Queen Elizabeth doesn’t receive any money from the Crown Estate

 

The Queen doesn’t receive any money from the Crown Estate, whose profits have been handed to government since 1760 to reflect the fact the monarch no longer uses them to pay for the costs of the State, said senior journalist Richard Palmer.

He was responding to a claim made on social media that "The Royal Family's Sovereign Grant is calculated by 25% of Crown Estate profits."

Richard Palmer said that the annual surplus from the Crown Estate, which really belongs to the monarch in name only  is used as an index - rather than, for example, the inflation rate. The money still comes from taxpayers.

He said it all comes from the same pot (apart from. "There’s an important constitutional point: MPs have agreed that a constitutional monarchy should be answerable to and depend financially on Parliament.," he said.

Richard Palmer said, "The Queen has done well out of this theoretical link between a percentage of the profits of an independent (perhaps arms-length government) property empire and what she receives from the taxpayer since 2012. But now of course she is facing several flat years because profits fell."

He added,"She is fortunate that her taxpayers’ Sovereign Grant hasn’t been cut in line with Crown Estate profits. Before the SG was introduced, palace officials said it would fall and rise with CE profits. But at the last minute it was agreed it would never fall."