Legal & General handles King’s staff pension schemes as monarch’s £13m tax bill revealed
Legal & General handles the King’s staff pension schemes, official accounts have shown in disclosures of the monarch’s financial activities.
In the first annual account of the King’s tax bill and sovereign activities, it was revealed that Charles III was among the top 100 taxpayers in the country. The accounts also uncovered details about his staff, investments and the royal household’s financial reserves.
The King paid £12.9m in tax in the financial year between 2024 and 2025 while the heir to the throne, Prince William, paid £7.76m.
Charles III is the first monarch to publish his tax bill.
Accounts also showed that public funding via a government grant to the Royal Household would double in three years to £99.9m. The household received £51.8m in 2024-25, with spending to fund cybersecurity and maintenance.
The near-£100m grant is set to come after £137.9m will be spent the year before, mostly to complete a renovation of Buckingham Palace. This comes as the government has tweaked the terms of a financial agreement with the Crown Estate, the King’s commercial property and land arm, which put more cash aside for capital investment.
The Royal Household spent less than he received in income in 2024-25, allowing reserves to be topped up by around £1m.
Details in the Sovereign Grant annual report also revealed that the King would not move into Buckingham Palace and he would instead stay at Clarence House near The Mall.
King’s staff: Pay differences and pension perks
Details about the King’s staff also suggest that payroll costs for the King jumped due to an increase in employees and a rise in the national living wage in April 2024.
There was also a rise in housekeeping and hospitality costs between 2024 and 2025 as the King put on more catered events.
The median pay for staff working for the King was £34,766. The lower quartile of staff was £28,810 in the year while some courtiers on a committee that organise state visits, garden parties and receptions were paid up to £230,000.
The cost of full-time staff was £20m in 2025, according to the King’s accounts, while the number of employees rose to 539 people.
Documents revealed that workers have been auto-enrolled into a pension scheme handled by Legal & General, with the monarch’s activities contributing 15 per cent of salaries into the fund. The Royal Household paid in £3m over 2024-25.
Tax disclosure questioned
Dan Neidle, of Tax Policy Associates, has questioned the “point of this exercise” in disclosing the tax bill.
He said there were questions over how the King separates official and personal expenses, adding there remained problems around transparency. He suggested the King should receive less cash and not pay tax rather than disclose his payments into government coffers.
Stephenson Harwood partner James Quarmby said the King had “no obligation” to disclose his tax bill.
“If I were him, I would have kept schtum,” Quarmby said amid some criticism about his tax affairs.