donx

My wife didn't received such an email from Airbnb. I'm guessing she didn't receive it because her Airbnb is a townhouse, not a condo. Are you renting a condo on Airbnb?

Since my wife has an agreement with Airbnb and they are including VAT as a charge against her profits, wouldn't this information be similar to the situation you posted where she will need to pay taxes on her rental income?

This topic is of interest to me as well since my wife is in a similar situation to the OP. We don't live in Thailand and my wife has never paid tax in Thailand even when she was living there many years ago. However, she now receives rental income for her townhouse that is available to rent through Airbnb. I asked her about taxes and she said she has a friend that works in the government (revenue department?) that can explain what she needs to do. Airbnb collects VAT but I'm sure she will need to start paying personal income tax on top of the VAT. Perhaps she should establish a Thai company so she can deduct expenses to reduce her tax liability.

He means the use of a Thai company to circumvent laws prohibiting foreign ownership is illegal. He recommends only purchasing a condo that does not need to be owned by a Thai company. The condos owned by Thai companies most likely already had/have a 49% foreigner ownership.

There won't be a term used in listings in this case. Why would anyone advertising to foreigners willingly let them know they can't own it directly? If you are interested in a specific condo or condo building, you need to check with the condo management what the percentage of foreign ownership is. If the seller is Thai, you need to research this yourself. If the seller is a Thai company, either research if it can be owned directly by you as a foreigner or walk away.

I remember a thread on this forum a few years ago where a foreigner inherited a condo from his/her foreign father and either had to bring in the government assessed value of the condo from outside of Thailand or sell the inherited unit. If that is the case, then I would expect the same would be true for a foreigner inheriting a condo from a Thai, assuming the foreign allocation is under 49%. I don't own anything in Thailand, so I can only comment on what I have read on here before. My wife owns several properties that will all be inherited by our Thai/US citizen children. I agree this needs clarification from a reputable lawyer.

That happened because 35 years ago, a Thai woman married to a foreign man was prohibited from owning property if acquired after marriage. The law changed sometime around 1999. I know this because I knew a man married to a Thai back in 1995 and he said his brother-in-law owned "his" house because he and his wife couldn't own it.

So true. The OP hasn't provided enough information leaving other posters to speculate. Even his one follow-up response was a bit vague. I assume he means that his daughter is 51 years old. Additionally, we don't know if his daughter is a Thai citizen or not. Many have assumed that she is Thai, but my guess based upon his interest in having his daughter inherit the villa led me to assume she isn't Thai.

This is the quote of the day in my humble opinion!

My understand of the law, and based upon information provided on this forum previously, is that when a foreigner inherits a condo from another foreigner, the new owner needs to bring in funds from abroad equivalent to the assessed value of the condo. Either that or they must sell the condo. Previous posts in this forum usually identify the foreigner inheriting the condo as a Westerner. However, I believe this stipulation applies to anyone that is not a Thai citizen. Being born in Thailand does not automatically confer Thai citizenship unless at least one of the parents is Thai. So, your daughter is not Thai and therefore must bring in funds from outside of Thailand in order to keep the condo. You can state in your will that you want her to receive the condo. And if you make her the executor of your will, she should have time to either come up with the funds to put the condo in her name or sell it and receive the net proceeds from the sale of the condo. Another alternative would be for her to apply for Thai citizenship. Whether that is even possible for her, I don't know.

I don't have information specifically on what to expect as an adult. However, I will say that the process to get Thai ID cards for my daughters who were minors at the time took a whole day. That was in Phatthalung. In addition to getting them entered into their grandparents' house book, they required interviews with others in the community that could vouch for them being children of my wife. They kept asking for photo copies of everything, so we kept having to go to a local print shop multiple times during the process. The official processing the applications created handwritten reports that were passed on to a secretary who entered those reports into a computer. Once the girls had the Thai IDs, they were able to get Thai passports in Hat Yai which only took about an hour to process. Of course we had to drive to Hat Yai and back from Phatthalung, so the total time was about half a day. I hope you don't have to go through the same agonizing process that we did. By the way, I'm interested in finding out how your application goes because we didn't obtain a Thai ID for our son because my wife didn't want him to register for the military draft. We intend to get his Thai ID after he's in his 30's.

In my opinion, there are cases where an Airbnb rental could work in Thailand. For example, when a family of 8 needs a booking, getting multiple hotel rooms could be more expensive than renting a house that accommodates up to 8 guests. I have a family of 5 and I often look for places to rent wherever we travel that can accommodate all of us in a single place. In Thailand, we often have to book 2 rooms which isn't too bad, but if we can get a place with 2 bedrooms, we prefer that option. Unfortunately, there aren't many hotels or serviced apartments in Thailand that have such an accommodation. I have rented apartments in Rome, Paris, Tokyo, Kyoto, Brooklyn, etc. instead of hotel rooms because it was much more cost effective than booking hotel rooms.

Based upon your response, I believe the situation I outlined is legal since a townhouse is owned by a Thai. How else could it be owned other than by a Thai or a Thai LTD?

I know this thread is about buying a condo and renting on Airbnb or some other short term rental site. However, there are posts about a villa being rented out short term. My question is, assuming that someone has a townhouse, is it illegal to rent it out short term? If this is the only property being rented out by the landlord, it doesn't appear to violate the Hotel Act which requires a license when renting something like 4 or 5 units or more. And if the townhouse doesn't have an HOA to restrict short term leases, is there any reason such a rental would be considered illegal?

How about this situation? Brother owes a bank money on land but can't pay the debt. His sister offers to pay off the debt but only if he transfers the land to her. The land has been owned by the brother for many years. Over time, the brother hopes to pay back the sister so that he can own the land again, but that might not happen which is why the sister requests that the land be transferred to her in the meantime. What will the transfer fees and taxes be in this situation?