Dogmatix

I agree that non-smokers in general should not be troubled by weed or any other smoke.

The law is the Public Health Act which makes it a not terribly serious offence to smoke tobacco, weeds, herbs or anything else in public, if it causes a nuisance and someone complains. It is also illegal for restaurants to allow patrons to smoke anywhere that food is served whether inside or outside. The authorities try to make out there is a specific law against smoking weed in public to intimidate people and to satisfy the haters and non-partaking Chinese and Singaporean tourists but the truth it that they have not got around to passing any legislation specific to smoking cannabis in public.

A Darwin award for getting caught smuggling nearly half a kilo of cannabis into Thailand. He probably would have sold it at a loss and, if all that stuff had burst in his gut, he would have gone to the happy hunting grounds.

Anyway Thai government departments and courts can interpret things in ways they feel like and that are inconsistent from case to case. But on the face of it there is nothing to specify that a gift can only be made from income that has already been taxed in Thailand and, even, if it was made from after Thai tax income, it will still be taxable as a gift, if the gift to a spouse is over 20 million. Another thing you could look at is the device used by Ung Ing to avoid paying gift tax on transferring shares well over the gift tax limits to her family members. The transfers were not structured as gifts which would have been taxable over the limits but structured as sales of assets. The purchases were paid for using open ended promissory notes, callable at any time. Ung Ing got the DG of the RD to testify in parliament that that the transfers will only be deemed as taxable events when the promissory notes are cashed which will, of course, never happen. When Ung Ing's time in politics comes to an end the shares will be transferred back to her, either as foreclosures on the repayment of defaulted promissory notes or some other tax avoidance scheme will be set up. The unpaid promissory note tax avoidance scam has the advantage that the DG of the RD has testified in parliament that it is rock solid. However, that doesn't stop the RD or the Tax Court making a completely different ruling on the same scheme presented by a mere mortal. Nothing is rock solid apart from just declaring the transfers as income and pay Thai tax on them which will be gratefully received, even if the income was not strictly speaking assessable, or leaving the country, as your friend did. But IMHO, the gift to spouse window is fairly solid, although I would expect to see the limits reduced at some point. Parliamentarians would not want to see it eliminated completely because it is a handy way for them and their wealthy sponsors pass on chunks of their ill gotten gains to wife and kids whilst still alive tax free. I should add that the gifts I have made to the missus are from income earned overseas prior to 2024. So they wouldn't be taxable, even if I gifted them to myself. Eventually I hope this whole thing will become clearer and then I might gift income earned after 2024. Mrs Dog also has income and assets of her own which makes it more difficult to conclude I had benefit from the gifts.

If you want to go to a place that is similar to what Cowboy was in the 80s, go to Ban Chan.

The last time it and most other red light areas were fun was during the period at the end of COVID when bars were allowed to reopen, ostensibly as restaurants for a while (some put up price lists of hamburgers and hot dogs), but they were still not letting in tourists, except that many of the old haunts didn't survive and had closed down. When the tourists came back, it seemed they were determined to make up lost income by fleecing tourists and anyone else who walked into their cross hairs.

You are right except that your translation of 1471,3 translates more wording than is actually to be found in the original which says just 3) ที่ฝ่ายใดฝ่ายหนึ่งได้มาระหว่างสมรสโดยการรับมรดกหรือโดยการให้โดยเสน่หา or "Property acquired by either party during marriage through inheritance or given out of affection." However, in Section 1474.2 the giftor has the right to specify in writing that a gift to a married person is to form part of the conjugal property. When you think about it, the only person giving a gift out of affection to a married person with an interest in making that gift conjugal property is the other spouse. Therefore, in the unlikely event that you were, for example, accused of living in a house or driving a car bought with the proceeds of a spousal gift, or even perhaps having some of the gift gifted back to your personal account, you could easily produce a document retroactively that assigns the gift as conjugal property. So Section 1471.3 has the effect of protecting someone who receives a gift from a person other than their spouse, perhaps as an advance inheritance, from having to share it with their spouse, if they don't want to, or on divorce. But it doesn't prevent a gifting spouse from assigning it to be conjugal property under 1474.2.

Well done for citing that tax case. It is only case relevant to this issue, as far as I know, and I spent some time searching before sending some gifts. The September 2023 reinterpretation that foreign income was taxable has no bearing on gifts because remitted income will only be considered as remitted income, if you remit your offshore income to yourself in Thailand. So the only issue is whether a remittance to a spouse or unmarried partner is her income or a gift. A lot of the case study goes into details of whether unmarried partners can be treated the same as married couples under the gift tax law. There is no clear conclusion on this point. They say that on the face of it unmarried couples are, well, unmarried as far as gift tax is concerned but if you look at certain rulings to do with asset disclosures for politicians, you can argue that unmarried couples are in fact married. None of that matters in the case of married couples with a marriage certificate from any country to prove it. They are married which means that the Thai spouse may receive gifts up 20 million baht in any tax year free of gift tax and the gift is not subject to income tax either. Much has been made by farang "tax advisors", who usually can't read Thai and are unlicensed to advise on Thai tax, of conditions applicable to gift tax that they have largely invented to give themselves credibility and garner more clients. But the truth is that the only evidence for how the RD interprets gift tax for spouses is the case you cited. There is no evidence that a deed of gifting needs to be drawn up overseas and expensively notarised by a foreign lawyer for each gift made. There is no evidence that the RD will painstakingly examine the application of the gift to see if the giftor had any benefit from the gift or not. This is probably impractical anyway, given that the Civil and Commercial Code holds that all assets acquired by either spouse after marriage are deemed conjugal property. Thus the gift to the spouse immediately becomes conjugal property on receipt. Bottom line. Go ahead and make the gifts to the missus. Make sure you never remit more than 20 million in one year and keep records of your remittance and her receipt from the bank statements.

Quite a few of the bars have been saying a lady's drink is a double or "bern" for some time. You can argue with them that you only agreed to one drink before they pour them but it is exhausting. Easier just to say no and not buy them drinks at all, unless you are really smitten which is rarely the case.

I never saw the original bar or Mr Edwards but was there in the early 80s and it was a very quiet place with only osingle shophouse bars and music often provided by a jukebox. Drinks from 30 baht and very little pressure to buy lady drinks. Sometime in the mid 90s they started knocking bars together to make the double shophouse bars which justified higher prices than the single bars. Coyotes arrived in around 2010 charging more for less. In the noughties it was said that a shady Iranian character had bought several of the bars as a money laundry operation. Now it seems in transition to a makeover like Wanchai in HK had become by the mid 80s, i.e. a rip off place where local expats didn't go but visiting US sailors went to blow their wads and get nothing in return. There are now more thana few nasty rip off bars in Cowboy where they heavily pad your bill up to about 6,000 in under a half hour. Even some of the remaining single shophouse bars that were normal a few months earlier start to do that, so you are taken unawares. I guess there are enough Chinese tourists now that the whole street will be a no go area for local expats soon enough. Last time I went there the cannabis shop near the Asoke end had been turned into a massage parlour. Undercutting the bars I guess because there is no need to pay a bar fine, ladies drinks or a short time hotel.

I just looked into the PT-141 that is on offer as a nasal spray on Lazada and it seems to, indeed, be fake. The same stuff is available on Amazon US and the product description suggests the only PT-141 content is the misleading name. The credible reviews suggest it does nothing. No reviews on any of the Lazada pages selling it. So that just leaves the Thai clinics which to sell mainly the injectable form.

It seems to be available in Thailand now. Lot of ads for clinics offering it and some online sellers, including on Lazada which, of course, might be fake product. The cost seems to have come down a lot.

Was that the foreign woman in photo sitting down watching her two beaus jousting for the right to her hand in marriage or something? Plenty more fish in the ocean off Pattaya.

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.