Well, this is awkward for all those glowing stories about Prince William being Britain’s most popular royal. Dame Margaret Hodge, the government’s Anti-Corruption Champion and former chair of the Public Accounts Committee, has described the financial arrangements surrounding William’s Duchy of Cornwall as “extraordinarily murky” and warned that they undermine trust in the monarchy.

Her criticism gets straight to the heart of the problem.

“It is private when it suits him and public when it suits him,” Hodge told the Observer. “If it’s private he should be paying capital gains tax. If it’s public he should be transparent about the finances and we should have regard to the duchy in setting the sovereign grant.”

— Dame Margaret Hodge, the government’s Anti-Corruption Champion, speaking to The Observer, 4 November 2026

In other words: pick one.

William’s Private Estate Comes With Some Very Public Privileges

The Duchy of Cornwall reported net assets of about £1.2 billion and a distributable surplus of £21.55 million for 2025-26, which provides William with his principal private income. The Duchy describes itself as a private estate. That explains why the National Audit Office does not audit it. But this is no ordinary private property empire.

William did not build it, buy it or inherit it through the normal probate process. The estate automatically passed to him when his father became king because William became Duke of Cornwall.

Its structure is governed by centuries of charters and Acts of Parliament. HM Treasury oversees the preservation of its capital, directs the form of its accounts and must approve certain substantial property transactions. Its annual accounts are also presented to Parliament. Yet when questions arise about greater public scrutiny, we are reminded that this is a private estate. How convenient.

The Duchy does not pay corporation tax, and its capital gains are exempt from capital gains tax. The Duchy says this is justified because William cannot personally access its capital and proceeds from asset sales must remain within the estate and be reinvested.

But an ordinary commercial landlord does not receive a blanket exemption from capital gains tax simply because sale proceeds will be reinvested. That is precisely why Hodge’s criticism is important here.

Remember When William Was Presented as One of Britain’s Biggest Taxpayers?

Back in May, the Sunday Times estimated that William was paying between £5 million and £7 million a year in income tax. A month later, the Royal Household disclosed that he had paid £7.76 million for 2024-25. The article presented him as one of Britain’s highest taxpayers and noted that he voluntarily pays the highest rate on taxable income received from the Duchy.

Kensington Palace said William pays the top rate of tax on his personal income, including the money he receives from the Duchy. That sounds impressive.

But it does not answer the question Hodge is asking now. William paying tax on the income he receives from the Duchy is not the same thing as the Duchy itself paying tax on profits or gains from selling its assets.

The Sunday Times itself described the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster as private landed estates that operate like commercial corporations while benefiting from Crown-linked tax privileges.

So yes, William voluntarily pays millions in personal tax. But the £1.1 billion estate generating that income occupies a much more advantageous position. Those two facts can exist at the same time, and repeatedly highlighting the first without discussing the second gives the public only half the picture.

Tax lawyer Dan Neidle has gone even further. Neidle’s criticism goes beyond the current capital gains dispute. He also questions the legal basis for treating William himself as exempt from ordinary statutory tax on the income he receives from the Duchy. He traced the arrangement back to a three-paragraph legal opinion issued in 1913.

His assessment of that opinion is devastating: it contains little reasoning and largely asserts that the Duke of Cornwall is exempt. Neidle argues that William should pay ordinary statutory tax rather than making voluntary payments under a memorandum with the Treasury.

His point is simple. Either existing tax law applies to the Prince of Wales, in which case HMRC should apply it, or Parliament should explicitly create an exemption.

What should not happen, he argues, is for an enormous constitutional tax privilege to continue indefinitely through convention and deference.

That seems like the bare minimum we should expect from a modern tax system. Ordinary people cannot tell HMRC that their tax arrangements rest on a century-old understanding and therefore everyone should stop asking questions. Why should the future king?

Then There Is Bradninch

And suddenly this argument is not merely theoretical. William’s Duchy is currently selling the historic Bradninch Estate in Devon as part of a wider plan to dispose of roughly a fifth of its land and concentrate investment elsewhere. Some families have lived there for generations.

Tenants told the Observer they feared losing their homes because they could not afford to buy them. Farmers who commissioned their own surveys claimed that the Duchy’s valuations averaged around 30% above market value.

Several tenants also complained that improvements they had funded themselves increased the prices they were now being asked to pay.

After the Observer exposed the dispute, the Duchy agreed to new independent valuations jointly instructed by the tenants and the Duchy, as well as a review of how tenants’ investments in their properties should be recognised.

This is where the tax argument becomes especially uncomfortable. The Duchy can sell valuable land, keep the proceeds inside the estate and reinvest them without paying capital gains tax on those gains.

Meanwhile, the people living on that land face the very ordinary financial consequences of property ownership: mortgages, valuations, debts and the possibility of leaving their homes. Quite simply put, the tenants get the market, and Britain’s most popular royal’s Duchy gets the privilege.

And William Wants to Be the Prince Who Ends Homelessness

William has made homelessness one of the defining causes of his public life. His Homewards programme aims to demonstrate that homelessness can be made rare, brief and unrepeated.

Yet Mary Ryan, who has lived in Bradninch for 36 years and is supporting affected residents, accused William of hypocrisy for promoting homelessness initiatives while his own estate causes distress to families who fear losing their homes.

That contradiction is blatantly apparent for everyone to see. You cannot build a public identity around housing security while treating the housing insecurity created by your own billion-pound estate as an unfortunate side effect of portfolio management.

Private Wealth, Constitutional Privilege

The Duchy wants us to understand that it is private when questions about public auditing arise. But it exists because William occupies a constitutional position.

It passes automatically to the heir. Parliament has legislated around its management. The Treasury oversees its capital and approves major transactions. And its unusual status produces tax advantages that an ordinary private landlord could never recreate.

This is private wealth generated by constitutional status and protected by privileges unavailable to practically everyone else. That is why Margaret Hodge’s criticism lands so hard. The real question is not whether William pays some tax. He clearly does.

The question is why this extraordinary financial structure continues to operate between two worlds, private when scrutiny becomes inconvenient and constitutional when privilege becomes useful.

If the Duchy is genuinely private, tax it like a private commercial estate. If its public and constitutional character justifies special treatment, then subject it to the transparency expected of a public institution. What should no longer be acceptable is reaching for whichever definition best protects the privilege.

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