It's explained in excruciating detail here in the Sovereign Grant Framework Agreement[0], it is a grant of £85.9 million from Treasury. However, this amount is proportional to the value of Government revenue received from Crown Estates.
This is in keeping with the agreement between King George III and Parliament to give up revenue from the then unprofitable Crown Lands (now more precisely termed The Crown Estate[1]) in return for a Government stipend. The Crown Estate (which is still "owned by" The Crown[2]) now makes £345 million a year[3].
In contrast, The Duchy of Lancaster and The Duchy of Cornwall and the Royal Collection are not funded by Government, and are instead funded by the Royal Family, or admissions/donations, for the later.
Of course it costs the taxpayer. The government could simply stop handing over millions of pounds a year to these people if it wanted to. But it doesn't. This decision costs the taxpayer.
Taking the logic further - all privately owned property and revenue "costs the taxpayer", relative to the public owning it instead.
The UK treasury is formally Her Majesty's Treasury, and the sovereign grant paid to her is actually a small portion of the money she puts in through the Crown Estate. So she is a net donor to the treasury, although she gets a major out in that the Crown Estate is not subject to inheritance tax.
Through the royal grant, yes. But it's notable that the royal estate directly earns more money for the taxpayer than the royal grant, so effectively this didn't cost the taxpayer anything.
Except, if the royal family didn't exist, wouldn't the same amount of money still be coming in, only now 100% of it would by used for the taxpayer's benefit (supposedly)?
Yes, ideology really seems to confuse people with stuff like this.
By way of illustration, consider two scenarios:
A: The government sends the Royal Family 100 million pounds directly, every year.
B: The government via property law enforces the Royal Family's ownership over a property portfolio, allowing them to collect 100 million pounds a year in rent.
Which of these "costs the taxpaper" and which doesn't? Many people will insist that A does, and B doesn't.
But in fact, both A and B do "cost the taxpaper" much the same.
Sadly, you are afflicted with exactly the ideology I'm talking about, which prevents you from thinking clearly.
> The government does not 'send' the family anything, it takes £200m from the profits of their assets and leaves them with £100m.
You are obviously unfamiliar with how it actually works. The revenues of the Crown Estate belong to the Treasury (aka, the government). On a regular basis, the Treasury makes a payment to the monarch personally equal to 25% of these revenues, because a law says they must.
The government literally sends money directly, exactly as I said, and this represents a direct cost to the taxpayer, as I said. If they did not send this money, the taxpayer would be better off.
Right, so you're talking about the new civil list system; vs. taxes on their private assets.
From the way you were speaking it seemed like you were just calling the private assets of the monarch their estate.
If you mean the income provided here, then it is for the execution of the sovereign's duties, ie., all the staff; diplomatic costs, building costs, etc.
You may be able to argue it would be less if we had another head of state, but i'd imagine the whitehouse spends a similar amount. (Likely, much more so, given the cost of presidental travel).
Yes; the Queen's own (extensive) property would remain hers, but the Crown Estate would almost certainly remain with the state. It's a holdover from the days when there was little separation between the King's own money and the government's, and the King paid the expenses of government himself.
Yes, the Crown Estate is already administered by a public body that would presumably continue to operate much the same should the UK become a republic.
Of course, the public would benefit immensely by no longer having to send a quarter of the revenue to the Queen personally.
