Prince Charles cuts costs but pays less tax

Prince Charles has published his accounts for the year, and nobody seems entirely sure whether he should be condemned as a profligate parasite or praised for his thrift. The numbers go something like this:

Charles earned a total of £19,491,000, the vast proportion of which came from his Duchy of Cornwall estate, which makes money from renting out property to selling chocolate biscuits. By claiming increased business expenses, he paid taxes of £3,093,000, almost 10 per cent down on last year.

However, his taxes did at least cover his cost to the taxpayer. He received official government funding of £3,033,000. This was up on last year's £2,454,000 figure, mainly due to two high-profile foreign trips to South America and to the Far East.

In terms of private expenditure, he cut his foreign travel bill, spending more holidays at home, and introduced various energy-saving devices.

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING
 
Robert Cole, the Times: His political antennae are tuned well enough to tell him that he must help to refill government coffers, which have been so comprehensively clobbered by the credit crunch, and his tax bill exceeds his expenses claims… Of course, the Prince can only appear to be self-sufficient because he inherited swaths of prime real estate in the first place. But here, at least, is one national institution that does not need bailing out.
 
Andrew Pierce, the Daily Telegraph: The grant went up not because of the Prince's extravagance but because of two ambitious overseas trips to the Far East and South America. The Prince and Duchess do not travel cheaply or lightly. They usually have a retinue of 14 to 16 including equerries and protection officers. Ironically, the theme of both visits was climate change leading to criticism of hypocrisy over the size of the carbon footprints left behind them.
 
Robert Booth, the Guardian: With echoes of his mother's rumoured habit of wandering the corridors of Buckingham Palace switching off lights to save money, Charles also clamped down on the use of electricity across his household and installed energy monitors in offices which allow staff to be named and shamed if they use abnormal amounts of power. His sons also felt the tightening of their father's purse strings. Their new joint household was established with just six staff, compared with Charles's retinue of 125. ·