“It does highlight the fact that the Palace was trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes last week.”-Graham Smith, anti-monarchy organization know as ‘Republic’.
Despite the belief, in the U.S., that the Royal Family in the United Kingdom are just figure heads, the Royal Family commands true Royal Power, and it’s the British taxpayers that pay for it.
The Queen of England is just a figure head when it comes to the larger Commonwealth, but in the United Kingdom she reigns supreme: She is the Governor of the Church of England and Scotland. She is the Head of the Armed Forces. She opens every yearly session of Parliament by dictating the agenda. She is the one who signs new laws, not the Prime Minister.
Now the part of the British Parliament, know as the House of Commons (representing the non-lorded class of people), has just released a financial study of the taxes paid to the Royal Family in the past year. They discovered that the Queen ripped off British taxpayers by at least 4 million pounds ($6 million).
Last week the Royal Family officially stated that they got only 32.1 million pounds, but it turns out they actually got 36.2 million pounds ($52 million). On top of that the House of Commons investigation (conducted by the Commons Library) revealed other expenses, paid by taxpayers, that were not accounted for by the Royal Family.
Last year’s estimated cost of the Royal Family, to the British taxpayers, was about 202 million pounds ($326 million). The Royal Family gets taxpayer money from several programs called Grants. The biggest one is called the Sovereign Grant, and is guaranteed never to decrease.
People of the United States should realize what the Royal Family is doing now is basically what the Royal Family did to push the American colonies to declare independence in 1776, leading to the Revolutionary War. Back then King George 3rd was ripping off the American colonies by making them pay taxes with no representation, and no return benefit (just like our grand U.S. government is doing to us now).