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Prince Charles was today accused of “dodging around for tax purposes” and paying the Inland Revenue at a rate 12% below his servants.

The revelation sparked fury after Parliament’s spending watchdog grilled the heir to the throne’s personal aide over his multi-million pound income from the Duchy of Cornwall.

MPs said Charles deducts his own spending as a “business expense” – because “his business is being the Prince of Wales”.

They also accused him of exploiting a 900-year-old deal which allows the Duchy – worth £762m – to escape tax.

Labour’s Austin Mitchell, said: “It looks in the figures that are published that Prince Charles’ direct tax plus indirect tax is 24% of his income for 2012.”

He told the Mirror: “He pays a smaller proportion in tax than any of his domestic servants.”

Charles’s tax bill during the last financial year was £4.4million - around a quarter of his £19million income. Yet his low-paid servants pay 36% in tax.

Anti-monarchy group Republic’s leader Graham Smith, said: “Unlike multinational corporations Prince Charles doesn’t have to create a complex network of overseas companies and offices.

“He simply insists he shouldn’t have to pay and hides behind his very own onshore tax haven – depriving the public coffers of millions of pounds.

“At a time when the country is under unprecedented economic stress, it is unacceptable that the heir to the throne is avoiding his tax obligations in this way.

“Everyone has a moral obligation to pay a fair rate of tax, whether that’s Starbucks, Google or the heir to the throne.”

RMT rail union leader Bob Crow said: “While workers are seeing their pay and conditions hacked to ribbons by this government, Prince Charles and the rest of the super rich are getting away with daylight robbery.

“We’ve got cleaners sweeping up body parts on the Tube paying a higher percentage in tax than the heir to the throne. The whole rotten system stinks.”

The Prince’s principal private secretary William Nye told MPs of the Public Accounts Committee that Charles paid the top 50% tax rate, until it was cut to 45% by George Osborne this year.

But he admitted: “He pays income tax on his income after relevant business expenses.”

(Image: PA)

Mr Nye said: “It’s been that way since the Prince of Wales and the Queen first started paying income tax 20 years ago.

Mr Nye also admitted that Charles pays rent to himself to stay at his Highgrove home.

The Prince owns the estate, which he uses as his family home with the Duchess of Cornwall, through the Duchy of Cornwall.

And by paying rent to the Duchy from his own income, it means he pays less in income tax.

Committee chair Margaret Hodge said she was struggling to understand why “the Duke of Cornwall pays rent to himself”.

Mr Nye said: “A proportion of the cost of the Prince of Wales’ properties as they relate to official duties is a deductable expense.”

But Mr Mitchell accused Charles’s officials of “dodging around for tax purposes”.

He said the Duchy was not treated as a business “but for every other purpose it is a corporation”.

He added: “Wouldn’t it be better if it was just taxed as a corporation instead of as some kind of medieval anomaly?”

Mr Nye said the Duchy was like a “family business and was not a corporation”.

But Mrs Hodge disagreed and demanded to know why the Duchy should be exempt.

How the poorest hit hardest

The poorest families pay more in tax than the richest under Chancellor George Osborne’s double-dealing rules, the Daily Mirror revealed last week.

We unearthed figures from the Government’s own Office for National Statistics showing the least well-off households have been coughing up 36.6% of their income while the wealthiest pay only 35.5%.

After all taxes and benefits are taken into account, the top 20% of earners pocket £57,300 a year while the bottom 20% are left with just £15,800.