Dogmatix

Quite right. Western tax authorities are paperless and unapproachable. You will not get the pieces of signed and stamped bumf Thai authorities expect on the basis of what is available here. I have undergone a corporate tax audit for a small family company. Not fun. A half day of grilling in Thai at the tax office, following by a second half day with documents they requested which luckily I was able to produce retroactively. They were trying to argue that VAT should have been paid on exports of services which is not correct. So I had to produce the contracts which luckily they accepted in English but didn't want to lose face by admitting they couldn't read them. So they tried to go after us for not paying stamp duties on the agreements instead to save face. I told them the agreements were made in Hong Kong and no subject to stamp duty. So they got us for a mistake made by our accountant and find us 36,000 including penalties and interest, instead of the 200K they had targeted. You have to understand that tax inspectors are under a lot of pressure to raise additional tax. Once they have opened an investigation, they need to get something to cover their costs and not end up with egg over their faces. Expats who can't read or speak Thai, and have to rely on financially illiterate Thai partners and friends, and can't produce certified documents to support their cases will absolutely be low hanging fruit.

Absolutely. DTA's have hardly been used to get tax credits for personal income tax because there was no need to use them. You could just remit income the following tax year or just not bother to declare it as there was no enforcement due to the fact that there was such a big loophole and the RD didn't yet have access to CRS reports. I have also heard that companies needing to claim tax credits, which has also been fairly rare had to use the services tax accountants or tax lawyers to claim, as it is complicated and there is nowhere in the corporate tax return forms to claim tax credits. For those waiting for a space in the PND 90/91 tax return forms, examine the forms closely and note that every item refers to a clause in the Revenue Code. Now have a look through the Revenue Code to see how it deals with the DTAs and in what clauses? Answer: unlike other statutory Thai laws that have been amended to reflect the existence of international treaties, the Revenue Code has never been amended to reflect the existence of DTAs in the 50 odd years these have been in force. Now ask yourself how the RD would add DTA sections to the tax forms when there is no section of the Revenue Code they can refer to in support of this? Answer: it is impossible.

I don't think the impetus comes from the drug companies in this case. There are parties that benefit more directly from recriminalization. It is more likely to come from the police who used to make big money from smuggling and dealing ganja in the past, as well as from shaking down backpackers found smoking a joint sold to them by police.

The ministry had already drafted a bill that stopped short of making it totally prohibited but made recreational use illegal but subject to a fine, not imprisonment. Then in walks Tony still upset with the dealers that supplied his son with coke and other substances and suddenly there is a flip flop based on the wishes of one man who is now running the country from behind the scenes. It makes Thailand a laughing stock in the West and eliminates all the GDP contribution, employment and tax revenue from the industry, as well as Thailand's potential contribution to development of knowledge of medical marijuana. Not mentioned in the article is that the final decision rests with the committee of the Office of the Narcotics Control Board of which Anutin is still chairman. But probably nothing he can do to stand up to Tony - yet. However, the elite forces that did a big deal with Tony to get him off his prisons sentences seem to be very dissatisfied with his immediate reneging on his agreement to stay out of politics, as he behaves openly as shadow PM. He may get his comeuppance, as his popularity is waning fast and he doesn't resonate at all with young voters who see him as an irrelevant old geezer from the past who sold out to the establishment to come home. His daughter and the feeble nominee PM are even less popular.

The RD issues certified tax returns which are certificates of tax due or refunds due but I don't think they issue certified tax receipts. You go along to the RD office with a copy of your tax return and they give you a copy with a stamp, date and a signature on every page. I have some that I had to get years ago when I applied for citizenship and I guess the system is the same. Knowing the Thai bureaucratic mentality they will want something similar from which they can see what type of income it was what you declared for tax. Perhaps they will accept a certified tax receipt that just shows how much was paid. But most Western tax authorities don't issue manually signed certificates like they do and taxpayers generally can't just walk into a tax office to request something like that. They write letters that get a reply months later, if at all, and wait for hours hanging on the line with call centres to be fobbed off when they finally get through. My family had to resolve an issue with inheritance tax with HMRC in the UK and it took 5 months to get a response despite repeated letters and phone calls. The possibilities for claiming tax credits range from officers who might just close their eyes and say that looks vaguely OK to officers who will stonewall indefinitely, if they don't get the type of documentation they are used to in Thailand. The way to resolve this would to issue an order saying that income already subjected to tax in a DTA country is not assessable. That would mean no need to declare it or submit evidence. But pigs could fly.

I think he meant it was a Karen hill tribe lady.

This was also Thaksin's mentality. If you are elected with a sizeable majority and you are free to commit any crime you like. The land case was clear cut corruption. The Exim Bank case was clear corruption. The rice pledging scam was clear cut corruption. Thaksin always dismissed his criminal cases as political but never refuted the details of them. In the case of his son's money laundry case, they always argued that there were another 100 or so people who received the money stolen from Krung Thai Bank in addition to him who were not charged. That was true and they should have been charged but it didn't make the son any less guilty. But anyway the US Supreme Court seems to agree that presidents can commit any crime they like too.

They were the real perpetrators.

Come on. You are forgetting where you are and forgetting that Thai bureaucrats are very lazy and want to be noticed by the politicians for coming up with stuff that can be made to sound as if a huge amount of incremental tax will be collected with no backlash from Thai voters. They don't think through the ramifications and don't care if a chaotic situation is created for others to clean up, as long as it is not going to get Thai protestors out on the streets to make them look bad. The guy who signed the order had already been promoted from the RD to be finance permanent secretary and left the RD 10 days later with his quick win on his record and he might be in the running for a juicy post-retirement job, even finance minister, if noticed by politicians. If the implementation is messy, he can blame it on his successor. He is also the guy behind the abolition of the waiver on tax on small imported packages below 1,500 baht declared value, claiming fancifully that will raise 700 million in incremental tax before the end of this year. No mention of the cost of collecting tiny amounts of VAT, potential chaos in post offices or the likelihood that Thais will avoid buying many of these imported products that are not available in Thailand at all to avoid huge queues in post offices. They simply don't care.

Bear in mind that the only DTA protected pensions are pensions of former government officers and US social security plus maybe some other countries' state pensions. These are in the "shall tax" category. The vast majority of state pensions and all private pensions are in the "may tax" category which means that Thailand can exercise its option to tax them, even though they are already subject to tax. In these cases the DTAs only protect you from double taxation but not from dual taxation. I don't think they are going to redo the PND 90/91 forms, even to provide a space for claiming of tax credits. We are half way through the tax year now and nothing has been said. They are very lazy and can easily argue that DTAs have been in place for 50 years and (a very small number of) people have been claiming tax credits without this. Think about it like the requirement for a company to register for VAT in order to apply for a WP. Companies with revenue under 1.8 million a year or 300k in a single month and companies who have no domestic sales do not have to register for VAT. My company had no domestic sales but I had to register for VAT and file monthly zero returns which I still have to to today more than 10 years after cancelling my WP with that company. There is no way to get out of the VAT net once you are in it, other than dissolving the company. If Immigration decides that everyone on a non-tourist visa presumably has some income and must present a certified tax return to renew their visa, they are not going to care about subtleties. If you have to get a certified tax return and have no assessable income, they will think that is tough luck, as they will probably not believe you anyway. However, it is not too difficult to file a tax return declaring 120-180k in income and get the piece of paper Immigration is asking for without having to pay any tax and it would only cost 100 or 200 baht. I think they would have to give plenty of lead time to allow people to get TINs and tax certificates. For example they could announce around now that anyone on a non-tourist visa from before 1 July 2025 will need to show a certified tax return for renewals after April 2026. All of them will be tax residents and none would have any excuse not to comply with that.

I note that the tax advisor quoted cites no reference for his assertion that overseas pensions will not be taxable in Thailand. The RD has been silent on the application of the remittance tax but in its interview with the Swiss embassy the RD official made clear that they had every intention of taxing pension income remitted to Thailand. A DTA may allow you a tax credit but they have said that, if the Thai tax rate is higher they will come after you for the difference. They have not said what they would accept as evidence of a tax credit which is anyway made extremely difficult by the lack of synchronisation of tax years. For example, if you are a Brit, when you file your tax return in March 2025, how do you show your UK tax return for the period 6 April to 31 Dec 2024 when the UK tax year only ends on 5 April 2025? Potentially you will have to pay full Thai tax on pension (and rental) income for that part of the year and try to claim a tax credit from HMRC which will not be forthcoming because HMRC has made very clear that it exercises its "may tax" option on any income arising in the UK - a not unreasonable position. There the UK expects Thailand to exercise its "may tax" right to collect only the difference, if Thai rates ae higher. The big problem here is that DTAs are very vague and countries have to come to mutual understandings on how to operate them. Within EU and including the UK they have developed these unwritten understandings. Generally speaking they accept the principle that income is taxed in the European country it arises and the European country where the taxpayer resides will not attempt to collect teh difference on income that has been subject to tax in another European country. Thailand has no such understanding on how to operate DTAs with any other country and has not produced any domestic regulations on how RD staff should apply DTAs. If you ask them, they will admit they don't have a clue. But RD officials have indicated that intend to apply the letter of the DTAs in order to collect as much tax as they can. Hopefully they will one day come up with understandings with the 61 countries with which they have DTAs not to try to collect more tax on income already subjected to tax in another country but it is premature and highly misleading for a tax advisor to claim this has already happened without zero supporting evidence.

No need for Immigration to cooperate with the RD to do this. The RD already has a system for taxpayers to get a certified copy of their latest tax return. Just show up at your local tax office with a copy of your tax return and they will give you a stamped a signed copy for a small fee of about 100 baht. The police just need to add at certified copy of the latest tax return to the list of documents required for visa renewal. I think this is already done for NON-B visas. Also no need for the Immigration to report anything to the RD. You don't have a certified tax return, you don't get your visa renewed and have to leave the country. They could pass the information to the RD who could send you a notice reminding you to do a tax return but government departments hate cooperating with each other or providing access to each other's databases. Requiring certified tax returns is so easy that its a no brainer for Immigration. If you have enough income or savings to live on for another year, it is not unreasonable for them to assume you remitted at least 120k in the previous tax year. If that is all non-assessable, you can file a turn return with zero income, just like my company has to file a monthly VAT return showing zero VATable income.

There is an annual exemption of 10 million for gifts to non-family members but there is a case study on the RD website where the RD ruled that transfers from overseas by a foreign man to his Thai girlfriend for maintenance purposes didn't qualify for the gift exemption because they were not legally married. The catch is that gifts to people who are not a spouse or a descendant or ascendant direct relation have to pass a more stringent test of being gifts for a traditional occasion, such as wedding gifts. There is more case law on this. So it is unlikely that gifts to a girlfriend will pass muster, if investigated. On the other hand there seems to be a lot of latitude over gifts to a legal spouse or direct family member.

Those local beans are quite acceptable and very cheap. Heinz beans are also available at Villa Market for 138 baht and on Shopee for 109 baht. The couple should shop around and not buy in shops with rip off prices for foreign tourists who are too lazy to figure out what the baht price means. If shop owners can find tourists stupid enough to pay those prices, who can blame them but vote with your feet.

Seems like his problem was that he overstayed his visa and his friends or family took a long time to wire money out to him to bring him home. He was lucky he wasn't charged with working illegally or any drug offences. The latter would have meant a much longer spell in a regular prison. The IDC is notorious. Some people stay there for years and die there. Innocent children are incarcerated along with their mothers without access to proper nutrition, medicine or schooling. The Thais regard these foreigners as subhumans and no one doesn't anything about their plight because they are not Thai and therefore will attract interest from political activists. It is truly a disgrace and shows up Thai racism.

Many have also been found not guilty from modern DNA evidence after being executed. What is egregious about this case is that the murderer assumed that he could kill with impunity owing to his status, connections and money, most acquired through corruption and other criminal activities. For a long time it looked like he would get away with it. Many other similar types have gotten away with it.

How do you know she had it coming? She was just arguing about the ;price for an alteration, not insulting the tailor's mother. How would he know what kind of accent she spoke in? He would need native speaker English and a fair bit of travel in English speaking countries to be able to detect this. Can you tell the difference between Southern, Northern and Northeastern accents of Thais speaking Central Thai?

The date for the imposition of VAT on small packages has been set for 5 July. There were two announcements, one from the Finance Ministry and another from the Customs Department. The net result is somewhat different from what was previously announced, i.e. that VAT would be charged on parcels that were previously exempt up to 1.500 baht for a trial period till 31 Dec to see if it was not too disruptive. What is actually happening is that VAT is introduced permanently on anything over 1 baht. Import duties are now exempt up to 1,500 baht value including shipping and insurance costs until 31 December. If no further announcement to extend the exemption, import duties which range from 5% to 40% will also be imposed on all imports. They are working on amending the Revenue Code to make overseas vendors collect the VAT for them and remit it monthly but it is anyone's guess how long that will take and how many vendors will comply with it. Meanwhile, they will collect the VAT on a package by package basis. I read somewhere else they are considering a universal import duty rate of 10% for small packages up 1,500 baht which would make it possible to get overseas vendors to collect that for them as well without having to go through a complex assessment of duty rates for each item. So probably next year we will be paying 18% more for small imports, They claim they will collect an additional 700 million baht in VAT on small packages in the rest of this year but don't show the basis of their calculation or give an estimate of the incremental cost of collecting this. They say that sales will be undiminished because Thais will still wish to import items from overseas and won't mind paying more them. In my case I will certainly import less in the rest of this year because I have been stock piling imports since they made the announcement in April to avoid paying VAT and being forced to traipse over to the post office or the customs office to queue up and pay. https://ecs-support.github.io/post/knowledge/2024/06-22/

Khao Sod is less coy than the unknown source of the OP. It provides the name of the brave woman hitting tailor as Mr. Daeng Phanupong of Smart Tailor Shop. Not so smart now Mr Daeng, even though you thought it was clever to slap a female customer so hard she fell down in front of her children. Was the extra 100 baht worth it?

Lucky you were still around to handle the murder case personally.

The Thai billionaires will find it inconvenient but they can use corporate structures to avoid a lot of the effect. They have family office wealth management companies set up in various tax efficient 0jurisdictions. These companies can retain earnings from dividends and capital gains without creating taxable events for beneficiaries in Thailand. Thai beneficiaries can will only have to pay income tax, if they receive dividends from these companies in their own names. Even this can be avoided by using loans. Offshore Co A lends US$10 million to Thai beneficiary for 10 years. 10 years later he takes another loan out from Offshore Co B to repay the original loan to Offshore Co A and so on. To prevent this there would need to be legislation allowing the RD to lift the corporate veil on offshore companies and trusts. Legislation would have to make the company taxable as a Thai company, if beneficiaries and/or controlling shareholders were found to be Thai tax residents. I doubt if that would come in the first round, if at all. if Tony is in power at the time, he will definitely prevent that. Other corrupt Thai politicians and bureaucrats use offshore structures to hide wealth offshore too. Some were outed in the Panama papers but not investigated by Thai authorities. So Thai billionaires and their families will probably be safe for a long time to come.

After a few weeks of requesting it I finally received a hard copy of my statements for December 2023 from a bank in Hong Kong with a tiny little bank stamp 12 millimetres across without any signatures or initials. I suppose I could add the signatures myself. It's not exactly a certified copy but better than a downloaded statement from the internet, I guess, and probably better than most people will be able to provide to proof that income was earned before 2024.

Yes, they would only use the old tax clearance system, if they were too lazy to draft a new police regulation. If would be quite easy to draft a new regulation though. Just add a tax clearance certificate to the list of documents required to renew a visa other than a tourist visa. If no tax due yet, get a certificate from the RD office that no tax was due.

They forgot to mention the attraction of the high level of education and English language ability in Thailand compared to Malaysia. 555

You are right and this situation looks clear cut. No tears from me in the unlikely event the switches were ever flicked on a wealthy dirtbag like this. But in places like the US it has mainly been poor blacks that got executed. So it has just been an extension of the practice of lynching.