Dogmatix

If it remains unclear, how will professional advice be able to clarify it? Many of the people claiming to be expert tax advisors appear to know a lot less than we do, judging by their podcasts etc.

The question was how might it take for Thailand to introduce global taxation? At least 5 years is a reasonable guess but this is something that would require an act of parliament and would probably need to be part of government policy which it is not at the moment.

Another point from the French embassy video was that the Thai guy, who couldn't speak French, said in English that expenditures on a foreign credit card in Thailand are deemed as remittances. He said that taxpayers who use foreign credit cards in Thailand would have to submit their credit card statements, presumably translated into Thai, if not in English. This must apply to debit cards and ATM withdrawals too. He didn't say what part of the tax return form this income should be declared on but logically you have to declare the income used to pay the card bills, rather than the expenditures made with the income, assuming it is a assessable income in the first place. In fact the credit card statements are merely proof of remittance, not of income, but he didn't make this point. Nowhere else have they said that taxpayers need to provide proof of remittance, only of income and of tax credits. He didn't mention the use of foreign credit cards to order goods to be shipped to Thailand. They can argue that the goods were remitted to Thailand but that seems a bit of a stretch to me. Same with air tickets bought abroad for use in exiting or entering Thailand. I know some expats who live from ATMs and foreign credit cards without ever remitting anything to Thailand. I expect they will carry on as before without filing tax returns.

I think not really likely for some time. It is quite legal for someone to live in Thailand without having even enough assessable Thai income to have to file a tax return. You could have 100 mil invested in the SET and live off dividends subject to 10% withholding tax but take the legitimate option not to include in your assessable income or file a tax return. Your retirement visa could be done on the lump sum basis. It would need an Immigration order that tax returns are required for visa renewals or perhaps enforcement of the existing law for tax clearance certificates on visa renewal or leaving the country. Ultimately it is possible, if Immigration and the RD decide to coordinate on this. Consider the case of VAT registration required for a WP. I operated a business that only exported services and therefore had no VATable income and would ordinarily have not had to register for VAT. However, to get a WP the business had to register for VAT and file monthly VAT returns showing zero VATable income. In fact today we still have to do that long after I no longer need WPs, as the only easy way to get out out of VAT registration is to wind up the company.

One point that is generally overlooked is that many expats living in Thailand off foreign source income were in violation of the Revenue Code prior to the effective date of P. 161/2566. The 1987 ruling clarified that foreign source income remitted to Thailand in the same tax year it was earned was assessable for Thai tax. Anyone who got their pension remitted direct to Thailand was very obviously required to file a tax return and pay Thai tax, subject of course to DTA tax credits. If those expats start filing a tax return for the first time in 2025 and the RD sees the evidence of pension being remitted direct to Thailand that was obviously in place before Jan 2024, they are quite entitled to ask how long the expat has been receiving this income in Thailand. Then they are entitled to do an audit going back 10 years, if tax returns were not filed, and arbitrarily assess tax, penalties and interest. Given that the RD didn't really attempt to enforce the tax on same tax year remittances in the past, it seems unlikely that they will do this now as a matter of policy. However, as we know that much is left up to the discretion of individual officers and inspectors, some of whom enjoy low hanging fruit, we cannot say the risk of this happening is zero.

The fact that Pichet has resigned doesn't undo puppet Srettha's decision to comply with the order from his boss to appoint this ex-con to the cabinet. The case shows how confident Tony has become in sticking it to the Thai people. First lose the election. Then renege on coalition deal to do a deal with uncles after getting his puppets to promise they wouldn't in order to put his own puppet in as PM and seize power in a silent while technically a prisoner. Then put in a convicted felon who was convicted committing a crime under his own orders as a minister. The other point is that it reminds Thais how willing Tony is to force his lackeys to commit crimes for him and risk going to prison including his own sister, not to mention Boonsong sentenced to 40 years for his role in Tony's rice pledging scam and others still in prison for the same thing. Meanwhile he organises his own way out without ever having to spend a night in jug.

It takes a long time for government departments to coordinate with each other but If this reinterpretation survives, it seems a no brainer that this will ultimately happen. If you take into account that they expect pensioners to have an income of at least 65k a month (and that number is about 20 years old and overdue for a substantial upward revision to take inflation into account) it is obvious that they feel foreign pensioners are well into the threshold for taxable income after basic deductions. In the past they demanded tax clearance certificates from expats working in Thailand to let them leave the country and that legislation is still on the books but no longer enforced. It would not be difficult to either start enforcing that again or make a new Immigration order requiring a tax clearance certificate or certified tax return for visa renewal. If this survives, I would say you are looking at 5 years grace period before that happens. If they still haven't sorted out how to do tax clearances or cope with out of synch tax years by then, it will lead to a mass exodus.

I had a quick butchers at that video of a discussion in French involving French embassy staff and RD officials regarding the Franco Thai DTA. It is quite funny because the French embassy people were arguing that Section 18 of the DTA says that private pensions from France shall only be taxed in France, while the RD was arguing that it says may be taxable in France which means it may also be taxable in Thailand, which is exactly what the RD intends to do. Looking at the Thai version it is extremely clear that it says "may be taxable in the first country" อาจเก็บภาษีได้ในรัฐแรก. Here อาจ or aat definitely means "may be." Looking at the French version I can see why embassy officials unversed in tax jargon and specifically DTA jargon got confused. The French version uses the phrase " are taxable in the first country (France)" or "sont imposables dans le premier Etat." However, in French DTA jargon this phrase "are taxable" has the same meaning as "may be taxed' in boiler plate Section 18s of English language DTAs, ie. are taxable in the first country and also are taxable in the other country. This is confirmed by looking at other sections of the Franco Thai DTA where the intent was clearly that certain types of income are taxable only in France. In these cases the French version inserts the word for only "que", as in "sont imposables que dans le premier Etat." This is further verified by comparing English and French versions of the Franco UK DTA where it is less likely that there were mismatches between the French and English versions. So this looks like a case where the RD officials were absolutely correct and the French embassy staff were incompetent because they didn't understand the French version of the DTA and failed to get a briefing from an expert at the French tax department to clarify before going to the meeting. Furthermore Section 19 of the DTA covering pensions paid to former French civil servants which is usually taxable only in the country of origin is also not protected under the French DTA. So the French negotiators in 1974 must also have been utterly incompetent, as it is possibly the only DTA that doesn't protect government pensions paid to retired civil servants. I glazed over a bit skimming through the rest of the video after watching that staggering interchange. But a couple of things I noted were as follows. When asked how to deal with the fact that French taxes are filed in April to June which means that French expats will not have supporting documents to claim tax credits when filing tax returns in March, the RD folk were unable to answer the question and the French speaking lady said they would get back to them at some unspecified date. Another point was that the RD folk said they would accept English translations of French tax documents along with the French originals but didn't mention whether translations would have to be stamped by an embassy and notarised by the Thai foreign ministry or not. She also said that originals of official French tax receipts would be needed. Given that many countries, including the UK, have a tax year and filing deadline out of synch with Thailand's which means that taxpayers will not have supporting documents to claim tax credits in March, even if the type of supporting documents the RD will demand are available at all, it shows a spectacular level of unpreparedness that 9 months after the reinterpretation order and half way through the tax year, the RD are unable to answer this question about out of synch tax years and filing deadlines between countries. Also they are clearly going to expect tax receipts certified and stamped manually by overseas tax officials like the ones that they provide but I am not sure how many Western countries can provide these. Another thing is that saying that English translations will be accepted contradicts what the RD official said in the Swiss Embassy video when he said that actually Thai versions are required but RD officers have the discretion to decide whether to accept English versions but aren't obliged to. Obviously the Swiss version is correct. Unless the law says English documents are acceptable, which the RC doesn't, then Thai bureaucrats are under no obligation to accept anything in English. It is unlikely that the RD will issue an order forcing them to accept English documents, given that most of them are not competent in reading English. Looking at that video reconfirms my thinking that attempting to claim tax credits for significant amounts of foreign source income should be an absolute last resort, until such a time as a reasonable and unified approach to foreign tax credits is established, i.e. not left to the discretion of individual officers, in the unlikely event that ever happens. If you go along to a rural RD office and explain that you paid tax in your home country on a million dollars of income that you remitted to Thailand in the tax year but have no documents to prove this because you earned the money in the UK from 6 April to 31 December and won't have any evidence of tax payment for a few months, what is the girl going to tell you? Quite possible you will be made to pay tax at 35% and told to try and get a refund of tax paid from your home country which might not be possible.

It is true that his power for now is mainly over PT but PT controls a lot, include the PM and Public Health Ministry which is all important to this topic. He is currently working hard to gain control of the new senate and hopes to install his brother in law as senate speaker which would give him a lot of control over appointments to courts and independent agencies that are currently still under Prayut and Prawit. That was power Tony used to devastating effect in the past, disabling the independent agencies. He will probably never have control over the military but could get control of the police back and I believe appeasing the police is a bit part of this and has always been very important to him. When he was first PM he shut down the Southern Border Command and seized control of security in the South to hand it to the cops, sending brutal Thai Chinese cops from Bangkok down there to take over key positions, replacing army officers who Prem had insisted should be Southerners who spend their whole careers there and were able to develop good contacts in all communities. The prize was all the smuggling income from oil, booze, fags, luxury cars etc coming over from Malaysia and people smuggling going in the other direction. The price paid by the South was devastating, as the Bangkok police thugs poured gasoline onto the flames of the Southern insurgency. igniting the whole region and leading to atrocities like Tak Bai. He has done remarkably well to regain as much power as he has only about a year since he was facing 10 years in jail. However, I agree with your sentiment that this is likely to be his swan song. He is out of touch now and doesn't have the same appeal with upcountry people or the young in general as he did and is unlikely to improve this much. Many of the die hard reds have deserted him over the dirty trick of doing a deal with the uncles and not standing by the coalition agreement with MFP. HIs daughter is not terribly bright and is nothing without him and is unlikely to develop much of a cult following of her own. Put her in a TV debate with someone like Pita and she would be shredded. But sadly Tony has enough power to totally destroy the cannabis industry.

Ok if the RD is not successful in getting the government to amend the RC to introduce global taxation, as they said was the ultimate goal when they introduced the reinterpretation which they said was only a stop gap solution. In that case becoming a non-tax resident would only exempt you from Thai tax on income earned in that year, regardless of whether it was remitted or not. However, there is a great deal of uncertainty about when or whether this can be done, as indeed there is about how the reinterpretation will be interpreted.

There is legislation that requires crypto exchanges to withhold tax on crypto gains at the rate of 15% but the last time I looked there was a notice on the Bitkub website saying that the RD has yet to make any moves to require enforcement of that by exchanges and that Bitkub has not yet been ordered to give the RD information about client accounts. No doubt this will all happen at some point but the the tax on gains, like many things here was not thought through and is difficult to implement. A reclaimable withholding tax on gross sales would have been a lot easier.

It's hard to say that gifting is not in the spirit of this legislation because what we are talking about is not legislation. It is a reinterpretation of a 1987 ruling that clearly interpreted the RC, the recent reinterpretation of which may well be held to be unlawful, if challenged in the Tax Court. I think it would be more accurate to say that the reinterpretation is not in the spirit of the legislation. The problem for the RD is that gift tax was introduced via a Royal Decree in 2015 as an amendment to the Revenue Code. There are some vagaries in the wording, as is normal in Thai legislation which likes to keep options open for contradictory interpretation in different cases, but nothing the RD DG can get her hooks into to attempt to amend with another legally dubious departmental order like P. 161/2566. It can only be amended by another Royal Decree, which can later be nullified by parliament, if deemed inappropriate to the emergency requirement to allow Royal Decrees to circumvent parliament, or by a proper Act of Parliament, involving public consultation and three readings in parliament. The previous treatment of gifting in the Revenue Code was that there was no tax on gifts but the definition of gifts was somewhat stringent and was the same for everybody. That definition was cut and pasted as the definition of gifts to people who are not spouses or ascendant or descendant blood relations. However, at the same time a new definition was introduced for gifts to spouses and ascendant and descendant relatives that is very broad, in fact, seems limitless. The actual text of Revenue Code amendment 40 of 2015 promulgated in the Royal Decree of 5 August 2015 signed by Gen Prayut is บุคคลธรรมดาที่ได้รับเงินได้จากการอุปการะหรือจากการให้โดยเสน่หาจากบุพการี ผู้สืบสันดาน หรือคู่สมรส. This means "Natural persons who receive money being support or gifts of affection to ascendant or descendant relations or spouses." There is nothing in the thus amended Revenue Code, as some ignorant, English monoglot commentators have suggested, that delineates how spouses may utilize these love gifts or anything, as some have even more ludicrously surmised, saying that gifts may only be made from income already subjected to Thai PIT. There is also nothing that says these gifts may not come from abroad. Indeed there is actually a RD case study that implies quite clearly that they can be made from abroad. There is also nothing much that can be found in publicly available information providing any ministerial or departmental regulations apart from the case study referred to above. However, the Civil & Commercial Code provides a definition of gifts that stipulates that a gift is irrevocable, except in certain circumstances delineated in the C&CC, such as bad faith of the recipient. There are several court rulings regarding the old definition of gifts, relating to a huge gift made by Thaksin's ex-wife to her brother. Since the old definition is now the RC definition of gifts to those who are not ascendant or descendant relations or spouses, these rulings can be considered as applicable to gifts to those not directly related. The rulings make clear that the gifts have to be made on a special occasion, such as a wedding. Birthdays are not mentioned and I would be extremely wary of making gifts to unmarried partners for this reason. So will the gifting rules in the RC be amended to close the loophole it appears to provide in the legally dubious P. 161/2566? Gift tax was introduced in tandem with inheritance tax and made effective on the same day. It is my belief that it will continue to be considered in tandem with IHT, rather than with the non-legislation of P. 161/2566. While Gift Tax was introduced via a Royal Decree, IHT was introduced as an Act of Parliament. Srettha actually ordered the RD to review IHT and Gift Tax soon after he became PM and a few weeks later it was reported that the RD had completed its review and made suggestions as to how to tighten up IHT and gift tax to generate more tax revenue but the details were not made public. Technically the government could do this with a Royal Decree but I feel that broadening the net of IHT which is an extremely unpopular tax in most countries through a Royal Decree would create a backlash and the government would think it safer to amend it through an Act of Parliament with token public consultation. Of course gift tax could be amended separately with a Royal Decree but I suspect they will continue to be considered together. The most likely outcome in my view is that thresholds for both IHT and gift tax will be reduced at some point. The tax rates could also be raised. If the gift tax threshold for spouses was halved to 10 million a year, that would still be fairly useful for most expats. A final point to note is that there is nothing to suggest that the spouses who receive tax exempt gifts should be Thai citizens. Foreign spouses are equally eligible.

I doubt it. It must be a huge amount of data for anyone to sift through. Thousands of foreign passport details, the vast majority of which are not tax residents and no way to distinguish them. I think the details are probably just kept for a while in case of money laundering or passing of forged currency. Then trashed. However, the RD must have the right to sift through it, if it feels the urge.

Good points. Another issue is that demand for speed pills went down and prices fell. When cannabis was illegal trade in speed pills and meth was far greater than the trade in cannabis. Police and influential persons involved in the yaba trade suffered. Speed pills and meth are much easier to produce than cannabis and are more compact and easier to smuggle and distribute. The government wants to give police and related criminals a double bonus - restore the profitability of the huge yaba trade and give them back their cannabis trade. The newly released despot has always favoured police complete with its all encompassing criminal enterprises.

With a tiny sample and loaded questions they can get opinion polls in Thailand to say whatever they want.

Before decriminalization there was copious supply of cheap brick weed grown by Thai politicians and other influential Thai people in Laos. It was low quality and grown with liberal amounts of toxic pesticides. Now the cheapo brickweed is apparently still flowing but there is also oversupply of better quality weed, both grown locally and smuggled from the US through lavish bribes paid to the customs dept. Where is it all supposed to go? The cheap brickweed was a staple product was always there and isn't going away. The supply of the better stuff will probably diminish and go up in price but won't go away entirely and customs officers still need money to pay for luxury cars, mansions and prestigious overseas schools and universities for their kids, while earning pitiful government salaries. Now police, who have been out in cold for two years, will also jump back in and seize back their control of distribution networks plus busting backpackers who buy their product on the islands. Another brilliantly thought through policy to appease the capriciousness of one elderly convicted criminal who has bought his way back into power.

I enquired about getting certified statements from a bank where I have an account in HK, not expecting anything. Two weeks later I finally got a reply saying that certified statements can be ordered for HK$50. So I will get one for Dec 2023.

I don't think they have the resources to step up resources. Their inspectors apparently have quite a backlog already.

Yes. Sorry for the typo.

Clearly things will be extremely chaotic in implementing a most likely unlawful re-interpretation by a bureaucrat without any supporting regulations or preparation whatsoever and involving the application of dozens of slightly different DTAs which RD officers have never had a reason to even look at, let alone fully understand how to implement them. I was giving some thought to what types of remittance will be easiest to handle and which will, in my humble opinion alone, be least likely to attract unwelcome attention from the RD. I give my own rankings. Others will have different opinions. 1. Documented loan from offshore company. 2. Gift to spouse. 3. Remittance from balance already in bank account prior to 1 Jan 2024. 4. Remittance of capital gains from stocks where no tax has been paid (this one is easy because no DTA tax credit is available - just pay Thai tax in full.) 4. Remittance of income from employment or pension claiming DTA tax credit. 5. Remittance of dividends or investment gains claiming DTA tax credits. 6. Remittance of rental income on a monthly or quarterly basis. (This one is a complete PITA because you have to file a mid year PND 94 with estimate of full year income as well as year end PND 90. In addition you will have to claim tax credits under DTAs. Probably best never to remit post 2024 property income, sell the property and/or leave Thailand, if you are dependent on rental income to survive in Thailand.) Just my ideas that don't constitute advice to anyone.

You can usually file on the first working day on the new year. I remember once online filing was delayed by about a week due to a glitch. No you can't file early but you can file late, if willing to pay the late fine which is not much. You can file online from abroad, if you can cope with the Thai language pop-ups in tiny print

Curiously useless to say there will be stringent new regulations in about a week's time without saying what they are.

A bit meaningless with no info about who is in the family and what are their sources of income.

Decriminalizationis not an initiative of the government. It is an order from Thaksin to his flunkies Somsak and Srettha who can’t survive 5 minutes in office without Thaksin’s support. No consultative or democratic processes involved. It was not Peru’s Thai policy until recently. Srettha assured the weed shop owners they could stay in business soon after he took office. The country is now ruled by one man.

If you are selective, you can easily dig up evidence to support your case whether you are pro or con. But what is clear in this situation is that all of these arguments are for show as the decision is up to one man alone, who owns the government, and he decided long ago he don't want no drugs, regardless of any evidence either way or economic growth or tax generation. Somsak and Srettha are just flunkies with no decision making power following orders. Cholnan tried to exercise a bit of independence at the Health Ministry and tighten up but not ban completely but got the axe for his pains. There is no consultative or democratic process here. Anutin will not put up any resistance because his boss have already made good money from this, particularly when prices were really high, and now he is getting even fatter and happier from his current government position. It's a shame for him that the Mary Jane train has to stop but he will certainly not rock the boat.