Meghan Markle & Harry’s ‘£2m pocket money’ is the tip of the iceberg – it’s time taxpayers looked into Charles’ Duchy
PRINCE Harry and Meghan Markle “will no longer receive public funds for royal duties”. So says Buckingham Palace.
But if you think that means there will be no more of your money spent on them, well, think again. Prince Charles will see to that.
Harry will continue to receive £2million from his father, but although Charles has amassed a personal fortune of over £100million, the money might not be coming from that closely guarded pot.
The prince could instead be paying him through a outdated racket called the Duchy of Cornwall.
Charles could claim this as a business expense which means he can reduce the amount of tax he pays. The public would be paying for Harry by the back door.
Harry of course has no connection with this sprawling property company called the Duchy, but that has never stopped Charles benefiting from its special tax status.
The status of the Duchy has been contested for decades and while Charles insists it is private, that's strongly disputed by others.
Charles has also claimed as business expenses the cost of 28 personal staff to pamper him – butlers, valets, gardeners.
He had the cheek to argue that Camilla’s personal costs even before they married were a Duchy expense so claimed for her staff, her travel, her jewellery, and the stabling of her horses.
And he got away with it. The line was only drawn when he tried to claim his polo ponies as business expenses.
In my time in Parliament I saw plenty of MPs claiming for duck houses, moat cleaning and the like. Is this different?
So what is this Duchy? Well it’s not just in Cornwall where it has land. Its tentacles stretch far and wide. It even owns the Oval cricket ground. Extra cover for the Prince as he hits the taxpayer for six.
The Duchy turns in a profit of over £20million a year. That is money that many argue should go straight to the Treasury. Instead it becomes pocket money for the Prince.
He has reluctantly agreed he should pay tax on this money but the vast array of creative expenses he conjures up means in a recent year when the Duchy made £18.3million, only £4.5million was paid in tax at 40 per cent.
That can only be explained if he dreamed up more than £7million in expenses.
Charles says the Duchy is a “private estate” — which it is legally, but it acts like a public body that reverts to the Crown when there's no Duke of Cornwall.
It has had notices served on it by the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency and they can only be served on a public body.
It is the harbour authority for the Isles of Scilly. The Information Commissioner has ruled it is public.
But by insisting it is private means the Duchy’s accounting practices can be hidden away. No right of access for the National Audit Office. No freedom of information.
If you go cap in hand and bow and scrape, they might let you see some old Duchy paperwork. On the other hand, they might not.
In this medieval throwback, Charles scoops up the property of anybody who dies without leaving a will. The general right for a King or Queen to do this was abolished in 1830. But not in the Duchy.
Yet this so-called private estate suddenly becomes public when it suits Charles. Unlike any other private estate in Britain, it doesn’t pay any corporation tax or capital gains tax.
No wonder Charles is worth over £100million.
Suddenly the private Prince becomes a public figure, demanding – and getting – the right to change government legislation that affects the Duchy in a way he doesn’t like.
To be fair, he does pay the market rent for the vast property he occupies at Highgrove. He pays it to the Duchy which then returns the money to him, tax-free, as the Duke of Cornwall in a sort of merry money-go-round.
He got Duchy employees to grow trees on Duchy land and then sold the timber to... The Duchy. Charles pocketed £2.3million tax free for this racket.
The Duchy of Cornwall is not some hobby growing a bit of organic lettuce here and there. Nor is it a small collection of twee cottages as you might infer from the pictures the Duchy uses in its publications.
No, it is a hard-headed ruthless property company with advantages in tax and law that no other company has.
It is a massive money-making machine for Prince Charles, money that rightly belongs to us all but that he diverts to himself.
It’s time for this medieval monstrosity to be sorted out. As Margaret Thatcher once famously said: “We want our money back.”