Buckingham Palace disclosed that King Charles III paid £12.9 million (about €15 million) in income and capital gains tax for the 2024–25 financial year, Euronews reported — the first time a reigning British monarch has publicly attached a figure to a personal tax bill. It is a notable act of transparency, but a partial one: the Palace released the headline number without the income, deductions or workings behind it.
The figures
The £12.9 million covers the year to March 2025, up from £11.7 million the year before. Together with a part-year payment following his accession in September 2022, Charles has now paid more than £30 million in voluntary tax since becoming king, according to Euronews.
The bulk of the King's private income comes from the Duchy of Lancaster, a centuries-old estate of farmland, property and investments held for the sovereign, which generated around £25 million for him last year. That is separate from his private estates at Balmoral and Sandringham and from personal investments whose scale is not public.
Why the payment is voluntary
Here is the part that makes the disclosure unusual: British monarchs are legally exempt from income tax and capital gains tax, and pay no inheritance tax on assets passed from one sovereign to the next — an exemption rooted in a 1993 arrangement. The practice of paying income and capital gains tax at all was begun voluntarily by the late Queen Elizabeth II, introduced after public criticism of royal finances in the early 1990s. It has never been written into law and depends entirely on the monarch's consent.
In other words, the £12.9 million is not a bill the King is required to pay. It is a sum he has chosen to pay, calculated on terms the public cannot fully see.
What the public money side looks like
The tax the King pays should not be confused with the public funding the monarchy receives. The Sovereign Grant — taxpayer money that finances the Royal Household's official work — is a separate stream, and it is rising sharply: it is due to climb to £137.9 million in 2026–27 to help fund the long refurbishment of Buckingham Palace, before being cut back to around £100 million a year from 2027. No tax is levied on the Grant, because it is not personal income.
The transparency question
Critics argue a single number, stripped of the underlying accounts, does not amount to genuine transparency. The UK group Tax Policy Associates, run by tax specialist Dan Neidle, noted that the release gives "three numbers" without the income figures, deductions or expenses needed to judge whether the effective rate is high or low. With the Duchy alone producing roughly £25 million, the disclosed tax implies a rate that cannot be verified either way without the workings — because allowable official expenses are deducted before tax, and the Duchy figure is a gross surplus, not taxable income.
The Guardian, reviewing the same disclosure, characterised the amount as "very little" relative to the King's wealth and income. Supporters of the monarchy counter that no previous sovereign disclosed anything at all, and that the voluntary payments are real money.
For a global audience, the episode is less about one figure than about a recurring tension in public finance: where the line sits between a head of state's private wealth and the public purse — and how much of it the public is entitled to see. On that question, the King has, for the first time, offered a partial answer.
