Grenada government and opposition join forces to drop oath of allegiance to King Charles
A statement from the government announcing the move said that in 'a commendable display of national unity' the country's parliament had agreed bills to amend the country's constitution.
The change will remove the words 'His Majesty King Charles the Third, His Heirs and Successors' from the pledge of allegiance and replace them with 'Grenada'.
In the statement, Grenada's prime minister, Dickon Mitchell, said: 'The unanimous support for this amendment demonstrates our shared commitment to national identity and constitutional progress and while we may differ on many issues, today we stand together in affirming that our allegiance belongs to Grenada and its people.'
Later, he told local media: 'I don't think anyone in their right mind will expect me – or any future prime minister of Grenada – on taking the oath of office to serve them, that I should be swearing allegiance to King Charles, his heirs and successor.'
He added: 'What is it about King Charles that is superior to me, that requires me not to swear allegiance to the people of Grenada but to him?'
The prime minister added: 'Sovereign countries have excellent bilateral relations. That doesn't mean that you have to swear allegiance to the head of a state of another foreign country.'
This only happened, he pointed out, because Grenada was a former British colony and not because it was voted on by Grenadians.
The governor-general, Dame Cécile La Grenade, the Crown's representative in Grenada, assented to the two pieces of legislation to amend the oath, after they were approved in both the lower and upper Houses of Parliament.
Grenada's tourism and culture minister, Adrian Thomas, said the move was a response to decades of calls from Grenadians to change the oath, setting it amid a broader trend to decolonise society, assert the country's independence and reform the constitution.
He said: 'Although we still have many institutions, like the royal prison, the Royal Grenada Police Force, we are on the road to decolonising our society and apart from the oath of allegiance we will be doing much more in years to come.'
On the streets of St George's, communications consultant Sherene Thomas-Isaac, said the change was 'long overdue'.
'We're independent. I think that's a mark of our sovereignty … We have to follow the true course of what independence means for our region,' she said.
The change to the oath comes as the Grenada Reparations Commission vowed to step up the pursuit of an apology and reparations from the monarch and intensify calls for the removal of King Charles as the country's head of state, after new research revealed that George IV personally profited from slavery on the Caribbean island.
Arley Gill, the head of the commission, thanked Francis Alexis, a former attorney general and government minister, for lobbying for the change, which he described as 'one small step in the further deconstruction of a new colonialism process'.
Gill said: 'We need to strengthen the lobby in Grenada to get rid of the king as head of state. The royal family is not fit and proper to be the head of state of a country where they have directly profited from slavery. We need to move to republicanism immediately.'
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For every £2 earned above the threshold, you lose £1 of allowance. It's fully withdrawn by £125,140, when you begin paying the highest rate of tax. This gives workers earning between £100,000 and £125,140 a marginal income tax rate of 60 per cent. With 2 per cent national insurance and 9 per cent student loan repayments, the effective marginal rate could be 71 per cent, leaving you just 29p from every extra £1 earned. And that's before you factor in any lost childcare help. Additional-rate taxpayers also get no personal savings allowance, meaning they pay income tax on any interest from savings, unless the money is held in an Isa. Higher-rate payers can earn £500 a year in interest tax-free and basic-rate payers £1,000. The income you can earn each year from dividends before paying tax has also slashed from £2,000 in 2022-23 to £500. Additional-rate taxpayers pay 39.35 per cent on anything they make over this threshold (compared with 33.75 per cent for higher-rate taxpayers and 8.75 per cent for basic-rate taxpayers). A similar clampdown has happened on capital gains tax (CGT), which is charged on profits made from the sale of most assets. You used to be able to make up to £12,300 a year tax-free, but this was cut to £6,000 in April 2023 and halved again in April 2024. Higher and additional-rate taxpayers pay 24 per cent CGT on gains made above £3,000 a year, while basic-rate taxpayers pay 18 per cent. The final blow comes when earnings hit £200,000. At that point, workers begin to lose their £60,000 annual pension allowance, the maximum they can contribute to a pension each year while still receiving tax relief. The Treasury said: 'We are protecting payslips for working people by keeping our promise to not raise the basic, higher or additional rates of income tax, employee national insurance or VAT. That's the Plan for Change — protecting people's incomes and putting money into people's pockets.' • 'My reward for being a good saver? A £1,000 tax bill' Many high earners mitigate the tax burden by keeping their taxable income below key thresholds. This is usually done by saving more of your income into a pension, because all the thresholds above are based on your 'adjusted net income', which is your annual earnings (including bonuses) minus pension contributions and donations made to charities through Gift Aid. Jason Hollands from the wealth manager Evelyn Partners said additional-rate taxpayers often sacrificed bonuses or pay rises in exchange for increased employer pension contributions. 'Pension contributions are exempt from income tax and national insurance,' he said. 'This can help keep earnings below £125,140.' In many cases, it's worth going further. The most punitive cliff-edge comes at £100,000, where multiple benefits are lost and the personal allowance begins to reduce. As a result, some additional-rate taxpayers keep their income below this level through large pension contributions. 'It all depends on your living costs and personal circumstances,' said Chris Etherington from the accountancy firm RSM UK. 'If you're on £130,000 a year and have young children, it may make sense to cut your taxable income to below £100,000 to keep free childcare hours and your tax-free allowance. But it could make day-to-day cash flow tighter.' Calculations from RSM UK show that someone earning £130,000 would pay £44,703 in income tax. If that person paid enough into their pension to keep their income below the £100,000 threshold, they would pay £11,271 less in income tax. If they had a young family they could actually end up with more disposable income as a result because they would keep their childcare benefits. The 30 free childcare hours for two children under three would be worth £15,566 a year on average if they were in full-time, and tax-free childcare would be worth £4,000. Combined with the tax saved, that's £30,837, more than making up for the £30,000 saved into their pension, which has the potential to be boosted by tax relief and employer contributions. If income from savings, investments or property are pushing you over the £125,140 threshold and you are married or in a civil partnership, it could be worth transferring ownership of the assets to your partner if they are in a lower tax bracket. Transferring assets between spouses is tax-free, and so it could reduce the household's overall tax bill. Sean McCann from the wealth manager NFU Mutual said: 'One other area not to overlook is gifts made to charity via Gift Aid. These reduce your income and, in some circumstances, can help restore some or all the tax-free allowance and lower your tax bill.' Other tax-efficient investment options include venture capital trusts (VCTs) and enterprise investment schemes (EIS). These are government-backed schemes designed to encourage investment into small, early-stage companies. If you hold a VCT for five years and an EIS for three, you can claim 30 per cent income tax relief for each year. However, these are high-risk, niche products, so it's worth seeking financial advice before you make any moves. Hollands added: 'A six-figure salary has less wow factor than it did in the past, and a great many additional-rate taxpayers won't feel especially wealthy because the cost of living, higher mortgage costs and growing tax burden mean that the disposable income that can be used on the nice things in life won't be what it was in the past.' Suman Paul earns more than £126,000 a year, which should make him an additional-rate taxpayer. But Paul, an NHS consultant from Warrington in Cheshire, avoids the 45 per cent top rate of tax by making sure his income stays below the £100,000 cliff-edge. This means he keeps his tax-free personal allowance and still gets tax-free childcare for his daughter. 'Once you cross the £100,000 mark you start getting into marginal tax rates of 60 per cent, so that is one very inefficient tax trap that I want to avoid,' said Paul, 39. 'My daughter is also three and a half so we have to pay for nursery. We use the government's tax-free childcare scheme that gives you £2 for every £8 you spend. If we lose that, it would cost us more than £1,000 a year.' To manage his income, Paul pays for a car through his employer via salary sacrifice. It costs him £6,000 a year, which gets deducted from his salary pre-tax and reduces his taxable income. He also pays about £1,000 a month into his NHS pension and puts extra into his self-invested personal pension to bring his adjusted net income down further. Despite having an income that pushes him above the additional-rate threshold, Suman doesn't feel as if he lives a life of luxury. He said: 'It's a middle-class life. I can afford my mortgage, but my take-home pay does not feel like a lot. 'After paying all the fixed costs — mortgage, childcare, pension, car costs, bills — our disposable income is about £1,000 a month. And my wife is also a working professional. If I was a single earner, it would be much harder.'
