Dogmatix

I think almost certain that foreign tourists will be denied access to whatever gets defined as medical cannabis and quite likely foreigners on longer term visas including permanent residents too.

Not true. What Anutin did was to issue a ministerial regulation amending the appendix to the Narcotics Act that lists illegal drugs. Cannabis was simply omitted from the new list with the exception of extracts containing more than 0.2% THC. No mention of why this was being done or how the decriminalised drug should be used. Go read the Royal Gazette announcement for yourself. Anutin claimed verbally it was being done for medical use but he is a politician. What he did and what he said were two different things.

Most are subject to abuse and left to die in the overcrowded cells.

Interesting, if they have given the 50% allowance up to max 100,000 to foreign pension. Indeed this should be the case according to the letter of the RC but I assumed they might discriminate against foreign pensions. Technically it should only apply employment pensions but perhaps they will be generous enough to extend it to state pensions. However, for most foreigners tax credits should be claimable for pension income and US social security is protected anyway. Here's what the RD says about declaring Thai interest income and dividend income. "Interest The following forms of interest income may, at the taxpayer’s selection, be excluded from the computation of PIT provided that a tax of 15 per cent is withheld at source: interest on bonds or debentures issued by a government organization; interest on saving deposits in commercial banks if the aggregate amount of interest received is not more than 20,000 baht during a taxable year; interest on loans paid by a finance company; interest received from any financial institution organized by a specific law of Thailand for the purpose of lending money to promote agriculture, commerce or industry. Dividends Taxpayer who resides in Thailand and receives dividends or shares of profits from a registered company or a mutual fund which tax has been withheld at source at the rate of 10 per cent, may opt to exclude such dividend from the assessable income when calculating PIT. However, in doing so, taxpayer will be unable to claim any refund or credit as mentioned in 2.4." So Thai bank interest is taxable if over 20,000, even if 15% tax already withheld but, if non-employment income is the only assessable income you have, I guess, no need to declare it, unless total non-employment income is over 120,000. If your interest income is over 20,000, it seems you can avoid declaring it, if you keep your money in a finance company or in government bonds. Potentially you could pay more than the 15% withholding tax, if you were in a higher tax bracket. Even with such low interest rates in Thailand, it is not difficult to get more than 20,000 in bank interest. But what I said about Thai dividends stands. No limit to how much you can receive without declaring, if you are happy with the 10% withholding tax. There is a sweet spot for filing tax credits on Thai dividends which is around 2-4 million dividend income a year. As long as you don't have any other income, you can get a tax rebate of over 4000,000 on dividend income of 3 million, if you do RMF and have other deductions too. That means that you actually get more tax back than was deducted. I guess these dividend tax credits will be abolished sooner or later though.

I think so. He couldn't be extradited for the civil case brought by Roberts but, if he committed perjury under oath, albeit in a zoom call, he could have been extradited. He refused to testify to the FBI by zoom in the Epstein case, while Epstein was still alive and before Roberts brought her case. The awful Cressida Dick of the Met protected Andy from criminal charges in the UK. Even though Roberts was over the UK age of consent (and was clearly a hardened hooker by then) she was 17 and criminal charges can be filed against those complicit in sex trafficking of minors under the age of 18 under English law. If he were not a royal, things might have gone differently in the UK.

They didn't change the tax status of all foreign residents. They changed the tax status of all Thai and foreign tax residence who remit foreign source income. Foreigners who don't remit any foreign source income have no change in tax status.

Prawit was not happy about the deal that Thaksin did with Prayut to form the coalition. Thaksin cunningly played them off against each other and Prawit didn't get the ministries he expected and his senators didn't vote for Srettha. Maybe time for some pay back.

I think it was his US lawyer's advice. Andy and his British solicitor "Good News" Gary were utterly clueless. However, there was one weird part of the US defense strategy when Andy publicized that he applied for a jury trial which caused shock horror at the Firm and in the British media. This was weird because Virginia had already applied for a jury trial and the plaintiff's wishes for a jury trial take precedence. Therefore Andy was going to get a jury trial whether he wanted one or not. So this was probably also on the advice of his US attorney to throw sand in the eyes of Andy's mum and scare her into pay up which she did. Actually a jury trial would not necessarily have been worse than a bench trial but again Mum and the tabloids were not to know this and any kind of trial would have exposed Andy to a future US federal criminal trial for perjury , as he would testified under oath. So I guess there was no way Andy really wanted a trial at all.

In your section 8 I don't believe there is any requirement to file a tax return if you have Thai bank interest in excess of 60,000. PWC says this: " in the case of having income from other sources (with or without employment income) of THB 60,000 or less (for single persons) or THB 120,000 or less (for married persons)." I believe it refers to income from non-employment sources, e.g. rental income. Banks deduct 15% withholding tax on interest and it is an option to declare this income, if you believe you would pay less than 15% and get a refund. Otherwise you can just accept the 15% deduction and not declare it. Same applies to Thai dividends from which 10% withholding tax is deducted at source. You can have as much Thai dividend income as you want and it will not push up your tax rate. If you opt to declare Thai dividends, you can claim tax credits for the corporate income tax paid by the companies to avoid double taxation. This can be all calculated automatically for you by the RD's website, if you file online in Thai. Otherwise it would be very laborious and would take many hours of work (don't ask me how I know this). To qualify for the tax credit on dividends, you must own foreign registered shares as a foreigner, not NVDRs. Now for the bad news. This 60,000 threshold for declaring non-employment income probably applies to foreign pensions. Regarding the tax allowance of 100,000 cited for pensions, this seems misleading. The 100,000 tax allowance is for Section 40.1 income from employment which includes pensions but only pensions derived from employment. So state pensions are out but Thailand doesn't have any. So no need for them to mention this in the RC. I suspect company occupational pensions from overseas are also excluded, even though they appear to qualify on the face of it. That is because I suspect that to qualify the corporate pension has to be notified by a Thai employer, e.g. Thai Civil Service. Most Western government employment pensions will be protected from Thai taxation by DTAs, but not so state pensions (except US Social Security) and company pensions.

To get the spouse allowance you have to do a joint tax filing and the first time you claim you will be asked to submit a marriage certificate. So no. Common law marriages are not recognized for this purpose. No sure how you get to allowances and deductions over the following without having deductions for things like investment in RMF/SSF or insurance and stuff. Basic allowance 60,000 Senior allowance 190.000 Totals 270,000. Adding the tax free threshold of 150,000, tax would start 420,000.

Not only is Sirilapas smart and caring but he is also brave. She took Chalerm's son in their family stronghold and won. She has also been sentenced to prison for LM. Last but not least, she is also not bad looking.

know the project is not viable - they went through the motions in the first Thaksin govt - but it gives Srettha something to do which can't possibly be successful, so he won't upstage Ung Ing with her soft power. Also it provides fat consulting fees for PT cronies.

I have a two year old and fortunately I don't have to send him to a Thai state school. But I am pretty sure that, if he was beaten or abused by a teacher I would have difficulty in restraining myself from performing an eye for an eye retribution. Certainly I would pursue the matter legally rigorously.

I went to prep school and public school in the UK at at time when floggings were legally and liberally administered. The worst violence in my experience was meted out to 7-13 year old prep school boys. Our head master was clearly a sadist and got sexual pleasure from viciously caning 7 year olds in their thin cotton pyjamas over the laundry baskets, so their blood curdling screams could be heard throughout the dormitories - this for the heinous crime of talking after lights out which for them was 7.00 pm when it was still light in summer and early autumn. He also loved pulling boys shorts and underpants down and caning their bare bottoms till the blood was flowing freely down their legs. Boys were caned, not only for behavioral issues but for academic offenses like getting poor marks in French vocab rote learning tests. At my public school prefects were allowed to cane boys for offenses such as not calling them sir and there were house beatings where each of up to 15 house prefects took a stroke with a run up at a victim. We had a famous headmaster who was sacked from Eton, where he was nicknamed The Beater, and carried on his child abuse at my school. He loved the 13 year old first years and would give them a choice of a serious 6 up caning (with trousers up) in his study or a much milder trousers and underpants down beating with his belt which involved fondling of their private parts. Another teacher beat up 9 and 10 year olds in the junior school bashing them about the head with the aluminium studs of rugby boots. I would defy you to say that these corporal punishments did no lasting harm to the boys. There was also copious homosexual harassment and rapes too. The sense of impunity regarding corporal punishment extended to homosexual harassment. The school, Fettes in Edinburgh, got a poor write up in the Scottish parliamentary enquiry on past child abuse in boarding schools, resulting in 1.2 million pounds in out of court settlements paid out so far and there are still cases pending against it. I was also regularly beaten at home. My father had the same attitude as you. He said he was beaten often at home and at school and it never did him any harm. But my experience was different. I had no respect for the teacher who obviously flogged for sexual pleasure, as might be expected. But being beaten by father instilled in me a deep disrespect for a man who beat his own children, viciously on occasion. The parental beatings made me feel quite certain I was right and they were wrong because they debased themselves by using violence against their own children. I say NO to corporal punishment of children under any circumstances. Teachers cannot be trusted with this sort of punishment.

Well. As Mike Lister correctly, says they wouldn't know and don't want to lose face. Remember the fanfare announcement of the Phuket sandbox for returnees to Thailand during COVID. Thai embassies and consulates around the world were still saying they hadn't received information on how to process applications a week or two after the government announced the start date for applications.

I knew a guy who took tours to West Africa and other places a couple of decades ago. In the Gambia he warned the tourists no to go outside the guarded beach resort on their own. There were always several single middle aged European ladies in the tours to Gambia. One of them, a Swiss lady, ignored the warning and wandered out to explore the world outside the resort. She didn't get more than 500 metres before a guy popped up and raped her by the side of the road. She came back bleeding with ripped clothing. My friend took her to the local police station which refused to accept the complaint, arguing that she must have been looking for bumsters and got want she wanted. The victim was quite tough and recovered her composure enough to join in with the rest of the group on meals and tours after two days in her room. Not sure, if she was really interested in bumsters or just going for a stroll but she showed no interest in Gambian men after that. Apart from the rape to be fair the bumster scene seems no different from the bar girl and bar boy scene in Pattaya, except it is limited to young local men and middle aged farang women. Pattaya is more diversified and caters to every taste.

If you didn't make misleading assertions about Thai tax revenue breakdowns that are so far from what the actual data shows, I wouldn't point out your errors.

Some random thoughts. It terms of tracking remittances the RD could either do nothing, at least to start with, and rely self assessment or it could follow up on every remittance in to the banking system which would entail a lot of time and trouble and false leads. If they do track remittances which seems likely at some point, it would make more sense to set a minimum amount to avoid bothering with all the many small remittances. An easy way to do this would be set the limit at US$50k which is it the level at which remittances have to be reported to the Bank of Thailand by banks with a declaration from the recipient on the intended use of funds. Piggy backing on the system already in place would save a lot of extra work for banks but the RD might decide it doesn't care about extra work and set a lower limit. All Thais are likely to be tax residents but with foreigners they will get a lot of people who are not tax residents, if they set a limit that is too low. As far as gifts are concerned it has been advised to put "gift" on the remittance advice but I am pretty sure there is no gift category when the recipient has to declare the purpose of the remittance to the Bank of Thailand, if over US$50k. In this case the recipient should probably tell the BOT it is for living expenses.

No, you are still wrong even in your revised statement on both counts. PIT rose every year from 2001 to 2019 except 2009 (caused by the subprime global recession) and was 9% of total tax revenue in 2021, not 2%. Look again. PIT is 4th line down item "1100 of individuals". https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=REVTHA

From a paid servant of Thaksin who is actually the most divisive character in Thai politics in the last 30 years. How many people have been killed or committed suicide because of him and his nominee sister?

No it happens quite often in the LOS. A woman was killed when a power line fell down on her riding her motorbike a couple of years back. Never heard of accidents like that in the West.

You have to remember that this was not a holistic tax reform by the government involving legislation. It was simply the director-general of the RD deciding unilaterally that a clause in the Revenue Code will mean something different from what it was ruled to mean 38 years ago. Srettha ordered the RD around the same time to prepared draft amendments to toughen up the gift tax section of the Revenue Code and the Inheritance Tax Act to collect more tax and the RD said it had already done that but no details have been leaked. The wording on gifts is quite clear and the director-general obviously didn't see any scope for tweaking it to mean something difference with a malevolent stroke of his pen. If it is going to be done, it will need legislation in parliament.

The statistics tell a different story. https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=REVTHA. Direct taxes rose nearly every year from 2001 till 2019. In fact personal income tax rose every year in that period except 2009 due to the 2008 subprime recession year. Direct taxes accounted for 29%of government revenue in 2021, not 2%. It is great that you are proud of your wife's small business and minimal tax payments which you mention with great frequency. But the standard deduction of 60% is not really over generous for a business. That assumes a pre-tax profit margin of 40% which is far, far less than the average pre-tax margin of companies listed on the SET. Combined with personal allowances a 60% expenses deduction is advantageous for a small enough business but for a significantly larger business such a small deduction would result in a crippling tax bill. That is why businesses of any size will incorporate and submit audited financial statements showing their actual costs and benefit from lower corporate income tax rates.

These are interesting questions. There is definitely pressure to increase tax revenues which have been sliding backwards since COVID and Thailand's tax base is too long to pay for the type of welfare that voters are starting to expect - MFP promised an old age allowance of 3,000 baht a month, after the Prayut government stopped the old age allowance of 600 for new oldies and there is a group pressuring the current government to go through with that. MFP planned to increase VAT, introduce a wealth tax plus some other measures to pay for this. So definitely the government would like to see this remittance tax generate incremental revenue. There are no international regulations requiring this type of remittance tax. In Thailand's case the international pressure was to join CRS reporting which they did in March 2023. The RD twisted this round to sound like the pressure was to tax remittances, whereas the truth was that the RD felt that CRS would give them information about overseas bank accounts of tax residents that would make it easier for them to investigate foreign source income that might be remitted. The fact that the international pressure was non-existent and that they need to increase tax revenues doesn't necessarily mean that their will be draconian investigations of remittances but it might. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

New expats will be effectively limited to arriving after 1 July and buying their condo before the end of December that year. No need to think about moving and buying another condo, if you are retired and need to import the money. When selling to another foreigner find another new expat who has arrived after 1 July and is ready to buy before the year end. This a brilliant scheme to encourage expats to move to Thailand and buy condos. Countries like the Philippines and Malaysia will be kicking themselves for not having thought of it.