Dogmatix

For interest my company was audited by the RD going back four years, despite having filed all tax returns on time. They are restricted to going back 2 years for companies and individuals who have filed proper tax returns but that can be extended, if they think the taxpayer might have intentionally evaded tax. In my case it appeared they gave themselves the right to do this without any ceremony or explanation and trying to refuse them would only make them more determined to dig. The RC doesn't say anything about how far they can go back for individuals or entities that don't file tax returns, So the statute of limitations in the Civil & Commercial Code of 10 years applies in this case. But, if you didn't file because you had no taxable income over the threshold after deductions, they are not going to find much in a 10 year audit, even if you had been tax resident that long. The worst case would be 2,000 baht fines for those years and I think the requirement to file tax without having taxable income has been in place for less than 10 years which would mean you could only be fined for the years after it was introduced. With the large backlogs the inspectors have and the low revenue potential of such an audit, you can decide for yourselves how likely it might be.

Anyone who wants a TIN and is refused one face to face should ask the official to put that in writing or film him or her saying that.

The provision for tax filing for singles is 60k of income, other than income from employment, and 120k income from employment, including employment income from pensions. But what is unclear here is whether state pensions are included in this. There are no Thai state pensions and this form of income is not mentioned anywhere in the RC. So are state pensions income from employment? Not really because they are not paid by employers. Are they derived from employment? Yes indirectly because most countries only pay them to retired workers who generally have to pay contributions. Perhaps an issue to be decided by the Tax Court. Whether they are considered income from employment has a bearing not only on whether they are taxable at all but on whether the 100K allowance for income from employment is applicable to them If you have income over 120k or 60k, depending on the type of income, but no taxable income and you want to be 100% compliant with the letter of the RC, by all means get a TIN, if your tax office will give you one, and go ahead and file a tax return. In deciding this and/or calculating tax, it is up to you whether you decide that remitted state pension income is income from employment, income from investment, or not assessable income at all because it is not mentioned in the RC. Personally I would not bother to file for the time being, if my remitted income is below the tax threshold. That provision is not enforced on Thais and it is unlikely it will be enforced on foreigners at this time. The situation with expat tax returns will be highly chaotic and there will widespread non-compliance with the reinterpretation from both Thais and foreigners, largely because confusion due to the RD's refusal to publish any clarifying guidelines. So the idea that the RD is going to start trying to track down foreigners who remitted peanuts into the Kingdom to fine them 2,000, when they don't do this with Thais, is preposterous.

60k of income is the point where single people have to file tax returns. The 2,000 fine for not doing so is fact because it is in the RC. But there is no record that I know of anyone being fined for not filing when no tax was due. It is a relatively recent amendment that many or most low income earners don't know about. The policy was to try to get more people who do their own business filing, so that when they later hit taxable income, it will be automatic for the RD. I don't think it has been very successful and the policy is virtually unenforceable because they know there would a huge backlash, like when the government sued an impoverished old woman for the refund of her 600 a month old age allowance that she wasn't entitled to because she was drawing a miniscule army pension because her son was killed in the army by an explosion caused by an NCO's negligence. I think many expats who earn less that the taxable amount will be very daunted by filing tax returns and won't bother and I can't blame them. I doubt that they will be pursued by the RD and fined. In future, however, it is possible that Immigration will link up the RD and demand tax returns for visa renewal but there has been no talk of that yet.

I have done this once manually with a hard copy form which was a monstrous PITA and about half a dozen times online which is relatively simple with all the tax computation done for you. To do online you need to register in the TSD (SET share registry) portal. Once you have done that you will be able to access copies of all your dividend certificates, assuming your Thai broker has registered you properly with them properly from their side (not a given - a couple of my accounts were not registered properly with TSD because they got my name wrong, so there was no match with the TSD data). Once you get into your account at the TSD portal, there is a place where you are asked to give permission for them to send your dividend data to the RD. You fill in tax return form PND90 and click on the menu to complete the section for Section 40.4.b (40.4. ข) dividend income. There will be an option to click on for your dividend data at TSD to be transmitted directed. Click on it all your dividends will suddenly show like magic in your tax return with the corporate tax rates and you tax credit and tax rebate will be calculated. There are a few listed companies that refuse to use TSD as their registrar, notable some of the REITs. For those you have to fill in the data manually. Your Thai accountant can do all this for you. They can apply for an online tax account and the TSD account. Mobile numbers and OTPs are needed to set them up. I don't think TSD sends OTPs after you have set it up. The RD does but you can changed the phone number after setting it up. You can in fact let your accountant set it up using their own phone number. I do it for the missus who set up both accounts with her own phone number. I changed that to my own number for her own tax account and the TSD didn't send OTPs to get into her TSD account. The RD didn't object the same phone number was linked to my account. I find it worthwhile to claim the dividend tax credits because I get rebates of more that the amount of tax that was withheld but it depends on your income and deductions. I invest the maximum permitted in an LTF which gives me a 500k deduction that helps. Many people are unaware of the fact that anyone with assessable income is eligible for the LTF deduction. You don't have to be in employment but the asset management firms generally refuse to accept Americans as clients because they don't want to be bothered with FATCA.

They got this the wrong way round. Short term tourists cannot get the refund of the tax withheld because they are unable to get a TIN. Thais and foreigners with TINs can get the tax refunded. There is a space on the tax return form to declare interest income and, if had a TIN already, you could have filed a tax return by yourself and claimed the tax back within consulting any tax masters. You can also avoid having the tax withheld by signing the consent form described in my above post. The 3 provincial tax masters must have misunderstood that you wanted claim VAT rebates on shopping.

Actually there is a section of the RC that says you are entitled to receive interest from banks with the 15% withholding tax deducted, if you are willing to sign a consent form to allow the bank to automatically report details of your interest received the RD. If you receive a total of more than 20k in interest from all accounts in a year, you have to declare that in your tax return and they will tax you the 15%. I have never done that because I only found out about it recently. I have also never claimed back interest because savings rates have been stuck at a miserable 0.5% forever, despite lending rates being at a 20 year high and it involves going round the banks to get a certificate of tax deducted. If you own shares on the SET, the dividend tax credit is very useful, however, if you don't have too much other income, and well worth going to the effort to claim. You can get back more tax than was deducted from the dividends but Thai stocks have gone nowhere in about 7 years.

Looking at the current versions of Section 41 para 2, the para that was reinterpreted through order P, 161/2566 last September, on the RD's website, I notice that the Thai version has notes in the text saying See Order P. 161/2566 and See Order P. 162/2566 with links to the orders, so that Thai readers will understand clearly what the current state of play is as far as the RD is concerned. ผู้อยู่ในประเทศไทยมีเงินได้พึงประเมินตามมาตรา 40 ในปีภาษีที่ล่วงมาแล้วเนื่องจากหน้าที่งานหรือกิจการที่ทำในต่างประเทศ หรือเนื่องจากทรัพย์สินที่อยู่ในต่างประเทศ ต้องเสียภาษีเงินได้ตามบทบัญญัติในส่วนนี้เมื่อนำเงินได้พึงประเมินนั้นเข้ามาในประเทศไทย (ดูคำสั่งกรมสรรพากร ที่ ป.161/2566) (ดูคำสั่งกรมสรรพากร ที่ ป.162/2566) However, the English version has no notes or links and still reads. "A resident of Thailand who in the previous tax year derived assessable income under Section 40 from an employment or from business carried on abroad or from a property situated abroad shall, upon bringing such assessable income into Thailand, pay tax in accordance with the provisions of this Part." Although one accepts that its English translation is only for guidance, given that it knows that thousands of foreigners are deeply impacted by its capricious reinterpretation, it seems remarkably obtuse and unhelpful of the RD not to provide the same clarification to foreign readers that it has totally changed the meaning of the para in the same way it has done for Thai readers. It is not particularly helpful for the RD officers who will have to deal with foreigners' tax returns that the RD has not bothered to add the clarifying notes either. But this unhelpful attitude towards foreign taxpayers is probably reflective of what can be expected in next year when the first tax returns have to be done under the reinterpretation.

I now think the confusion regarding Royal Decree 743 stems from the use of the phrase "derived in the previous tax year". This must be written from the perspective of some one, for example, doing his tax return in March 2025 in respect of income earned in 2024. So that means effectively that what we would normally consider current income is tax exempt.

The posts about another fellow, who is retired and not earning in Thailand, who got a surprise RD visit in addition to my Danish friend are earlier in this thread. What I meant was that in addition to those cases involving expat pensioners there are posts in other threads about RD officers making surprise visits on farangs doing business in the wife's name, or officially visits to the wives.

Sorry no. It was quite early on but I can vouch for the guy I know personally. It was a few years ago. He is Danish and did a one year post retirement consulting gig for his former employer in Bangkok that got him into the tax net after working for them offshore for many years. A couple of years later they showed up at his house demanding to know why he hadn't continued to file tax returns. He said he was retired and living off his Danish pension which he was having sent to his Thai bank directly, rather than accumulating it and remitting in the next tax year. They asked to see his pension documents and when he said he had paid Danish tax, they asked to see evidence of that which he showed them. Then they said that was OK because the remittances had already been taxed in Denmark and went away without suggesting that he should pay the difference between Danish and Thai tax. The next year they came back again asking the same questions. He is an irascible bloke and told his daughter to tell them the situation was the same as on their previous visit without offering them any documents. Then he told her to give them 1,000 baht to go away and never come back. They took the cash and waied politely, left without demanding any documents and never came back. That is how he told it to me and I have no reason to believe he lied. RD officers can and do visit people in their homes unannounced. I have seen posts in other AN threads from people reporting surprise RD home visits in Phuket regarding tax on business they were doing in the Thai wife's name. One of my concerns is that, although it is unlikely to be official policy, RD inspectors, who have a lot of authority, may go rogue and visit farang pensioners in their homes to shake them down for pin money. Officers in most big cities have plenty of other fish to fry but this seems more likely in resort areas and rural areas where farangs stand out like sore thumbs. With no official guidelines on how to interpret DTAs or what documentation is needed for tax credits individual officers may apply some exaggerated interpretations and expect bribes to go away. Foreigners are more vulnerable because they tend not to have connections and generally don't know the law. plus are fearful of criminal convictions that might affect visa renewals. The way the RD is applying this non-law is an open invitation to extortion and corruption.

The RD English versions are only for guidance and they sometimes add nuances that are not there in the original in order to try to make them read better in English. In the case of Section 56 the Thai phrase that is translated as "taxpayer" is บุคคล which just means "person", not "taxpayer". A good example of why you need to be able read Thai and make the effort to look at the original to opine on this stuff. Nearly all the farang tax advisors are illiterate in Thai and just read translations and/or rely on unreliable Thai staff and often jump to conclusions that are completely wrong. It is also important to be able to search for case studies in Thai.

This is clearly the case, given the stats published by the RD on tax returns filed and, so far the RD has shown no interest in tracking down the ones who are unlikely to have assessable income well over the threshold. What they are doing is trying to track down Thais who make a living from selling on stuff on open sources like Facebook. It is the traders they are after, not wage earners making 15,000 a month who should technically file tax returns but have no tax to pay. In the old days they used to try to track down businesses like restaurants by visiting them incognito to assess the average meal price and then having people sit across the street to count the number of customers. Now they are applying AI and going after the huge numbers of online traders who don't file. I doubt they will go after expat pensioners as a matter of policy but, if you look back in this thread, you could find examples of expat pensioners who have already received surprise visits from RD officers at home demanding to know why they haven't filed tax returns. I know one guy who had that happen because he retired from a job in Thailand and stopped filing tax returns, as he only had his already taxed foreign pension. Others claim they had visits without ever filing tax returns.

Not sure what you mean by this but, if your question is "Has anything been enacted requiring tax payments on remittances of foreign source income from any year in the past, the answer is no." This was just done via an internal order to RD staff telling them to interpret the Revenue Code differently from how it has been interpreted since the 1980s based on a clear ruling at that time. To enact this re-interpretation would require an act of parliament with full parliamentary process and public consultation which could easily result in its defeat in parliament. If the government could make a case that it requires emergency legislation, they could enact the reinterpretation through a Royal Decree. However, given that the ruling has stood since the 1980s and the RD is unable to give any idea of how much incremental revenue it stands to collect from this, the urgency requiring a Royal Decree would risk being challenged and the decree potentially nullified. The order is binding on RD staff but not binding on taxpayers who are obviously not subject to RD orders to staff. The RD has argued that, since it is a directive to staff on how to explain the Revenue Code to members of the public, taxpayers have a duty to follow advice from RD officers and pay tax accordingly. This a pathetic legal argument which would not stand up in a court in a rule of law jurisdiction and may also not stand up in the Thai Tax Court, if challenged and hopefully it will be but no sign of that yet.

Section 56 Every taxpayer except a minor or a person adjudged incompetent or quasi-incompetent shall, on or before the last day of March every year, file to the official appointed by the Minister a tax return reporting the assessable income received in the preceding tax year in the form prescribed by the Director-General, if such person-12 12N.DG.IT.No.28 (1) has no spouse and has the assessable income of the preceding tax year exceeds 60,000 baht, (2) has no spouse and has the assessable income of the preceding tax year under only Section 40 (1) exceeds 120,000 baht, (3) has a spouse and the assessable income of the preceding tax year exceeds 120,000 baht, or (4) has a spouse and the assessable income of the preceding tax year under only Section 40 (1) exceeds 220,000 baht. Section 35 Any person failing to comply with Sections 17, Sections 50 Bis, Sections 51 or Sections 69, unless in case of a force majeure, shall be subject to a fine not exceeding 2,000 Baht. Section 17 In relation to tax return filing, it shall be filed within the time limit specified in the Chapters regarding taxes and in accordance with the form prescribed by the Director-General. In fact the threshold for filing a tax return is 60,000 for single taxpayers or 120,000 for married taxpayers, if there is any income under sections of RC other than Section 40.1 which is income from employment (including occupational pensions). For those with only income from employment or occupational pension the threshold for filing a tax return is 120,000 for a single or 220,000 for a couple. This means for example that, if you remit pension income plus some interest income or income from dividends or capital gains and it is over 60,000 or 120,000 for a couple, you have to file a tax return. Another issue is Section 49which allows an RD official make up his assessment of what a tax resident's income may have been, if he doesn't file a tax return. As already mentioned, they are have not been know to harass low income Thais for not filing tax returns and hopefully they will not harass expat pensioners either. However, that doesn't rule out the possibility of shaking down expats living in ostentatious mansions in rural villages, even if they have filed tax returns. Section 49. In the case where a taxpayer deriving income does not file a tax return, or the assessment official considers that he underreports the amount of his taxable income, the assessment official with the approval of the Director-General shall have the power to determine the amount of his net income on the basis of the money or property owned or possessed by such taxpayer, his expenditure or standard of living or his behavior, or the income statistics either of the taxpayer or of other persons carrying on a similar business. The official shall make an assessment accordingly and give the taxpayer a notice of the amount of tax payable. In this respect, the provisions of Sections 19 through 26 shall apply mutatis mutandis.

Apologies. I should have said the section for capital gains on shares and similar assets is 40.4 (g) [40.4 (ช)], not 40 (g). I am pretty sure that the online version of PND90 has headings to click on that correspond exactly to the income categories in Section 40. I have declared for myself and for Mrs Dog, who is actually an accounting grad from a Thai university but gets me to do her tax return, income from employment from commissions and from Thai dividends. Last time I also opened up the section for interest income but decided I didn't have to declare it, despite being over 20k last year because I have already had 15% w/h tax deducted. I didn't look at 40.4 (g) but I assume it is the same as the others. Since you mentioned it, I tracked down a Thai hard copy PND90 and an English translation (for guidance only and it seemed not to correspond exactly to the original, as I have seen in the past). You are right. In the hard copy Thai PND90 there is no specific space for declaring capital gains on shares, even though they are a separate subsection in the RC. You have to declare capital gains on shares in Section 3.6.6 (Income under Section 40.4 of the RC) at the bottom where it says others (specify). This is confirmed in the RD's English language guide to PND90 for 2021 on page 10 no. 3 item 6 (attached). The omission of a specific section for capital gains on equity investments in the hard copy PND90 seems odd, given that there must be many taxable transactions in Thai unlisted companies and that there is a separate section for foreign dividends which I assume very few people declared in the past because they were able to avoid tax on them by leaving them overseas until the next tax year. There are also now 2 separate sections for crypto related gains. But anyway there is little obvious logic to many things done by Thai bureaucrats, including the RD order that has caused all this pain. I once foolishly missed the deadline for online PND90 filing which meant that I had to file late and in hard copy only, as the online function is disabled after the deadline, which I didn't realise until it was too late. In order to claim the tax credits from my Thai dividends I ended up having to submit over 20 supplementary pages and do the entire computation of tax credits and tax computation myself manually. I nearly went mad doing it but it was worth it as I got a tax rebate of about 350k. This seems to be what Thais and foreigners will have to do to declare foreign source income. Another thing of note is that income from dividends paid by overseas companies has been an item even in the hard copy PND90 for years and years. These are items that are taxed at source by a number of countries, which means that Thai taxpayers need to claim tax credits for them. Logically there should already be a space to claim tax credits against them but there isn't. So I am not holding my breath about a space suddenly appearing to claim tax credits for other types of foreign source income. It could be the same as the credits on foreign dividends, i.e. add some supplementary pages in Thai making your case for tax credits and doing the computation of tax yourself. .PND90.pdf guidePND90 2022.pdf

Your first and second look fine to me. Your third might be OK too but there is scant evidence on what the RD considers acceptable as a gift to someone who is not a spouse or an ascendant or descendant relative. The only case I know of is the case of Thaksin's wife retroactively making a wedding gift of billions of baht worth of Shin Corp shares to her brother-in-law two years after his wedding. This was initially disallowed by the Tax Court on the grounds of the two year gap but later allowed on appeal like all the Shin family tax cases which initially appeared to be open and shut guilty verdicts but later all overthrown on appeal for unclear legal reasons. The point is that wedding gifts seem definitely to be OK, if delivered promptly. In your case that may not be much help because, if you make a wedding gift to your gf, you will presumably be able make gifts to her as a spouse thereafter.

I would agree with not declaring items that are not assessable as they are foreign source income prior to 2024 when you are also not tax resident. Re item 3.x / capital gains sold stocks - where I can declare gains of sold stocks in 2025? [no NL tax paid]. I have only recent experience of filing tax return PND91 online which is in Thai only. I have given up looking at the RD's English translations of PND90/91 forms because I have found them to be often out of date and unreliable with items missing and numeration out of synch with current Thai versions. I recommend that you double check with the Thai versions using Google translate, if you don't read Thai. In the online PND91 you get to a page which lists all the categories of income under Section 40 of the RC. You would click on 40 (g) and a page will pop up for you to declare capital gains. Capital gains on SET listed stocks traded through the market are not taxable but Thais have to pay tax on gains on unlisted Thai shares and now on remitted gains from foreign listed shares, which is probably what this is all about, given the pathetic performance of the Thai stock market, relative to NASDAQ for the last several years. 40 (g) gains derived from transfer of partnership holdings or shares, debentures, bonds, or bills or debt instruments issued by a company or juristic partnership or by any other juristic person. For income earned in 2025 and remitted to Thailand, on which foreign tax has already been paid, I assume you will have to declare the income in the relevant pages similar to the 40 (g) example above but there is, as yet, nowhere to claim a tax credit and perhaps never will be, given the utter incompetence and disinterest the RD is showing towards this highly complex issue triggered without any detailed planning by their previous DG who is now permanent secretary at the finance ministry.

No fines for not filing a tax return, if there is no assessable income. The contentious area is where a tax resident has assessable income over 120k but no tax is payable, due to income less deductions being less than the tax free threshold of 150k. Bizarrely a tax return is required in this case on pain of a fine of 2k but there is no evidence that this part of the law has ever been enforce. As previously mentioned the Prayut govt introduced the requirement to file in this situation claiming that it would put the govt in the position of being able to pay benefits to those low income earners. There has been no further mention of these welfare payments and there was never any explanation why those earning less than 120k should be left out, if that had been a genuine argument. The real reason was of course to try to force more people doing sole proprietor business into the tax net, i.e. get someone into the habit of filing on the premise they will have no tax to pay, then whoops they suddenly find a couple of years later they do have tax to pay. To your more pertinent question. No, you do not have to file a tax return for a year where your only onshore income comprises foreign source income that arose prior to 2024. I think that because a tax return is only required where you have assessable income over 120k this is something where there is no doubt, although it is possible that the RD, if it has details of the remittances, could ask for clarification.

He was Pravit's boy and allegedly his bagman. But now Thaksin is back he feels invincible because his father was the police driver of Thaksin's (ex)-wife's father who was a top police general.

I understand your logic and respect your decision but I am still personally of the opinion that an informal, unauthoritative tax guide is not something that AN should be doing. I am not surprised no one stepped into the breach. If comments are tightly controlled, it will not generate meaningful traffic anyway.

I agree the interview with RD official Nathanan Junprateepchaiat the Swiss embassy raised many more questions than it answered. He did confirm that gifts from overseas to spouses in Thailand were exempt up to 20 mil but he also contradicted himself by saying that gifts to children were not exempt having just said that gifts to direct ascendant and descendant relatives were OK. What is a direct descendant relative, if not your child? It was just a superficial attempt at PR with a embassy but when you analyze it, he was so confused and vague that it was useless. And that is a senior official the RD assigned as a spokesman on the subject. What hope for RD officials dealing with tax returns from expats living in Nakorn Nowhere.

Yes, your remittance to her Thai bank is a remittance and is assessable income for her, assuming you are not married. There is an RD case about exactly this. A Thai woman received remittances from her foreign boyfriend abroad and it was deemed taxable income because they were not married. If married the RD would have accepted that the remittances were gifts from a spouse which is tax exempt up to 20 million baht a year. If you gave her the money in cash and she hand carried it back to Thailand, it is also assessable income. However, if you were able to get Thai baht in HK, there is no way it could be detected, unless it were more than the amount of cash allowed to be carried out of HK or the amount allowed to be carried into Thailand and she was caught by customs at either end. I think the HK export allowance is the lower amount and is about US$10,000 now (previously no limit). If she give her USD or other foreign currency, she will have to show her ID card to change it at a license forex dealer, although I doubt that goes to the RD. She could also change it with an unlicensed forex dealer without ID or with a friend who wants to travel overseas. USD cash no longer seems useful in the US as everyone has gone cashless now and $100 bills have always been treated with suspicion.

I thought you said you were not going to have anything to do with the tax guide or any tax threads only a few days ago.

I think that is going to be a big problem. If even the RD legal officers at the provincial level have not bothered to study the DTAs and have no opinions on how to apply them, what hope is that an RD officer in Nakorn Nowhere is going to be familiar with the details of the 60 or so DTAs and will suddenly know how to apply them, having never had to before. In his article when P. 161/2566 first came out Prof Kitiphong, a leading tax lawyer and former chairman of Baker McKenzie pointed out that the fact that the RC has never been amended to reflect the existence of DTAs and that it thus doesn't confirm that DTAs are even applicable to PIT could be a problem in implementing this arguably unlawful RD order. There is just one ruling on record relating to use of DTAs vis a vis PIT which relates to income from temporary employment abroad which apparently came about because the RD was reluctant to accept the tax credit from the tax paid overseas. There are no rulings on DTAs applied to capital gains or other investment income or pensions or anything else. There is no regulation on which method will be applied to DTAs - 1) tax everything in full and let the taxpayer claim a refund from the other state; 2) don't tax anything that has been subjected to tax in the other state; 3) demand the difference between Thai tax and the tax rate already paid in the other state, if the Thai rate is higher. There are indications the RD intends to use method 3 but there are no regulations to that effect. RD officers could easily choose to demand full payment of Thai tax and let the taxpayer claim a refund of tax paid. That saves them the trouble of studying the DTAs and being accused of not collecting enough tax and many will be scared of being accused of taking a bribe to reduce a tax bill. They will not get into trouble for charging too much. The RD officer in the interview with the guy from the Swiss Embassy said they will not be issuing any regulations about DTAs and hinted it will be up to individual officers to decide how to apply them. Since it is not a law and is probably unlawful anyway, it would be difficult to issue regulations to support it. If the order gets successfully challenged in the Tax Court, the RD would be digging itself into a deeper hole by issuing unlawful regulations to support a non-binding, unlawful order.