The salaries of the kings of Spain increased by 3% in 2023 following the increase approved in the General State Budget for personnel in the service of the public sector.
Following the list of gifts accepted, Casa Real has published the salaries of King Felipe and Queen Letizia during 2023 to demonstrate the clarity of the monarchy.
King Felipe’s and Queen Letizia’s Salaries
King Felipe VI was paid a total of 270,609.60 euros (about $294,000) last year, while Queen Letizia was paid 148,826.44 euros (about $162,000) and Queen Sofia 121,776.14 euros (about $132,000).
Neither Princess Leonor nor Infanta Sofia received any remuneration for their public engagements.
Of the total allocated to these salaries, which according to the report published this Thursday, July 11, represents 6.4% of the almost 8.5 million of the budget of the King’s Household in 2023.
Neither King Juan Carlos, from whom Felipe VI withdrew his remuneration four years ago, receives any salary.
Activities Carried Out
The royal household also published the report of the activities carried out during 2023.
Along with a video reviewing the most outstanding ones, Zarzuela detailed that the royal family carried out a total of 394 activities, both in Spain (293) and abroad.
“The most significant areas were those related to International Relations (22%), Institutions (20%), Culture (13%), Defense (10%), Economy (8%) and Training (7%).”
With this information, the royal house is once again complying with the transparency rules approved in 2014 after the proclamation of Felipe VI in June of that year. However, this time there is a novelty with respect to previous years, since the royal house has published the report of the audit that, for the first time in history, has been carried out by the Court of Auditors of its annual accounts.
The report is favorable and determines that the annual accounts of the King’s Household give a true and fair view of its assets and financial situation “as well as of its results and cash flows and of the budget settlement statement”.
The report details, for example, that during 2023 the royal household earned income of just over 120,000 euros (about $130,000) from marketable securities and fixed asset credits.
It is also reported that they spent a little more than two and a half million dollars in “ordinary management expenses” for the rental of means of transport, fuel, insurance, professional services and other items such as the purchase of “press, magazines, books and other publications”, which cost about $65,000 in total, or “telephone communications”, about $600,000.
Felipe VI and Letizia’s taxes
Unlike other European monarchies, such as the Nordic ones, the Spanish royal family does pay IRPF taxes to the Tax Agency.
As explained by the Spanish newspaper ‘ABC’, in an estimate by Gestha, the union of tax technicians, Felipe VI would pay to the Treasury around a little over $100,000 from his salary as monarch, which represents approximately 38% of his remuneration.
For her part, Leonor and Sofia’s mother would pay almost half of Felipe’s salary, around $55,000.
Since when do monarchs pay taxes?
It was King Juan Carlos I who revealed these data in 1992 during an interview on the BBC. Words that surprised a lot in the United Kingdom, where after this news Elizabeth II had to accept and pay also for her activities as sovereign.