Nice opinion from TheGuardian here:
It has not been widely reported, but King Charles won’t have to pay a penny of inheritance tax on the vast estate passed to him by one of the wealthiest women in the world. Nor is he under any legal obligation to pay income tax; he does so voluntarily. This has been the arrangement only since 1993. For decades beforehand, the monarchy paid no tax at all.
When that came to light, the public outcry, coupled with the anger of ordinary taxpayers asked to stump up for repairs to Windsor Castle, forced the Queen and her eldest son to rethink their affairs. When John Major announced this deal in the Commons, he defended the lack of inheritance tax as being in the service of “the overwhelming wish of people in this country”. The people in this country were, of course, never asked.
“Do you know that there is a duke in Scotland who can ride ninety miles without leaving his own estate?” asks a character in Victor Hugo’s 1869 novel The Man Who Laughs. “Do you know that Her Majesty has £700,000 sterling from the civil list, besides castles, forests, domains, fiefs, tenancies, freeholds, prebendaries, tithes, rent, confiscations, and fines, which bring in over a million sterling?”
“Yes,” comes the reply. “The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.”
Nothing new.