The receipts apparently merit royal thanks (7)
I believe the answer is:
takings
'the receipts' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'apparently merit royal thanks' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'royal' could be 'king' (a king is royal) and 'king' is found in the answer.
'thanks' could be 'ta' (UK informal version of 'thank you') and 'ta' is located in the answer.
A single letter 's' remains which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for takings that I've seen before include "Income from sales, etc" , "gold received?" , "Monetary receipts" , "Income from transactions" , "Cash receipts" .)