Few will have a great deal of sympathy for King Charles after his Crown Estate reported it had lost half a billion pounds of returns from its London property portfolio.
Revenue from properties in London fell by 6.5% to £7.2 billion after the value of its retail portfolio fell.
Footfall in the West End of London is still below pre-pandemic levels, which has led to 20% of Crown Estate-owned properties becoming vacant.
It may be hard to conjure up too much sympathy for the monarch, but the drop in revenue from London retail property should have alarm bells ringing in The Treasury.
The Chancellor should be urgently rethinking whether imposing a 20% tourist tax on visitors shopping in the UK is paying dividends.
The Crown Estate made up for lost revenues and profits from West End retailers with a boom in business from monetising off shore wind farms.
Retailers like Watches of Switzerland, Harrods and Selfridges, are not so fortunate, and are suffering some of the toughest summer trading conditions since the darkest days of lock downs.
A private conversation with a major luxury jeweller, who I will not name, outlined the difficulty of maintaining sales when wealthy visitors to this country, who would have chosen to buy big ticket items here when they could reclaim 20% VAT instantly as they left the country, diverted their spending to cities on the continent like Paris.
The retailer explained how it was sprinting just to stay still; investing in bigger and more spectacular stores, but sales have remained flat year-on-year.
Rising costs and no increase in revenue is leading to a squeeze on profits, and considerably lower corporation taxes owed to the Treasury.
This story is being repeated across the UK, particularly in the major tourist cities like London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Windsor and York.
I am hearing from a number of jewellers that sales are flat or down, profits are being squeezed and they will be paying less in corporation tax as a result.
There are signs that the Treasury may be preparing the ground to drop the so-called tourist tax in its Autumn Statement, and is calling for evidence of the damage being done by the lost of VAT-free shopping.
Retailers would be well advised to share their experience, and prove that the current policy is costing far more in lost corporation and other taxes than it is raising through reimposing VAT on overseas shoppers.
