the UK purse by $2.7 million a day.
Or think of it this way: With only 10 working members of the royal family, that works out each one of ‘em costing $100 million each, a year, or about the same as an Inter Milan striker on top notch form.
The 90-year-old Duke of Kent undertook 97 working engagements in 2024, meaning he cost Brits more than $1 million a pop. Princess Anne, by comparison, did 394 engagements but still that means she ‘cost’ $253,000-a-go.
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Norman Baker, a former Liberal Democrat MP and author of Royal Mint, National Debt, has been researching the price tag of the monarchy for years, and says that the actual cost of the institution has passed the equivalent of $1 billion in Australian dollars.
This includes the Sovereign Grant, paid directly by the government to Buckingham Palace, security, tax exemptions and indirect subsidies that date back to the Domesday Book.
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And yet the spiralling $1 billion figure comes even though King Charles is the first private billionaire to take the throne and even though Crown Inc has been shedding working members in recent years and official ranks are so reduced the remaining jobbing HRHs could be squeezed into a family-sized Kia.
Take the money the royal family collects from the UK government to pay for them to rep Britain and to let Donald Trump occasionally come for tea. In 2011, Queen Elizabeth collected about $15.8 million, plus extra for transport costs, from Downing Street under something called the Civil List.
That year that system was replaced by the Sovereign Grant, which is calculated differently.
In 2025 the Grant was worth $262 million.
And yet this skyrocketing figure comes despite the fact that recent years have seen the working ranks of the royal family shrink as the vicissitudes of age, mortality and Oprah bore off various members.
But this is just the money the UK people pay for the royal family to work; privately they are also far richer today than the royal family has ever been in its history and Charles is the first billionaire monarch in history.
According to Baker, the King might personally be worth more than $4 billion, on top of the income he pulls in from the Duchy of Lancaster and the Sovereign Grant, thanks to his inheritance from the late Queen. He also collected her more than $1 billion in jewellery, a string of race horses, a $200 million stamp collection and enough art to make the Louvre get jealous.
Does this, the UK is suddenly asking, represent value for money?
That question became a very live issue in Britain after it was revealed in November that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has only been paying a peppercorn rent on his palatial home Royal Lodge.
The Lodge, like all royal properties, is owned by the Crown Estate, the independent private business that manages assets like Buckingham Palace and even vast swathes of the UK seabed. The profits from this are then divvied up between the taxpayer and the King, which is called the Sovereign Grant. Failing to maximise Crown Estate profits therefore deprives the public purse of potential revenue.
It has since emerged that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor, the strongest argument to be made for republicanism since the Bastille was stormed, is not alone in the cushy deal department.
This week The Times broke the news that Prince Edward, a man who would struggle to get recognised at the annual drinks of the Monarchist League, is also only paying peppercorn rent to live in a 120-room baronial so enormous you’d need a compass and a map to find the mud room.
Likewise the 88-year-old Princess Alexandra, the 58th in line to the throne, is living in a historic, seven-bedroom home on four acres – in London – for which she is paying about $92-a-week rent.
Letting royal family members pay what are effectively mates rates – in failing to maximise profits – that comes at the expense of funds which could go to help the beleaguered health care and education systems.
The timing of these disclosures could not be worse, with the British Chancellor announcing more than $50 billion in new taxes. Little wonder that this week the UK Parliament announced they are launching an inquiry into how royal property arrangements are handled.
Look closer and the entitlements enjoyed by the royal family are truly extraordinary.
Take Prince William and Kate, The Prince and Princess of Wales who now spend their days doing Jolly Regular Sorts act – their pub lunches, their selfie-posing and station wagon-driving.
Last year it was reported that the prince’s $2.2 billion Duchy of Cornwall, the 688-year-old trust exclusively enjoyed by the heir to the throne, was charging the British people rents on lifeboat stations, the fire service, village halls and school playing field. (He’s since changed course on this.)
Or there’s King’s $1.3 billion Duchy of Lancaster which has been doing things like charging the National Health Service more than $22 million a year to park ambulances in a warehouse owned by Charles.
That’s all perfectly legal mind, but this all comes as the UK suffers through a cost of living crisis so acute that potatoes are about to be sold by the half.
Perks and lurks? There are so many, many more.
Charles and William can also collect money from dead people. Under something called bona vacantia they can claim the assets of anyone who dies in the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall who does not have a will or known heirs. (The Prince of Wales has said the money goes to charity.)
No one even knows if William and Kate pay income tax on the $40 million he gets every year from the Duchy. For them, like the King, income tax is voluntary. While Charles, as Prince of Wales, released his tax returns, William has refused to do so since getting the title in 2022, raising the possibility that the Waleses might simply choose not to.
Even if William does pay this income tax, he and Charles are exempt from paying capital gains tax, corporation tax, and the inheritance tax. They are also exempt from health and safety, equal opportunity, wildlife protection and race relations laws and are not required to pay the minimum wage to all employees.
Next. Through the Crown Estate and privately owned holdings, Charles controls 272 grace-and-favour properties, which he can hand out like sweeties to family members and staffers. Again, any instance of not maximising Crown Estate profits means less money going to pay for schools and hospitals.
Princess Beatrice and her family have an apartment at St James’s Palace and Princess Eugenie and hers live in Ivy Cottage at Kensington Palace; there has been no indication they pay a commercial sort of rent on them.
Taxpayers also foot the bill for security. Even though only the King and Queen Camilla and William and Kate and their three children receive 24-hour security, protecting them, along with royal properties, costs between $300 and $400 million annually.
On top of this, not included in that $1 billion figure are the expenses of State events like Queen Elizabeth’s funeral and the mourning period- $364 million- and Charles’ coronation – $144 million.
The Treasury has also, since 2017, been funding major renovations to Buckingham Palace which are only set to finish in 2027. In 2008 the Palace itself estimated they needed between $64 and $110 million in taxpayer funding to cover the maintenance backlog and update the crustier bits of. By 2016, the bill was $738 million. The works are still going on.
Meanwhile, support for a monarchy has fallen to the lowest level ever in recent tracking.
Still the UK is simply not ready to answer the grand existential question of what they could replace the monarchy with – and for the love of god, they could put on tourist tea towels.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as $1 billion: Staggering cost of the royal family exposed
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