Dogmatix

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.

This was a curious election between two Thaksinite candidates. Kamronwit is the policeman who was promoted under Yingluck to Bangkok police chief and flew to HK to have his new badges pinned on him by Thaksin. Then he got caught flying out of Japan with a Saturday night special hidden in his sponge bag, allegedly hidden there by his wife, who packed his bag, to get rid of him after he was seen parading his well known girlfriend in public. Tony officially backed the candidate who was involved in graft the last time he held the position. So it must be something about division of graft proceeds and repayment for electorate support.

I used to buy wine at these King Power shops until I found I could buy the same wine cheaper at Villa Market.

Doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Tony wants it banned again for his own personal reasons relating to his son’s drug abuse. His beloved police also want to get their income back from dealing weed and shaking down people they arrest, including foreign backpackers who will be low hanging fruit because many will not realise it has been decriminalized. The announcement is already drafted and nothing will stop it, short of Tony waking up dead from one of the many life threatening conditions he claims to have.

The mad King Donald will soon reign over Americans in a way that will make them wish they had never booted out the mad King George Iii. This court is now a joke. It totally does the bidding of the man who appointed the judges. It is like some third world countries where those in power can get judges they appointed to even rule that a convicted criminal can be a minister, in spite of the constitution apparently saying otherwise. That’s what you get when you allow the president to appoint judges single-handedly.

It doesn’t say where this junk came from but it is highly selective in the data it cites. Exports of services may be largely tourism income which is positively affected by the weak pound partly caused by Brexit. But exports of financial services, London’s key industry, were totally trashed by Brexit as banks shut down entire departments and moved them to the Continent. London’s residential and commercial property markets are still suffering. As for exports of goods, these are totally ravished by Brexit due the costs and procedures added which have booted smaller British companies out of exporting to EU markers and out of business in many cases. EU customers no longer want to deal with British exporters who don’t have European warehouses because it is too much trouble for them. Some victory and neither of the two main parties dare acknowledge the 400 pound Brexit gorilla smirking at them.

I expect the police efforts to save the man might have been more successful, if they hadn’t shot him first.

Another photo op with him at the Patong cop shop but no more information about who he is or why he was arrested. Hopefully they gave the British Embassy more than a photo of him with his face blanked out but their efforts on his behalf would be the same either way.

They will still need manual Thai gates for Thais who can’t be read by the electronic system or those too young or too old to use it. You should be OK.

Sooner or later as sure as God made little green apples and definitely if and when they introduce global taxation, they will ask foreign residents on visas other than transit and tourist visas to show a tax clearance certificate. They could do this for visa renewals which would be the most logical but, since they are so damn lazy, they could also just enforce the existing regulation requiring a tax clearance certificate to leave the country.

Simple. Obtain a certified bank statement to show the money was in your overseas bank account as at 31 Dec 2023. Get that legalised at the Thai embassy or a consulate in that country. Then get a certified translation done. Finally get the translation certified at the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Present it to the RD and wait to find out what is still wrong with it. Another solution that will be followed by most sensible people is to avoid buying any property in Thailand or making any major purchases in Thailand like a car.

I saw a friend last night who is retired and needs to make remittances from overseas to survive. He is concerned about how to do his tax return next year, if, indeed he needs to do one, and how the RD will interpret the DTA, how to claim tax credits, what evidence is needed to prove pre-2024 income etc etc. He visited his local tax office in Bkk and sat down with a nice lady who spoke good English but was totally unable to answer any of his questions, including, “Can I use my overseas credit card and ATM card in Thailand without having to declare on my tax return?” Definitely a high level preparation has been undertaken at the RD for a major tax change. Just issue an order to say the law means something difference for what it has meant for over 50 years without any legislative process and sit back idly waiting for billions of dollars of foreign cash to pour into the Treasury. I guess the difference with upcountry tax offices is that they are less likely to be able to speak good English or even understand the questions.

I just had a chat with my accountant on the phone about my two staff who earn more than 120k a year but not enough to pay tax and have never filed tax returns. My question was should I file late tax returns for them. She said technically they can be fined 2k, if they are caught and they should file tax returns. I said what about waiting till next year, rather than filing late which can't be done online. Probably OK was her response. I think there are many people in this situation and not politically a good idea to go after them but they could be fined, if caught in some kind of random check.