King Charles has made history by becoming the first British monarch to release their tax bill, handing over more than £30 million since he acceded to the throne.

Buckingham Palace revealed he paid more than £12.9 million in 2024/25 to HMRC and a further £11.7 million the previous year, putting him among the country's top 100 taxpayers.

His current accounts are still being audited so have not been publicly confirmed. He was crowned following the death of his mother in September 2022.

Keeper of the Privy Purse, James Chalmers, said the request to reveal his combined income and capital gains had come personally from the King, who is determined to aid clarity and accessibility around royal finances which are under more scrutiny than ever.

Prince William, who had until now refused to reveal how much tax he paid as heir to the throne - despite his father doing so when he was Prince of Wales - has also caved to the inevitable.

In 2024/25 he paid £7.76 million to the taxman and a further £8.34 million in 2023-24.

His private secretary, Ian Patrick, revealed Thursday that he had paid more than £20 million to HMRC since he became Prince of Wales, adding: 'The prince recognises the interest in these arrangements and the importance of appropriate transparency.'

Last year William received a private income from the Duchy of Cornwall of £21.6 million.

The Duchy is a billion-pound landed estate which covers 51,800 hectares across 19 counties, the profits of which fund the heir to the throne's public work and private outgoings.

William pays income tax voluntarily at the highest rate on any net surplus once official expenditure has been deducted.

Aides are still refusing to say what that expenditure is, however.

William, 44, has also made clear he is determined to modernise the Duchy, having vowed to sell off 20 per cent of its landholdings over the next ten years and invest the money in sustainable issues and community housing.

One individual he is still collecting rent from, however, is his own father.

As Duke of Cornwall he leases the King's Highgrove, his beloved Gloucestershire estate, and charged Charles £503,711 in rent last year.

William's Duchy of Cornwall accounts also reveal that following a public outcry over revelations he receives £1.5 million rent annually for abandoned Dartmoor Prison, he has now asked for the sum to be spent on regenerating the local community instead.

There had been widespread anger that the Ministry of Justice was paying the money to the heir to the throne as part of a 25-year deal with the Duchy even though the jail has been empty since July 2024, due to toxic levels of radon gas, causing real financial hardship to the local community.

It was a busy year for the Royal Family with the King and Queen conducting 708 engagements between them, with the rest of 'the firm' undertaking a further 1,565 in the UK and abroad, according to the annual Sovereign Grant Review.

The royal residences hosted 827 events and 97,000 guests - up three thousand on the previous year - as part of the monarchy's attempts to widen access to the occupied royal palaces, as they are known.

More than 700,000 paying visitors also walked through their doors.

In line with the King's passion for sustainability, he has installed electric car charging points on the forecourt at Buckingham Palace itself and plans to replace royal vehicles with a largely electric fleet.

While staffing levels remain broadly equal between the sexes, the palace admit 'some challenges remain' including the proportion of ethnic minority employees which has dropped to around 12 per cent of its workforce and remains some way short of its 14 per cent target.

But, as always, the biggest focus is on how much the Royal Family earn, or are given, and what they spend it on.

Privately the King relies on the Privy Purse including an income from the Duchy of Lancaster, a private portfolio of land holdings and investments, which was up 3.4 per cent to £25.2 million this year.

Other funds come from personal investments and the profits of private estates such as Sandringham and Balmoral.

The King voluntarily pays income tax on all of this, as well as capital gains on everything but the Duchy.

As regards his public funding from the government, this is known as the Sovereign Grant and is used to pay for his official duties and the work of his household.

He pays for other working royals out of his private funds.

Last year the Sovereign Grant increased by £45.8 million to £132.1 million, largely because of major building works at Buckingham Palace, which are now nearing their end.

The grant has a core element covering travel, property maintenance and payroll and this has almost doubled in three years from £51.8 million in 2024/25 to £99.9 million in 2027/28.

Graham Smith of anti-monarchist group Republic, which campaigns for an elected head of state, described the grant as 'inflated'.

Mr Chalmers, however, stressed the Sovereign Grant would fall to £100 million and remain 'flat' for the next five years 'in line with His Majesty's clear wishes.'

He said the palace was 'committed to transparency' and the money received from the government was 'not a blank cheque', with expenditure governed by the 'same standards and disciplines as any publicly funded body'.

'In this and every aspect of his duty, His Majesty is guided by a singular purpose - to serve with constancy, devotion and unwavering resolve,' he said.

'So while much changes, our central principles remain: to deliver value for money and to support the Royal Family as they seek to help shape a better world....a future in which tradition and modernity work hand-in-hand for the benefit of all.'

Expert Dan Neidle, of Tax Policy Associates, also pointed out that while the King and Prince of Wales paid income tax, the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster were not subject to corporation or capital gains tax no matter how much they grow and pass from 'one generation to the next entirely free of inheritance tax'.

He added: 'The reality is that the King is completely unlike any other taxpayer, and the boundary between personal assets and Crown assets is very wobbly.'

Robert Salter, tax director at Blick Rothenberg, added: 'A lot of their wealth is, in effect, state owned but sharing their tax bills puts their finances into normal terms and they are clearly in the top fraction of 1 per cent of the country, which you would expect.

'I suspect the royal family is quite vanilla in how they pay their taxes and where they invest.

'Their wealth planning does still differ from normal people – they don't need a pension, for one thing, so you will probably find they give more to charity.

'Even if you just assume the entire £12.9million is in income tax and they paid a 45 per cent tax rate, they would have to earn between £26million and £28million of income.'

Where does royal funding come from? 

By REBECCA ENGLISH  

At its simplest, royal funding rests on a clear distinction between public funding and private income.

Since 1760, the monarch has surrendered the entire revenue of the Crown Estate – a vast commercial property and land portfolio worth £14.5billion – to the nation, in exchange for an annual payment from Parliament to fund its official work.

That payment is known as the Sovereign Grant and is calculated through a formula set in law, reviewed every five years.

Out of this the monarch pays for central staff costs and the running of the Royal Household, maintenance of the Occupied Royal Palaces in England and official travel for themselves and other working members of the Royal Family – who are also provided with an official residence and office at no charge.

Any unspent funds are held in reserve within defined limits, allowing them to be used responsibly in future years.

The King’s private funding is known as the Privy Purse and is made up of a number of separate funding streams: the Duchy of Lancaster, private investments and the profits from private estates such as Sandringham and Balmoral.

Founded in the 13th century, the Duchy is an estate of landholdings and investments held in trust for the sovereign.

It was safeguarded as a source of private income for the monarch to provide a degree of financial independence from government, and is fully audited.

Its capital cannot be touched but the monarch can use the surplus – ie the profits of the estate – each year to fund their private living costs.

In 1993, Queen Elizabeth II began voluntarily paying income tax and capital gains tax on her private income but never made those figures public.

The King pays an allowance and official expenses for working members of the Royal Family. That means the vast majority of costs associated with the wider working royals, are now paid out of the sovereign’s own pocket through the Duchy.

The King also pays for the maintenance of private estates, other private expenditure and his tax. While capital gains tax is not payable within the Duchy, the King pays it on money he earns from other privately held assets.

But inheritance tax is not deemed payable on assets passing from one monarch to the next as the Treasury regards assets such as Sandringham and Balmoral to have official as well as private use.