What happens to the Balmoral estate is entirely up to the family as it is a private home.
What will happen to the queens 50,000 acre Balmoral house/estate if Scotland votes for independence?
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No they want to keep what they paid their own cash for like anyone else would do.
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There is another Scottish Castle about 8 miles along the coast from us, The Queen Mother bought it just after her husband Bertie died. She spent a lot of time in it during the summer months, after she died she left it to Charles who also uses it as a bolt hole.
It’s The Castle of Mey.
Donald Trump continued to own property in Scotland whilst he was the American president. And no one had a problem with that, other than due to the awful environmental vandalism that Trump inflicted on the country, thanks to a golf course.
The royals, via crown estates, own millions of pounds worth of land in Scotland. Balmoral is only part of what they own I believe they even own a gold mine, or gold rights in Scotland too.
Would it not be more likely that any future independent Scottish government places taxes on second homes and non-primary residencies & land? The money from Dutch, Danish, middle eastern owners would be welcome. Second homes can be a blight for many villages as most of the year they sit empty and they have a tendency to push up house prices. Imagine such tax costs for a large pile like Balmoral.
I’d also think they would regulate holiday rentals more stringently. In France an AirBnB let house must be registered with the tax authorities, the French AirBnB site automatically takes the equivalent of local taxation for every night let and the tax declaration form that everyone complete has a section just for earnings from holiday home lets. So that might deter KC3 from letting out Balmoral…
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Crown Estate Scotland is responsible for managing:(Crown Estate Scotland - Wikipedia)
- 37,000 hectares of rural land with agricultural tenancies, residential and commercial properties and forestry on four rural estates (Glenlivet, Fochabers, Applegirth and Whitehill)
- Salmon and sea trout fishing rights on many Scottish rivers
- Around half the foreshore around Scotland including 5,800 moorings and some ports and harbours
- Leasing of virtually all seabed out to 12 nmi (22 km) covering some 750 fish farming sites and agreements with cables & pipeline operators
- The rights to offshore renewable energy and gas and carbon storage out to 200 nmi (370 km)
- Mineral rights over naturally occurring gold and silver across most of Scotland
- Retail and office units at 39-41 George Street Edinburgh (Crown Estate Scotland - Wikipedia)
Although The Crown has first claim on all “royal fish” (whales which measure more than 25 feet (7.6 m) from the snout to the middle of the tail) found dead or stranded in Scottish waters, since 1999 this right has been administered by the Scottish Government’s Marine Directorate, and royal fish do not become the property of Crown Estate Scotland.(Crown Estate Scotland - Wikipedia) Similarly, assets that have no owner (bona vacantia) also revert to The Crown, but in Scotland such assets are dealt with by the Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer(Crown Estate Scotland - Wikipedia)
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That may be true for ordinary houses but do you think it’s true for large working estates like Balmoral, which has working farms, forestry work etc and is employing people all year round and adding to the local economy?
It takes a lot of money to maintain the grand houses on those estates, so if Scotland chase away all the “foreign owners” by imposing large property taxes, what will be their fate?
There has been many a grand Scottish Castle or large house sitting empty and derelict for lack of someone willing to invest the money to renovate it.
The Queen Mum rescued one of these derelict castles, The Castle of Mey (which another poster has already mentioned)
She spent a lot of her private money on renovating the castle and buying farmland, setting up traditional breeding herds of Aberdeen Angus and Cheviot Sheep to provide employment and income for the estate.
Once it was in decent shape, she transferred the property to a Charitable Trust for the benefit of the community - the house is open to the public and uses the income to fund itself and its staff - the Trust uses the estate for educational purposes too.
Charles is currently the Trustee of it - the only benefit he personally derives from it is that he gets to spend 10 days a year at the Castle when it is closed to the public.
There is another house which nobody wanted, not even the National Trust could afford to save it, although they wanted to. Charles headed up a rescue operation for Dumfries House - his vision was not only to restore the House but to use the estate and buy more land around it to create housing and employment for a self-sustaining community.
Charles was slated at the time and accused of mounting a “vanity project” but I think it has worked out well in the end - I watched a programme about this project and noticed how he tied together several of his passions in this project - providing housing and employment in traditional rural areas and giving young people the opportunities through The Prince’s Trust by running Trust events at Dumfries House and giving full time employment to some of the young people who were being supported by the Trust.
I think one of the challenges in rural areas of Scotland must be in creating and maintaining enough employment to keep young people in the rural communities and prevent those communities from dying off as the young folk all move out to seek work.
If Scotland does use property tax to deter the wealthy from investing their money in large houses which come with estates and employment for local people, might they may be cutting their nose off to spite their face?
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Very interesting … the other side of the story … 
When the great houses (inevitably) disappeared so did all the job opportunities.
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That may be true, but what kind of opportunities are offered working for these wealthy privileged, absentee landlords? I was born & brought up in the Sandringham area & I have known of several people who have worked for the royals at Sandringham & I know for a fact that the wages on offer are lower than you would get working for other employers doing the same role.
The people who own these large estates often truly believe that poor people should think of it as a privilege to work for them & thus low wages are totally acceptable.
Well, there are no vacancies at the moment,
It can’t be denied that sustaining people and jobs in rural communities is a challenge for many developed countries. But technology and the pandemic shows that remote working is really possible. The notion that everyone seeking a meaningful job must move to the big city is a very 20th century way of seeing things. By contrast, we are now seeing people move out to the countryside and to smaller towns and villages to seek a better quality of life while retaining a good job. The challenge for governments is enabling this through investment in high speed broadband access, encouraging businesses to embrace remote working, and retaining local services such as shops, transportation, etc.
As noted above, the demise of large houses with lots of badly paid servants is good. Make them into national trust homes for volunteers to show tourists round, whilst taking good tourist money. Who then stay at the local hotel, which is kept open off season because well paid remote workers eat there. Perfect.
I’m not far from Windsor the wages aren’t great but the jobs offered allow many to go onto better well paid employment if people are trained in the royal palace. They have trained many over the years who have gone on to have wonderful careers.
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If a job involves real training, then in general wages are lower. But if they pay lower wages for people like cleaners or fully trained people like gardeners, cooks etc. Simply because of who they are, then that is wrong & I do not know Windsor, but I do know the Sandringham area well & here they do pay lower wages, even for fully trained people, or those who need no training.
The royals are well known for playing lower than average wages .
Then there is all that deference and brown nosing to take into account .
To say nothing of all those snotty courtiers that surround them.
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They expect people to feel privileged to work for them which, in truth, many of them do. And being able to put that on their CV will more than likely boost their earning power in the future.
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The whole rotten tribe really should be subject to inheritance tax.
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I completely agree .
How is it that on so many topics I disagree with what you write and then every so often you post something that I wholeheartedly agree with? Good post, sir.
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I agree that The Queen’s personal estate / private wealth should be subject to the same inheritance tax rules as everybody else.
The reasons given for why no inheritance tax is liable on the Queen’s personal wealth doesn’t wash with me…
Apparently, it was due to a deal struck in 1993 with the then Tory government, when John Major was PM. The Queen had finally agreed to pay income tax for the first time and, as part of that agreement, it was stipulated that sovereign-to-sovereign bequests would be exempt from inheritance tax.
The Treasury Memorandum of Understanding on Royal Taxation, written in 2013, states:
The reasons for not taxing assets passing to the next sovereign are that private assets such as Sandringham and Balmoral have official as well as private use and that the monarchy as an institution needs sufficient private resources to enable it to continue to perform its traditional role in national life, and to have a degree of financial independence from the government of the day.
Well, they still have the income from the Duchy of Lancaster in addition to the Sovereign Grant.
I don’t think many official functions are carried out in either of their private homes - they are more like private bolt-holes to get away from the Official Royal residences.
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That’s what I thought - Scottish people will probably want it back
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The Scottish people cannot have it back unless the monarchy are willing to sell and the scots have the money to buy it. It is a privately owned property bought from Scotland by Albert’s Victoria. If it is to be taken back then there is a case for every property in Scotland, privately owned by English folks, to be sold back to the Scottish - can’t see that, can you?
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