Dogmatix

Strange that will all these staggering achievements he ranked ever lower than Pita, Prayut, Anutin and Ung Ing in a poll of who Thais would prefer as PM. In the case of Srettha and Prayut they already know what they get. Still Srettha was beaten by Prayut and came last. Goes to show that a political system that ignores the results of general elections doesn't produce popular PMs, even though they resort to singing their own praises because no one else does.

It's interesting that Srettha as someone who has spent his entire career in real estate seems unaware of the flaws in Thai leasing law. It is simply a contract between the original lessor and lessee and is not binding on anyone else. That means the residual part of a lease cannot be transferred or sold without permission of the lessor. Moreover nothing is binding on a new lessor, who acquires the freehold by purchase or inheritance. Under such flimsy leasing law 30 year leases are problematic enough but 99 year leases are pointless without a proper legal framework guaranteeing transferability and making the lease binding on any future lessors or lessees. Without that there will be no secondary market in residual leases. So, if you want to sell up or leave it as an inheritance to your heirs, forget it. There seems to be little point for the Thaksin government to create waves in Thai society when the whole concept is unviable because they are too lazy or stupid to think it through and look carefully at what legal framework is necessary to create a secondary market in residual leases in developed legal systems with proper rule of law. Even 99 year leases become problematic in time without an automatic ability to renew them at price dictated by a fixed formula. I bought a 99 year lease in the UK with 87 years left in it. It was a converted townhouse with four flats in it and one of the first things I did was to organise everyone to withhold the exorbitant service fees being charged by the freeholder for non-existent services plus the ground rent, because legal research told be that tenants were entitled to withhold all payments to freeholders until a dispute is resolved by agreement or it court. After a year the freeholder folded and sold us the freehold for a reasonable price because we had made it worthless to him and he couldn't sell it. After owning it for 20 years, the leases were down to 67 years which is not very attractive to buyers. So we renewed all the leases to 990 years. Problem solved. That is an example of the legal framework in favour of lessees in the UK.

He is right about the digital wallet being a ruinous economic policy and it is tantamount to vote buying. I don't see the problem with 99 year leases though. I believe that more Thais would benefit than foreigners. Thai businesses frequently have to take 30 year leases to get business premises in locations they want. I central Bangkok much of the desirable land is owned by large estates that will never sell, just like London, and therefore leasehold only. 75% foreign ownership of condos is also neither here nor there. Most of the buildings foreigners want to own more than 49% are in resort areas where there are not many Thai buyers. In these cases it will make zero difference to affordability for Thais. At any rate Thais can rest easy that the government is doing its level best to dampen foreign demand for real estate but taxing the living b' Jesus out of remittances by foreigners and threatening global tax. Who would want to bring 20 million into Thailand to buy a condo or a 99 year lease, if they have to pay 35% tax on it?

Both behaved badly but the American should not have used the F word in my opinion. Telling her that she didn't understand English (when her English is very good) and didn't realize that the F word is not rude was childish and racist. So on balance he was worse than her.

I went to the RD today to present documents following my wife's tax return submission that I filed for her online. She didn't receive the letter saying what docs they wanted but I received the SMS reminding her to send them. So I went along in person carrying everything under the sun in case it was needed. As sod's law would have it they only wanted one of the documents and returned all the rest. I took the opportunity to ask the lady about the case of someone earning 15,000 a month which puts them in the situation of not having to pay any tax but having to file a tax return, according to the RC. I said that someone had been advised at the RD that they shouldn't file a tax return because it was a waste of officials' time (as someone reported in this thread). Her reply was that anyone with 120,000 income from employment (including employment pensions) should file a tax return and RD officials should not be advising the public not to file in those circumstances. I was not surprised as I was dubious about the post that said the RD had advised not to file. I doubt if the poster talked to the RD himself. Notwithstanding the above I am not sure that I would want to get onto their radar, if I were in that situation. Anyway bear in mind that there is nowhere on the tax return forms to declare state pension income, so you can argue it is not assessable.

Permanent residents of Thailand who go through a rigorous application and vetting process and paid fees in the region of 180,000 baht still need to have work permits but any Joe Blow can just show up and work for 6 months at a time without even having to apply for a work permit. Now there's consistency for you. Why not go back the status quo before 1972 when work permits were not required. Or better still before 1927 when visas and passports were not required. That would boost tourist numbers no end.

They are recriminalizing cannabis because Tony wants revenge for his son’s cocaine habit and many business will now have to close down, so no more legal dope industry to tax. So why not develop the sex industry as an alternative tax base and shut that down after two years?

You are right. A key point in a rule of law jurisdiction would be the fact that the government issued licenses to the shop owners and growers which implies that all was totally legal and they were encouraged by the government to invest in the new sector opened up by the government. If they have proper licenses, they should be compensated for this pernicious flip flop in government policy. If the government didn't want them to invest in the businesses, it should not have issued the licenses and collected the fees. That fact that someone else was prime minister doesn't negate government actions. Imagine if they suddenly decided that all of what we consider prescription drugs would only be available in hospitals and that pharmacy owners were ineligible for compensation. When Britain made the slave trade illegal it borrowed so much money to compensate British slave owners at home and in the colonies that it had to borrow so much money that the debt was only paid off in the 1980s. Now there's responsibility for investment losses due to legal changes for you.

From what I can see there is no confirmation that the ONCB met and voted to recriminalize today. Only English language media Bkk Post, Nation and Pattaya Mail are reporting this. Thai Rath reported that the ONCB is awaiting the official draft of the Health Ministry's order to recriminalize, following the vote of the ministry's Narcotics Control Committee on 5 July to recriminalize, and will meet to vote on it at the end of this month, since the ministry cannot change the law without approval from the ONCB. I agree that it is a foregone conclusion that the ONCB will approve the draft, given Pheua Thai's current dominance of the political scene and its founder's extreme desire to recriminalize for personal reasons. However, the OP's report and the English language reports from which it is presumably gleaned and which may have also gleaned from each other appear to be misleading. It is just not credible that not a single Thai language outlet would have come out with the news. I think it is likely that one English language writer or sub-editor confused the Narcotics Control Committee with the Narcotics Control Board and others followed like sheep. Perhaps it doesn't matter in this case as the outcome will be the same, despite Anutin's negative voted on the NCB. However, a fact is a fact and jumping the gun is jumping the gun.

The entrepreneurs got licences, made legal investments and followed the law. They deserve compensation from a capricious government that was pushed to do this by one man whose party lost the election, just because he blames these people for his son's past drug abuse. What a way to run a country.

Definitely there is more flexibility on declaring overseas rental income to the RD under the current remittance tax regime but this thread is about the RD's intention to introduce global tax. That would require you to declare overseas rental income on the same basis as Thai rental income, i.e. file a PND94 in September and a PND90 in March and pay tax twice a year. The basis for tax of property owned by individuals is that you pay tax on 70% of the income. A deduction of 30% is permitted and, if your expenses and renovations are more than that, you may pay tax on the actual profit but will need to submit audited financial statements audited by a Thai auditor and I doubt that any would accept the job of auditing a foreign rental business. So the tax you pay in the UK is likely wildly different from the tax you pay in Thailand. If you sell the property in the UK under Thai global tax, it will be taxed as income at your top marginal rate of tax. The current concessions vis a vis UK CGT obviously don't apply. That the principle private residence exemption is not allowed. The stepped up valuation as of 5 April 2015 for overseas owners who qualified for the Non-resident CGT scheme prior to 5 April 2015 will which make a huge difference to hose who have owned UK properties for decades. A real problem for those selling up in the UK to move to Thailand will be Thailand's lack of principle private residence exemption from capital gains tax. Say a British couple sell their house in the UK free of capital gains tax because they lived in it the whole time they owned it. Then they move to Thailand in the same year as the sale and before July, so they become tax residents. Under global tax they will pay full Thai income tax on the gain that was 100% exempted in the UK. On the remittance tax basis they will get the same tax hit, if they remit the entire proceeds to Thailand, perhaps to buy property in Thailand. A great start to life in Thailand for the unwary! I thank you for your plaudits but you are jumping to conclusions by saying my experience of Thai tax is limited to corporate taxes. I have been filing my PND90 online in Thai for over 10 years which I think very few in this thread have done even once. This requires greater knowledge of the Revenue Code than those who go to the RD office and ask an officer to complete their tax return for them. I also take the documents requested by the RD to the office and, apart from the COVID years, I take the documents requested to the RD office in person, where they open them on the spot and engage in some discussion of my tax return. Last year my Thai wife started to earn enough to be worth doing her tax return separately. I have also done that for her online and this week will take the requested documents to the RD and discuss her tax return with them. She is too busy to bother with that herself and, despite being an accountant by training, she has never done any work on tax.

I said banning cannabis would eliminate all its contribution to GDP, employment and tax revenue. How is that nonsense? Are you saying the contribution to GDP, employment and tax revenue will continue after the prohibition? The fact one shop owner, who may be a tax dodger, hasn't paid tax, doesn't mean there is no tax revenue from the entire industry. Apart corporate or individual income tax, employees have personal income tax deducted at source and businesses with turnover over 1.8 million are obliged to register for VAT. The above board contribution to GDP is already estimated close to the size of Thaksin's digital wallet scam which the government claims will miraculously boost GDP growth from 1.5% to 5%. So, if you remove a nascent sector from GDP entirely what do you assume will be its contribution to future growth or do assume nil real effect because the business will remain the same size but all will go into the black economy which benefits liquidity and indirectly boosts official GDP, even if not counted in the official numbers?

In this example you discuss your Us government pension which is clearly taxable only in the US and your IRA which, according to your post has no tax deducted at source and the US is not claiming a right to tax it. So lucky Thailand can tax it all and no US tax to claim a tax credit for. Most Europeans will have tax deducted at source and will need to claim a tax credit but, in many cases, won't have filed home country tax returns in the home country by the time they have file thai tax returns. Also take the case of rental income. The UK for example makes clear that it exercises its right to tax UK rental income. . Because all its DTAs say it may tax rental income, so it does. But Thailand may also tax overseas rental income and has said it will exercise this right. Rental income is taxed on completely different bases in Thailand and the UK. Moreover, the RD requires a half yearly PND94 tax return and tax payment in addition to the year end PND90. It will be interesting to see the reaction of the UK HMRC if someone writes to them and informs them from now on they will not be filing tax returns or paying tax on their UK rental income because they will only be paying tax on it to Thailand. You probably wouldn't get a reply at all but demands for a tax return and fines for late submission. The UK expects overseas tax authorities to enter into a gentleman's agreement not to exercise their rights to be primary tax authority for UK sourced income on a reciprocal basis. But the RD doesn't understand this and is under pressure to exercise its right to collect as much tax as it can to pay for fiscal incontinence planned by this government. European tax authorities are happy to enter into these gentlemen's agreements as it saves them and taxpayers a lot of trouble and in most cases doesn't make much difference to their tax takes. In Thailand's case, even if they understand that this is the way that DTAs are applied by grown up countries, they will not see the benefit to them because income earned by overseas resident individuals in Thailand is a fraction of income earned overseas by Thailand tax residents. For a start very few Thais have a pension at all.

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.