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David Dimbleby has called for ‘ultra-rich’ King Charles and other members of the Royal Family to pay more tax.
The veteran broadcaster, 87, took aim at what he called the ‘billionaire’ monarch, 77, and questioned why the royals are exempt from capital gains and corporation tax.
Duchy money is private income for Charles and Prince William on top of the Sovereign Grant, which rose by 53 per cent from the year before to £132.1million.
The Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall are run as commercial enterprises, but pay no capital gains tax nor corporation tax. Both Charles and William do pay income tax, but it is not clear how much.
The Duchy of Cornwall has previously stated that William would ‘effectively be taxed twice on the same income’ if he were to pay corporation tax.
Speaking to The Sunday Times ahead of his new three-part BBC documentary on the royals, Mr Dimbleby said: ‘Charles is the first billionaire to take the throne. Why don’t they pay capital gains tax or corporation tax?’
Charles’s net worth was estimated this year to be £640million, according to The Sunday Times Rich List.
Meanwhile, The Guardian placed it at around £1.8billion in 2023 – an estimate that was described by a Palace spokesman at the time as ‘a highly creative mix of speculation, assumption and inaccuracy’.
The Daily Mail has contacted Buckingham Palace for comment.
David Dimbleby has called for ‘ultra-rich’ King Charles and other members of the Royal Family to pay more tax
The veteran broadcaster, 87, took aim at the ‘billionaire’ monarch, 77, and questioned why the royals are exempt from capital gains and corporation tax
The Daily Mail revealed this week that the Royal Family is set to be charged thousands of pounds a year under Rachel Reeves’ mansion tax.
Royal properties will not be exempt from the Chancellor’s tax grab, meaning the King could be on the hook for a sizeable bill.
A number of royal residences are worth well in excess of £5million, including Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Kensington Palace.
Mr Dimbleby also revealed how he stopped presenting Trooping the Colour and the state opening of Parliament because ‘I got bored of it’.
He singled out the King’s decision to invite Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, his then deputy, to a new housing development in Cornwall for criticism.
He said it proved the King – who was at the centre of long-running controversies over lobbying ministers on matters as diverse as defence, the environment and architecture when he was Prince of Wales – was continuing to meddle in politics.
Charles invited the Prime Minister and Ms Rayner to his 540-acre housing development called Nansledan near Newquay in February to showcase the sustainable development, built on land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall.
There was disquiet at the time, with Number 10 forced to bat away suggestions that political influence was being exerted.
Now Mr Dimbleby, who is presenting What’s the Monarchy For?, says the visit was a clear attempt by the King to influence future housing policy.
He argued that the late Queen Elizabeth would never have taken part in such a nakedly political event.
Mr Dimbleby told the Mail on Sunday: ‘It may seem a kind of tiny detail but the fact that he took the prime minister down to Cornwall to show the Prime Minister and Angela Rayner to say, “this is the kind of housing I think we should be building”, is interesting because that actually isn’t the Monarch’s role.
‘The King has huge privileges. He has huge access, and he sees the prime minister. But we are a democracy and it’s not his business to start telling prime ministers or indeed us how things should be. I think that is not the role of the Head of State.
‘In showing sympathy for homelessness, that does make sense because who isn’t sympathetic about that – but to proselytise for a particular kind of building seems way off to me.’
Duchy money is private income for Charles and Prince William on top of the Sovereign Grant, which rose by 53 per cent from the year before to £132.1million
As Prince of Wales, Charles lobbied ministers extensively, primarily through private correspondence dubbed ‘black spider memos’ because of his distinctive hand-writing.
He supported British farmers against large supermarkets and backed a badger cull to control bovine TB.
He lobbied for the wider adoption of complementary and herbal medicines within the NHS.
And he intervened in planning disputes to save historic buildings and influence the designs of new developments.
He also campaigned on global warming and the dangers of genetic modification (GM) in crops.
The letters were the subject of a decade-long legal battle over their secrecy, culminating in a Supreme Court ruling in 2015 that allowed for them to be published.
Charles said in a BBC TV interview in 2018 that he knew he could not meddle in the same way when he was king.
Asked whether his public campaigning would continue, he said ‘No, it won’t. I’m not that stupid. I do realise that it is a separate exercise being sovereign. So, of course, I understand entirely how that should operate.’
Mr Dimbleby – long-time presenter of BBC Question Time and lead commentator on royal weddings, jubilees and funeral – said he found some of Charles’s campaigns as Prince of Wales ‘awkward’ but accepted he may ‘have got bored’ saying nothing for such a long time.
Mr Dimbleby’s three-part series, which launches on Tuesday, provides a probing and often critical look at royal finances, the remaining powers of the monarchy and the Crown’s attempts to influence public opinion.
His father was Richard Dimbleby, the BBC’s most famous presenter who commentated on the funeral of George VI and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
Mr Dimbleby says how uncomfortable the then Prince Charles looked when he made his confession of adultery in a television interview fronted by his brother Jonathan.
In the documentary, he says: ‘It’s agonising, isn’t it, to watch. You do feel really sympathetic for the poor Prince when he is answering these questions. He’s clearly kind of struggling for an answer.
‘But because he is the Prince of Wales and because the newspapers were full of gossip about Camilla Parker Bowles my brother Jonathan had to ask the question. But even so if I had been Charles I would have wanted to say “F*** off”.’
What’s the Monarchy For? will begin on BBC One and iPlayer on Tuesday 2nd December at 9pm.
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