Dogmatix

Glad I got my all of life driving licence when they were still available in 2003, if I remember correctly. Never took a test in Thailand, except colour blind test. Just showed my overseas licence and was given a one year licence. When that expired I got a 3 year licence. When that expired I got an all of life licence which was only available for Thais and PRs. About 2 years after that no more all of life licences were given but 5 year licences were issued in place of 3 year licences. I think the cost of the all of life one was 3,000 baht and a lot of people didn't apply because they felt it was too expensive. I suppose it depended on how much cash you had on hand and how long you estimated you might live.

While police chief Police General Somyot Pumpanmuang reportedly made billions on private placements of obscure small cap listed Thai companies that were performing badly but suddenly started doing better in private placements offered below market place. Most of these companies started performing much better soon after the placements and he exited. Soon afterwards the SEC changed the rules on private placements to prevent them from being offered below the market price which enabled outsiders to profit at the expense of existing minority shareholders who were diluted without the chance to buy into the placements themselves. However, while this private placement frenzy lasted it was incredible to see a serving police chief having the time, knowledge and experience to identify this hidden gems n the market which many professional investors were unable to do.

Is a semi-auto pistol. So the caliber must be .38 super, a souped up 9mm cartridge for shooting sports, if really a .38. Odd choice for an illegal weapon because there are not many compared to bog standard 9mm and hard to come by in Thailand. The powerful ammo would blow a home made pistol apart. I think more likely a .380 ACP which is short, lower powered 9mm cartridge, commonly used in converted blank guns in Thailand like the gun used to murder people in Siam Paragon. The shorter size fits the blank guns and the lower power makes them less likely to blow apart. But still quite hard to find ammo.

I mean who cares? These garbage stories about people being outraged by shirtless ladyboys or girls in spaggetti straps come out every year and will no doubt continue into the future. Grow up and get used to it. The people who go to these aggressive drunken water throwing fests don't care. It is only the old biddies who stay at home and see the vaselined clips that really care.

My son's head teacher at an international school recommended families to have phone free meals. Put them all in a box, if people have problems not looking that them during meal time. It's bad for digestion too. She also recommended no phones for kids till they are 14. In this case only the 20 year old should have a phone. There is plenty of academic research that says children, who spend too much time in the virtual world and not enough time in the real world, are much more likely to get depressed. Sadly, suicide rates have also risen in this younger generation.

It's obviously irrelevant that he was in the army like nearly all Israeli men and women and a significant percentage of Thai men too. Media don't mention whether every Thai criminal they write about had been in the army or not. Why not just describe him as an Israeli citizen? But, even if we think the reserved occupations that have been around for nearly 100 years are silly, it is still Thai law which people violate at their peril, even though they may be offering a useful service not provided by any Thais. Presumably he has also been charged with working without WP.

Playing Russian roulette in a reasonably well lit room you can do a quick sneak peak down the the barrel and see there is a round loaded. Alternatively those with a slightly higher IQ can just look the cylinder which is easier to see but requires powers of deduction that may not be working under nitrous oxide. If you don't see any rounds in the cylinder but know that one round was loaded into the chamber, it is a logical assumption that that round is in position to fire behind the forcing cone. In this case make an excuse of needing to rush to the hong nam after eating som tam poo pralah and forfeit your turn to the next contender.

Nitrous oxide is a very dangerous drug which I remember from my young days. Tried it once and passed out. When I woke up I had blood pouring into my mouth and found some guy in a white coat had ripped a tooth out.

If the casino is really only 10% of the entertainment complex which will make such a huge contribution to GDP growth even without the casino, why not go ahead without the casino which is causing so much trouble?

While 31 March was the last day for filing PND 90 or 91 in hard copy, yesterday was the last day for filing online. Now you can still file for 2024 late and pay the fine but only in hard copy which is more of a hassle because the RD online system nowadays has a lot of your data already loaded, e.g. deductions for family and your insurance premiums, charitable donations and tax deductible consumer purchases. It also calculates the tax for you. I filed my own PND90 last week but filed for Mrs Dog, who is a Thai accountant but lets me do her tax, because tax is not her specialty or interest. As always her information that was not yet pre-loaded by the RD arrived at the last minute. After doing both PND90s with different types of income, I can confirm that absolutely nothing has changed in the system since last year, despite widespread speculation that the RD would update forms to allow for DTA claims. There is a box to tick, if you have stock dividends from overseas but that has been there for years. I have never declared any but I assume it is just there because there are no tax credits on foreign dividends, so the form for them excludes that calculation. It would be interesting to see reports of people who have filed PND90s for foreign income remitted to Thailand last year. It seems the only way to do this and claim DTA benefits if by filing in person at an RD office, assuming they know how to do, which seems doubtful in most locations.

The obvious problem is that, despite the fact the UK state pension had long been in existence when the UK DTA was negotiated, the British negotiators, unlike the Americans, didn't insist on the sole rights to tax state pensions. The fact that they did insist on the sole right to tax civil servant pensions made clear that was all they cared about. Now Brits are left scrabbling to establish some sort of equivalency based on the DTA that specifically excluded their pensions.

Yes, it is ridiculous. Trump is not terribly bright and doesn't understand economics and the people around him, except for those like Navarro who are as unhinged as he is, are playing an Emperor's New Clothes pantomime just to hold on to power and make money from using their inside knowledge of the next mad announcement to short markets. Goods are imported from countries that can produce them at the low prices that American consumers are willing to pay. It is not the producing countries fault that they are able to satisfy US commercial demands.

THAI was banned from flying to the US in 2015 due to its failure to comply with US safety standards. Are they flying there again now?

The US rejected Thailand's order for F35s, as it is considered an unreliable ally and the RTAF is planning to buy Grippens from Sweden instead. They can switch the order to F16s with the US kill switch in them and outmoded weapons systems like the ones offered to Egypt, so they wouldn't be too great a threat to Israel. But Egypt decided those were useless and cancelled the order in favour of Chinese fighter jets with all mod cons included. There is all no corruption money for Thai politicians on US arms. Buying from the US no longer makes sense for any ally except Israel which gets preferential treatment with the latest versions and never has to pay for the sales, which is why it has a trade surplus with the US in spite of the US's massive "sales" of weapons to Israel. Even Canada and Portugal which are allowed to buy F35s with kill switch installed are cancelling their orders. Thailand can import the chlorinated chicken that Trump ordered the UK to buy, even though it is more expensive than British chicken and the need for chlorination reflects the insanitary condition of US chicken processing. If Thais like chlorinated chicken, they will also enjoy the 150,000 tons of US grossly hormone fed beef that was just rejected and sent back by China for food safety reasons. Then there is GMO soy beans, wheat and rice. Trump actually complained that Asian countries refuse to import US rice. I wonder why. Thais should man up and buy US Uncle Ben's rice at vast expense for the good of the country. Thailand should also reduce 400% or so tax on completely built up vehicles and import lots of monster gas guzzling petrol driven pick-ups assembled in the US from Asian parts despite its own auto assembly business suffering. Locally assembled trucks will be more expensive due to the local excise and other taxes on them. Then there is also US wine, beer and liquor that could be made very competitive in Thailand without any taxes applied to them. Since cannabis is legal Ung Ing should also import loads of weed from California. Give daddy a blast and get him high enough to forget his killjoy approach to dopers. He might make better decisions, if kept stoned and stop coming up with ludicrous ideas like free handouts that have done nothing to stimulate growth. Yesterday Trump's trade advisor, the moronic Peter Navarro said the EU has got to give up its VAT taxation which, to Navarro, is a non-tariff barrier (or cheating in his words). So Ung Ing will have to ditch VAT or exempt US products from it, so they will have an advantage over domestic producers. It all looks pretty hopeless for Thailand. How can they negotiate with madmen making totally outrageous demands? Rather than groveling in this way, it would be better to stand up to a bully and join hands with ASEAN to retaliate. Navarro has already announced that reducing tarrifs to zero won't cut it. So what can they offer anyway?

I would argue that a state pension like the UK one that is not income from employment is non-assessable income in Thailand because, like Thai social security pensions, there is no mention of it under Section 40 of the Revenue Code that lists all types of assessable income. Of course, there were no Thai social security pensions when the RC was drafted and it has never been amended to include or to specifically exclude them. But a Bkk based British tax advisor at a well known firm told in a Q&A session that he or his people had asked the Thai RD about this and they told him that foreign state pensions would be considered assessable income because they would consider them income derived from employment, albeit indirectly. This is, of course, totally at variance with the RD interpretation of Thai SS pensions being not derived from employment and therefore not assessable, despite the fact that both are contributory pensions indirectly derived from work in exactly the same way. When I asked him how the Thai RD interprets Australian superannuation which can now be claimed by those who have never worked and thus not even indirectly derived from employment, he was stumped for an answer, as he had never heard of that. Bottom line is this in my opinion. There is no logical way a UK state pension can be considered assessable income under the RC, given that the The SS pension that has an identical structure of being indirectly derived from employment is not considered income derived from employment and therefore non-assessable. However, if RD officers individually or collectively decide that foreign state pensions are assessable just because all farangs are richer than them and their state pensions are much bigger than Thai SS pensions or some such nonsense, then that is the interpretation that will prevail, unless there is a ruling to the contrary in the tax court. However, given the pitiful value of frozen UK state pensions, it seems somewhat doubtful that any British pension will fund a case in the Tax Court. So the RD can do what it feels like. In fact the same applies to the RD's unilateral reinterpretation the RC to tax foreign income, regardless of when it arises which, should be amended by parliament, not the director general of the RD, if it needs amendment. That could be overturned by the tax court but no sign of anyone taking action there.