Dogmatix

Big Joke threatened to blacklist them. LOL. Getting out of the LOS is more of an issued than coming back at the moment. Surprising no firearms offences so far but that might come later. There are charged with theft, presumably the gun. Would think they could be charged with illegal possession of a firearm in a public place and discharging a firearm in a public place. They might also be charged with threatening a cop with a firearm, although it looks as if they took his gun to avoid being shot, not to shot him. It goes to show the benefit of a back up gun in an ankle holster like many American cops carry, also he wouldn't have been able to get to one while in a head lock. Hard to say what motivated them. The cop said they offered a bribe. Was it the opposite that he demanded bribe? Anyway they were charged with driving without licences and therefore were a menace to others on the roads, particularly if speeding. Why not just pay a fine or a bribe and enjoy the rest of their holiday? They will probably have a few years in a nasty Thai prison to contemplate that.

I always got the impression that the low priced bottles were massively under declared too. Some low priced bottled must have been declared for a dollar or two each, given that the import duties, excise tax, municipal tax and VAT have to be applied to the landed cost and VAT is applied to the landed cost plus all the other taxes. I remember looking at an Australian wine import business someone put up for sale. Part and parcel of the deal was an Australia wine export company which was essential for buying wines in Australia and exporting them somehow at a massive loss in order to keep Thai taxes down. The wine producers are not willing to do this. So importers have to have their own price fixing operations in the exporting countries. This looks like a huge opportunity for the Customs and Excise Departments to call in millions in bribes as the importers will have to double up on the bribes they have already paid registering all their labels. Since the =FDA is involved in the registrations, they will also clean up.

The tax residency rules are pretty black and white in Thailand 180 days out in a tax year and you're out of the net whether Thai or not. I recall Thaksin's daughter, who is now in line to be PM, when she was studying in the UK was used as a vehicle to remit a huge family profit on something but it was challenged purely on the grounds that they had slipped up and she was out of the country a couple of days less than 180.

He would have been arrested for smuggling out out of Thailand but in Singapore he would have been hanged.

I knew one guy at university who did the same. He was bright and a nice guy but started taking acid on a regular was for a while wandering around wearing old ladies' outfits that he bought in the Salvation Army shop. Eventually he was institutionalised and the hospital said he could no longer function at all in the outside world and would probably have to remain institutionalized for the rest of his life. That was in our second year. He never reappeard and I never heard anything more about him. Sad. Anyone who's ever tried it will understand how it has the potential to take people to a place that they can never come back from. It is very different from cannabis.

Seems to be just Swiss thus far.

The uncles were OK with decriminalization. The problem is Thaksin.

Currently licensed herbal practitioners are allowed to write prescriptions for extracts over 0.2% THC. It seems logical that they will also be allowed to write prescriptions for the raw plant which is not illegal,

The way the bill is currently drafted, there is no basis to get warrants to search homes for cannabis, except perhaps for people suspected of selling or growing without a licence. For ordinary users the only offences are recreational use and driving under the influence. Possession is not illegal under the bill or the Narcotics Act, except for extracts over 0.2% THC. So, unless they change things it will not be illegal to possess it, unless you are caught using it recreationally. Of course they could argue that possessing buds without a medical prescription will be circumstantial evidence of intent to use recreationally. Their whole approach is ridicuous.

All this because Thaksin has a grudge against the coke dealers who allegedly supplied his son.

I think part of the problem is that Thailand doesn't adjust visa fees for inflation for many years and then does it in big jumps. Fees charged by immigration got their last major uplift in 1999. So there could a big increase planned there too. These new fees for tourist visas do seem a steep though with all their talk of encouraging more long stay tourists. Western countries increase visa fees every year. The US B1/B2 has gone up about 30% in two years but to be fair is still very good value. 6,660 baht for a multi-entry 10 year visa to a huge, developed country with climates ranging from the tropics to the Arctic and limitless tourist attractions is a lot less than Thailand is charging in NZ for a 6 month visa. You are also allowed to do business on the US visa which is not the case with these Thai tourist visas. I think they need to look value for money and competitiveness.

Wow. That is around 4% of GDP. How about the defaults on consumer debt which is more that mortgage debt?

Thai interest rates the highest in 10 years but how come I am still getting only 0.5% on my saving account - the same at 10 years ago?

This is a great idea in tandem with the plan to attract more alcoholic tourists to Thailand. Why not also put these pictures on weed instead of recriminalizing it. Warnings are indeed required on weed packaging in Canada and US states. If underage kids and foreign tourists see the warnings, they will know the risks and not do too much of it. So everything will be OK.

The state of California has determined this product may cause cancer and could cause damage to unborn fetuses. California requires a warning like this on just about everything, not limited to found, drink and smokables but plastics and stuff too. Thailand should these pictures on everything including all the cheap plastic products imported from China.

Thanks for the link but it doesn't support the statement that she was attacked by the government over monetary policy as governor. On the contrary she was attacked by the private sector as governor for bowing under pressure from the government to introduce capital controls. For the rest of her time as governor she kept a low profile.

The suspect looks a bit overweight. Prison rations should soon fix that for him.

There is no justification for reducing rates at this point but this is Thaksin's style. He did same think in the first Thaksin govt and fired the governor of the BOT. Repeating this type of nonsense and repeating the land bridge project along with the vote buying digital wallet shows how bereft he is of new ideas now but is nevertheless determined to get firmly behind the policy steering wheel again. How sad for Thailand to have someone like that in charge again when they voted for a different party anyway.

I don't remember Tarisa, whom I was at Harvard with, being either attacked by the government or thanked for her stewardship of monetary policy. Sadly for her she was largely discredited soon after becoming governor because she was pressurised by her mentor the previous governor, ML Pridyathorn, who had been upgraded as coup government finance minister, into introducing capital controls for foreign portfolio investors which crashed the stock market and had to be rescinded a couple of weeks later with Pridyathorn famously saying that the SET didn't need foreign investors anyway. The problem was that Tarisa actually had no experience of monetary policy whatsoever, as she had spent her entire career at the BOT on the supervisory side, of which she was head before she became governor. So she didn't feel in a position to resist the pressure from her mentor in the government to make a catastrophic policy error, which is unfortunately what she is remembered for. I am not sure in what sense she was attacked by the government over monetary policy when she actually did exactly what the government asked without question and no one thanked her for it. It was sad because Tarisa had a very distinguished career in financial supervision and revived the reputation of the central bank in that area which was in tatters after the BBC scandal and the Tom Yam Kung crisis which was kicked off by the collapse of Finance One two weeks after the BOT gave it a clean bill of health following its annual audit. They actually thought Finance One was such a fabulous example of a well run finance company that they had given it approval to acquire a small bank. What Tarisa was famous for before she ruined her own reputation was in standing up to the Thaksin regime which had busied itself looting Krung Thai Bank when she was head of financial supervision. The Thaksinite finance ministry kept trying to get her to call off the dogs and threatening her but she never backed down and the CEO of KTB went to prison. Thaksin's son narrowly avoided prison, despite what seemed on the surface to be a fairly open and shut case of receiving funds stolen from KTB and laundering them.

If they believe they are going to attract more boozers, they should offset the loss of revenues from stoners after recriminalize weed.

I agree the impact on tourism will be negligible, partly because the supply chain won't pass on much of the tax reduction to consumers anyway. I don't notice any feasibility studies done by the government to project loss of tax revenue from wine vs incremental tax revenue from more tourists and/or more expenditures per head. Do the Chinese come to Thailand to get pissed?

The trend of foreign condo purchases in Thailand has evolved following the COVID-19 situation. The market slowed during the outbreak but recovered and grew significantly afterward, reflecting the returning confidence of foreign investors in the Thai real estate market. Sopon also opined that encouraging more property purchases by foreigners could be a policy to stimulate the Thai economy. He suggested the government define areas where foreigners are allowed to buy to mitigate security concerns and potential conflicts between Thai citizens and foreign property owners. He further stated that the administration should consider new policies and approaches to regulate and promote real estate transactions by foreigners in Thailand. This would help the market grow sustainably and benefit the Thai economy while preventing potential issues arising from such liberalization. Why does he want to restrict the areas foreigners, who are already restricted to 49% of usable space, can buy as a way to increase sales? Crazy.

The surge may come to an end when Chinese buyers realise they will have pay 35% tax on the money remitted to buy the condos, if they are in Thailand for more than 180 days in a year.

I think they are so concerned about EU data privacy rules that the Irish police don't know their names either. So how can they extradite them?

Thais and foreigners will definitely be using the gift tax exemption to cover overseas remittances, particularly as it was apparently suggested by the RD in its #4 to its first Q&A on P. 161/2566, possibly as a way for taxpayers to mitigate the impacts of the announcement. So it will take some time to know, if there is an issue, since the RD will not be able to follow up on overseas gifts made to circumvent P. 161/2566 until after 2024 tax returns have been filed. Since they have a backlog, it may take some time. If nothing is said, we might have to wait for a few years to be sure that receivers of overseas gifts from spouses have not been made to show that their spouses had paid tax on the gifts overseas (assuming the income was taxable in the jurisdiction it arose) and/or taxed and penalised. If that is the case, it would be difficult to place the burden on the receiver, as they cannot automatically be expected to have access to their spouse's overseas tax records. So the burden would more appropriately be placed on the giftor who may not be a Thai tax resident or even living in Thailand, as in the RD's case study กค 0702/530 on the topic of gifts made to a Thai resident by a foreigner resident overseas. As far as the Simple Tax Guide is concerned, I can see that it is probably useful to a number of AN members but I personally would hesitate to publish a tax guide rather than just post a regular exchange of views on tax, as in this thread or the big thread. A tax guide, unless it just quotes from the RC and the RD, contains opinions that AN has to be responsible for as the publisher and, if someone decided to claim they had been damaged by any part of it and filed a complaint, it could be problematic and disclaimers may not offer much protection. An area I have experience of is publishing opinions on Thai stocks which I know you have to very careful about to avoid the SEC coming around demanding to see licenses, WPs etc. Some publishers of such newsletters have gone to great pains to make it look, as if they were published overseas. Just my thoughts.