rwdrwdrwd

Nice bloke

With income declared and taxed in Thailand, there should be no need for an embassy letter. (I mentioned it to advise you of taxation options). That the company is not based in your home country doesn't matter. An Australian having income from the UK still goes to the Australian embassy and not to the UK embassy.

Thanks for that info Is there any other known benefit beside simplified visa extensions to having tax receipts but no WP - I was thinking about buying a car in my name with finance but I suspect that would require WP anyway so the 400k does make sense if there is nothing else that monthly taxed income without WP could aid

In general you are only liable for Thai tax on offshore income if you bring it in to the country in the Thai tax year ( same as calendar year jan to dec) in which it was earned. So in the situation you describe if you receive a dividend offshore in say December 2013 and hold it offshore for a month and bring it in in jan 2014 then there should be no Thai tax liability . So in effect it does not need to be offshore for a year just .so long as you don't bring it in in the same year.

Wow even better than I thought - cheers for the heads up! Going by the letter of the law, is there any reporting requirement when bringing in money that is exempt from tax?

Does your TV have internet capability built in? You mention that you suspect it would be blocked by the wifi which indicates that it can at least connect - if it has internet capability and can connect to the wifi then it probably supports DLNA. If this is the case then you should be able to broadcast from your laptop to the TV, it's very unlikely this would be blocked.

This is the setup I use, I run Twonky - http://twonky.com/ and once it's running and the laptop and TV are connected to the same wifi network, I can just browse the shared files on the TV, whoever runs the wifi would have to have specifically gone in to block the functionality to prevent it. Certainly worth a try

This is only going to work for stuff you download though, it won't give you access to iPlayer etc

For receiving money no work permit is necessary.

Regarding the money, you must pay taxes and the tax forms can be used to proof your income. But income can also come from outside Thailand, in which case you need to provide a letter from your embassy confirming your income. The income does not have to be earned in Thailand or being received here.

For 400,000 baht in a bank account in Thailand for 2 months, you only show your bank book and a letter from the bank (standard letter that each bank has). You do not have to proof that the money comes from outside of Thailand.

Thanks for the input, appreciated!

In this scenario, since the 50k income would be declared in Thailand and taxed here would this remove the need for a letter from an embassy? In my case the company is not based in my home country either, so not sure whether my embassy could issue confirmation.

Also if anybody knows the answer to the second part of my question (zero tax due on income remitted to Thailand one year after being paid to an offshore personal account) it would be great to get some confirmation and advice on whether it must be declared as zero-rated when it is remitted to Thailand.

Hi, I wonder if someone can confirm my understanding regarding taxation of offshore dividend income

If a non Immigrant O visa holder is a shareholder of an offshore company and receives dividends of 50k a month paid to a personal account in Thailand, is it correct that a Work Permit is unnecessary but they can declare this dividend income, pay tax / receive paperwork for it and use it to qualify for Non Imm O visa extensions on the basis of 40k a month income (or 400k in a Thai bank)? If so what would be the process to follow to declare this income?

Furthermore, if they were to maintain an offshore personal account in a third jurisdiction and hold further dividends there for a year, is my thinking correct in that after 1 year passes they would then be able to bring this in to Thailand tax free regardless of the sum? If so is there any process that needs to be followed?

We found our place in Trang via trangzone.com - all Thai language but perhaps your GF can take a look there

Did the op attend the cremation?I find it very hard to believe the gf stayed on for the trip after her grandmother passed away!

Will never happen in a good family in Thailand or anywhere else in the world.

Has her friend also been an exchange student?

Sorry for being so distrustful ,must have been here too long?

My wife's grandmother was cremated months after her death - seems that this is the traditional style, at least according to this website - http://www.catandnat.com/pages/content/thai-funerals-checklist#.UWRS6asd5Gg

The body is traditionally kept for another 50 days or more before cremation but this practice is dying out. Prayers are usually chanted every 50 days until the body is cremated.

Difficult to say, but so long as you can connect to the modem (ie, it gives you an ip address but the internet is unresponsive) you can probably save yourself a walk by rebooting through the admin panel - usually at 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.254. It also might give you more granular information regarding the problem, look for a button that says 'renew lease' or similar, probably on some kind of status page. If you can't find it let me know the model of the router and there's probably a guide somewhere.

Ah thanks, sorry I missed the company name before. they are the service that cost you 6000TBH scanning fee? We will only be shipping about 5 box,s now and not bothering with my TV as I have ditched the box so nothing safe to transport in. Hopefully we wont incur such a harsh fee slapped ontop.

Customs itself leveraged the scan fee (which was 15,000 on a declared value of 150,000)- this charge is not related to the shipper at all. To be honest, I believe that unless you are extremely lucky (and being realistic you're unlikely to be so as a foreigner), unless you are willing to spend countless hours schmoozing and haggling you will be hit with a fee one way or another for around 10 - 30% of the declared value so if you're going ship, I would budget for it. You can treat it as a bonus if it sails through un-levied.

In terms of your TV, certainly in the case of Dynamic International they pack for you and it is done extremely professionally. We shipped numerous fragile items, notably a 60kg single piece glass table, flat screen 3d tv, lots of porcelain. We had one broken lampshade, everything else was spotless.

If it helps at all, my thought process on 'to ship or to sell' was this:

As other posters have mentioned yes you can buy the vast majority of items here, but from what I see it's generally a poor selection and is about 20% higher than in the UK, if you have items you like so much that you are considering shipping them then I suppose you have to weigh up the financial and time impact of firstly selling all the items before you travel (or storing them), and the same factors when researching, locating and purchasing replacements in Thailand. My perspective was that I could sell 3000 worth of stuff for 1500 and around 40 hours total time spent selling, buying equivalent quality replacements would have cost 4200 and 40 hours time.

So to ship:

Shipping = -1500 including insurance for the whole lot

Scan Fee = -300

Time spent sorting = 8 hours

= Total -1800 and 8 hours work

To sell and repurchase

Credit for selling items = 1500

Cost of equivalent replacements = 3600

Time spent sorting = 80 hours

= Total -2100 and 80 hours work

In the extremely unlikely event I found the same items at the same price as in the UK (3000) then this gives

= Total -1500 and 80 hours work

Do yourseld a favor and hust buy new sh*t.

Well I do own possessions which I would like to have me.

I have been recommended Dynamic International by my new employers, does anyone have any experience with them?

Yes, that's who I used as per the review above - they were great

Rwdrwdrwd if you use speedtest.net what speeds you getting with your 13mb package?

Here you go:

Thought I'd pile in, I've always used fixed CAT landlines who had always been excellent but more expensive. Moved to a different province recently and unfortunately the CAT office here don't seem to be as organised as elsewhere, unable to give an installation date beyond 'probably within a month'.

I opened a 3bb account, the 13m package at 900 odd a month, installed within 4 days and it's far better than expected. I like telly and have uk and us vpn accounts, with the standard (not the premier account and just adsl, not fibre-optic) 13m account i can stream netflix, iplayer, torrents etc with no problem - to be honest it's faster for me than CAT was, and cheaper. Highly recommended.

At the end of the day you need a pretty basic wireless cable (not adsl) router with some ethernet ports, Airport Express would really be paying through the nose for a pretty product.

D-link do make them, I had a quick look on invadeit.co.th - there is a D-link dir-600l which does everything you need for under 1000 baht.

D-link are perfectly fine for home use, I have an old dsl-2640t that I bought for around 1500 4 years or so ago and it's still running fine

Recently bought a Samsung Smart TV and got straight onto Netflix through Uno Telly (www.untotelly.com) - free trial and relatively inexpensive monthly fees afterwards.

Not having as much luck with the iplayer as this requires flash to be installed and cant do that onto the TV. Any suggestions welcome!

The quickest solution would be to add a vpn router to your network and sign up with a vpn provider. StrongVPN have links to preconfigured systems on their website, but at the end of the day any router that supports tomato or ddwrt and a us vpn (i do strongly recommend strongvpn) will allow this. I've successfully set up an asus rt16 and linksys wrt54g it's not especially simple but once it's up and running works perfectly.

I had to use True H for a couple of weeks recently whilst waiting for an install, went through 5gb in a week and went back to the shop and they with a little bit of fuss/confusion managed to put another 5gb on (paid of course).

I know if you just try to use the sms service it makes you wait for 30 days before repurchasing, but it might be worth paying a visit to the True shop

You won't be able to ship much for £1500, possibly 2-3 cubic metres. Wth a work permit, there will be no tax and duty. You have to declare any items as used though.

We just shipped 6 cubic metres for £1400, door to door packed in the UK and unpacked for us 400km South of Bangkok. It wasn't the cheapest quote offered either.. we evaluated three, they were all in the 1100 - 1500 but the one we chose was the most responsive company. This included full insurance. We did let them all know very clearly that we were getting multiple quotes.

Our shipment wasn't taxed since my wife (who kept her thai surname) was the shipper and classed as a returning Thai, however we did get a £300 'scan fee'. They didn't open anything, we were told this was because there was 'lots of things' - hah. I'm not sure if the OPs visa would trigger tax or not, I know some non-Imm visas are exempt but not sure if this is perhaps only year long ones. Personally I anticipated a 10 - 30% surcharge in one form or another which turned out pretty accurate.

For us, our shipment was lots of kitchen electronics (coffee machine, grinder, bread machine, slow cooker, blender, juicer). Quite a few expensive household electronics (yes including a TV), all sorts of stuff for a new baby, quite a bit of furniture, lots of books, documents, clothes. Full home office set. Probably about 3 - 5 grands worth of stuff. Everything was packed individually with great care, the sole breakage we had was to a fragile lampshade.

With patience all of this stuff could be located here, but at a premium on UK prices. We could have put everything into storage or sold everything, but the former is an ongoing expense (and not a cheap one), and the latter would have taken up an awful lot of time and hassle to offload things we liked at below market rate only to have to then find the same (or research suitable quality replacements, then find them) and buy them again at inflated prices here.

We don't regret shipping at all, it saved no end of hassle

The company we used was Dynamic International - they were great, the Thai end was subcontracted by them to United Relocations (Thailand) Co. Ltd, also a satisfactory service.

I've been in a situation where a suit is a problem in London a few times, and in Hong Kong, for financial services among others. If possible I always wear a full suit and tie, however numerous times this has been impractical, for example last minute interviews with little time to get suited and booted when I'm on a contract elsewhere in jeans and a t-shirt until half an hour before the interview slot.

In these scenarios I speak to the contact at the company or agency and say 'usually I would wear a full suit but in this instance it's impractical, could you accept that on this occasion I will not?'. It's never been an issue, and all cases where I have done this have resulted in offers. Must emphasise that I always addressed the issue before the interview.

In short, my advice is if you can wear a suit, wear one, but if you don't it's not the end of the world on the proviso you address it before you turn up.

I don't think he was right to escalate it by grabbing her by the throat when she tried to walk off and getting violent about it but I can certainly understand the Mercedes driver's anger.

I got the same translation, the woman had driven the van the wrong way down the soi, parked the van blocking access to everybody going in the correct direction despite there being places to park beyond the end of it, and then refused to move it out of the way when asked. Is it right for everybody else to be inconvenienced because of another's bad attitude and supercilious behaviour?

Great, thanks to thes informations, there's an True Move antenna 200 meters to my house so i'll choose it...

Is it big, red and white? If so it's in fact a CAT tower - True connects to their infrastructure and if it's 200m away a fixed CAT line is no problem for you.

Hmm. UP bakery.. Now their coffee is passable if you're lucky enough to get served, but my experience is that they offer awful service.

First day I went at 5pm on the dot and ordered a coffee to take away and was refused. They close at 5. Fair enough, I thought, though not too difficult to make a takeaway coffee.

Next day went mid afternoon, got an overpriced coffee. The food looked nice on the pictures so my wife and I took a table outside and looked at the menu in full view of 3 staff. After 15 minutes being ignored we gave up.

Today I went at 4.30. "latte to take away please". To be informed by the same individual that had half-served me on both previous occasions that they were "closed"

"but you told me you close at 5pm"

"I turned off the coffee machine already"

Two staff sat there twiddling thumbs half an hour before closing time and waiting for the clock to turn to 5. Not sure if the same people own the shop as are serving customers, but if not and the owners happen to read this - they are not representing your business well at all.

At least Starbucks leave the machines on until closing time.

Rant aside, there's a nice coffee shop and kwayteow shop (beef and duck) on the left hand side as you drive from krabi town to ao nang.

Any more ideas for good coffee are very welcome as I certainly won't be giving UP Bakery another chance.

My wife who used to work on Koh Ngai and is from Trang, she phoned an old colleague in Koh Ngai and according to them the best solution is firstly to see if your resort offers a package as it's probably organised well. They will sometimes organise a chartered ferry. The regular one only runs once a day at the moment at midday.

If you really wish to do it yourself she recommends a taxi to Pak Meng pier (price unknown, but could be 1200) and then a longtail boat (takes 1 hour, 1500 for the whole boat). You could rent a speedboat (30 mins) but you'd be looking at 2-3 times the price and it's not a lot more comfortable. My wife recommends the Jarawee boat company for either longtail or speedboat.

I live reasonably nearby and just had CAT installed after a good experience with them elsewhere. My previous experience was that they installed and I never spoke to them again for 18 months till I moved out, because nothing ever went wrong.

i did try to compare 3BB, True, TOT but all of them started on with the standard 'cannot, impossible it's too far', then 'maybe can but you must pay, we will come and check soon' lines, which for me sets a precedent for service. Spoke to CAT, they came out the next day to survey and it was installed and running properly within 4 days including a new cable to the house, cabling was 6k baht based on distance, I'm the first in the area with it.

I'm paying for 20mb and getting it consistently both to Thai servers (18ms ping) and to London with (300ms ping)

Interestingly I installed my own router today as I have higher end one, since I did I've been getting 28mb Thailand / 25mb UK. I wonder if there was some kind of limiter in place on the modem provided. My router is 5ghz and a faster wireless protocol but I thought either of these would supply the same speed except for local network communication.

Anyway, to summarise, with the router they supplied (1500 baht mid range linksys one) I got exactly the speed offered, and with a better router I'm actually getting 150% of it.

For anything beyond emails and general web browsing I wouldn't recommend anything other than a fixed line. To be fair I have been burnt before with Aircards etc so perhaps they have improved over the last couple of years, but I can certainly recommend CAT for delivering advertised speeds, no hassle surveying and speedy installation. It probably costs twice the price of the others but I think (especially if stability is important) it's well worth the money.