Not defending that evil family, but this article is incredibly inaccurate. My understanding is that the act mentioned makes the royal family exempt from INCOME taxes. The reason they're exempt from estate taxes, is because they're not actually inheriting anything. From a legal standpoint, everything is being held in a series of special trusts (I'm not sure what the technical term for the type of trust is in the UK, but in the USA they're called Dynasty Trusts).
These trusts basically are written and created in such a way, that they never run out and either ever Trustee/Beneficiary is allowed to designate a "secondary beneficiary/trustee" that takes their place upon death, of they go ahead and lay out the rules of beneficial/trustee succession upon creation of the trust, wherein they can lay out the rules that their descendants must follow in order to get their inheritance.
By doing this, no individual heir ever legally inherits the actual estate, which is owned by a separate legal entity, and instead are only entitled to a portion of the annual estate income depending on whether they're just a beneficiary or a both a beneficiary and a trustee.
So technically anyone can do this, most people just have little to no use to do it.
On a side note, this is also a perfect way to avoid losing half your crap in a divorce and avoiding alimony. If you legally own nothing and reposition your "income" as "living expenses" then your ex has nothing to sue you over from a legal standpoint.
Not defending that evil family, but this article is incredibly inaccurate. My understanding is that the act mentioned makes the royal family exempt from INCOME taxes. The reason they're exempt from estate taxes, is because they're not actually inheriting anything. From a legal standpoint, everything is being held in a series of special trusts (I'm not sure what the technical term for the type of trust is in the UK, but in the USA they're called Dynasty Trusts).
These trusts basically are written and created in such a way, that they never run out and either ever Trustee/Beneficiary is allowed to designate a "secondary beneficiary/trustee" that takes their place upon death, of they go ahead and lay out the rules of beneficial/trustee succession upon creation of the trust, wherein they can lay out the rules that their descendants must follow in order to get their inheritance.
By doing this, no individual heir ever legally inherits the actual estate, which is owned by a separate legal entity, and instead are only entitled to a portion of the annual estate income depending on whether they're just a beneficiary or a both a beneficiary and a trustee.
So technically anyone can do this, most people just have little to no use to do it.
On a side note, this is also a perfect way to avoid losing half your crap in a divorce and avoiding alimony. If you legally own nothing and reposition your "income" as "living expenses" then your ex has nothing to sue you over from a legal standpoint.
The Queen did pay Income Tax. Whether the King will I don't know.