Dogmatix

No other car. She drove at the other pick up, kept her foot on the floor until she could see it had cleared the parapet, then braked to make sure she didn't follow it over.

Cannabis farmers are pushing for decriminalisation because legalisation made the price drop precipitously. I am not sure how recriminalisation will put their hash cookies back in the jar and get prices back up again. Definitely won't do much for government tax revenue collection.

A male prisoner, who is also facing a lese majeste charge but mysteriously not indicted for it, appeared in great health when he arrived at the prison to start serving his sentence but was air lifted hospital the first. The Corrections Department and the government said that all prisoners are treated equally. So why wasn't Bung flew to hospital before she showed any symptoms, just like that male prisoner?

Unlikely.

That is possible but my experience with the RD is that they request documentation on anything in the tax return they don't already have direct inputs for. So it would be a departure from their current practice to let declared foreign source income go by on the nod. It could be that they will take the approach you suggest for practical reasons for the first few years. Another issue will be foreigners who show up at RD officers to let the staff do their tax returns for them. Unless there is direct order not to request any supporting documentation, it will be hard to restrain these folk from demanding it.

Perhaps both!

Conscripts, prisoners and people in some dirt poor African countries will enjoy eating this delicious product like it was an aged Talisker malt whisky. For sure the successful sale of this rare product at a premium to fresh rice will be used to reduce Yingluck's fine for causing economic damage to the country when she comes home as a free woman in the near future.

That would be the case with a UK tax return reporting foreign income for global taxation. But current Thai tax returns done online compute the tax payable after deductions for you and foreign source income must be entered in the spaces provided under the various sections of the Revenue Code that the income arose. Thus pension income must be entered in the section for income from employment. Once you have done that, the system will add it to the total of assessable income. It is possible that new forms will be designed with lengthy sections dealing with foreign source income and spaces to apply for tax credits incorporating the nuances of all 61 DTAs. In this case they might ask taxpayers to enter gross pre-tax foreign source income without taxing the gross amount. But I think this is a fantasy and for now you should only declare assessable income.

Those Carl Turner podcasts are good in parts like the curate's egg but the bits that are wrong or misleading are worrying. In one of them he claimed that the RD gets a quarterly print out of all credit card expenditures on foreign cards by all Thai tax residents. I checked with two overseas banks where I have accounts and they said that was complete nonsense and it is clearly not something reported under CRS. He replied to a request for a source by sending the details of CRS reporting which made clear it was not true. In the podcast about the UK DTA the expert said you would have to declare the gross pre-tax UK taxed income on your Thai tax return and claim the tax credit. This is clearly wrong because Thailand is taxing on a remittance basis. So why would you declare gross UK income to the RD? If you do that they will tax the gross amount and you will pay Thai tax on the UK tax paid before getting a tax credit. I would think you should declare on the amount remitted to Thailand net of UK tax and claim the tax credit against that. The expert is obviously used to global taxation systems where you have to declare the gross amount because all income is taxable whether it is remitted or not. He was apparently unable to adjust his example for the remittance basis. I stopped listening after hearing several serious errors in these podcasts and finding nothing of value that I didn't already know. But as I said, they are good in parts, if you are able to steer clear of the toxic parts that might do you financial damage.

Don't take this as gospel but my take would be: 1. I think your gains in 2024 are Thai assessable income because P. 161/2566 specifies foreign income earned in any prior year without limitation, although that was later reduced to any year starting from 1 Jan 2024 by P. 162/2566. This is one of the big problems of a remittance tax on foreign earnings without detailed regulations. If this reinterpretation survives long term, folk could be looking paying Thai tax on 2024 earnings in 2044. Anyway it looks as if you would have to claim a tax credit for tax paid in 2024, if you remit the gains in 2026 or 2027. Many will not have paid any foreign tax on capital gains on stocks in countries where they are not tax resident. Most jurisdictions are keen on charging withholding tax on dividends but even the US doesn't tax non-residents on cap gains. 2. There should be no Thai tax to pay on investments that resulted in losses or break even but how your prove this, if the RD queries the remittance may be a different story. 3. The 100k principle should not be taxable in Thailand. What you describe is the UK system for non-doms, i.e. the UK taxman requires that you classify remittances based on the highest tax liability first. So the interest which is taxable on remittance is deemed remitted until it is all gone. Then the tax exempt principle. That is in the UK regs but Thailand has no regs. So nothing to stop you saying you remitted the tax exempt principle first and left the interest to earn more interest. RD officials will not be able to cope with this because they are trained to cite clauses in the Revenue Code to support their decisions. In this case, they have nothing when the taxpayer argues that he remitted pre-2024 principal and never intends to remit the interest. If the case went to the tax court, the judges would either have to make up a law though a ruling or say it is up to the taxpayer to decide whether he remitted principle or income. You can easily see what a mess this is going to lead to with Thai investors who have been actively investing overseas for many years, since the Thai economy and stock market went ex-growth, due to incompetent and corrupt economic management for years and they could see NASDAQ always going through the roof. But this is pure Thaksinism. Issue a decree or an order to do what you want to do without bothering to think it though, completely bypassing parliament and the democratic process and let minions mop up the mess and try to make it work. If it can't be made to work, it was done by bureaucrat,. not the government and he can take the blame.

I think it's the thin end of the wedge. VAT will go up to 10% sooner or later and I saw some official quoted saying they are looking at a unified import duty rate for low cost items. I think that is the reason they have not imposed duty as well at this stage. It is too complicated to impose duty when you have to go through the complex HS codes to figure out what the tax rate is which could be anywhere between 5% and 40%. They will force the big vendor sites to charge 7% VAT and pay it to them. When that's up and running, they may decide on uniform 10% duty for all items up 1,500 or $40. Then with VAT up to 10%, there will be an add on of 20%, just like Brits pay in VAT. I think we will see that within 5 years. 7% is not so painful on cheap goods but 20% is more so.

When it becomes effective, Thai consumers should run a campaign for everyone to order as many dirt cheap items from China as they can afford in one go to overload the system and make the government reconsider. 555

That is the point. They are not protecting any Thai businesses because nearly all the low end China products cannot be made in Thailand. Thai middlemen cannot do much business importing them and selling them on at a mark up either because Thais will still buy them direct from China via Lazada, Aliexpress, Ebay and Shopee even if they have to pay VAT, as VAT only is cheaper than paying a mark-up plus VAT. I, myself, no longer bother looking for small items imported from China in Homepro or Central. They have poor selections and invariably don't have what I want. If I want screws or nails or a little pouch or something I order direct from China, often low ticket items at less 100 baht with direct cheap shipping subsidized by China. It is pretty obvious that the cost of collecting 7% VAT on these low cost items is going to be less than the cost collecting it.

Your vitamins might not get through at all, if they have to check every parcel, since they need a Thai FDA import licence and the only way to get this is to apply to the FDA as an importer and pay all the under the table fees. Each product need a separate import licence. So far they have turned a blind eye to small parcels of supplements.

Historically that was the case but the Prayut government introduced an amendment that requires tax filing for employees, which should technically include pensioners, who have assessable over 120k pa. after deductions - less for non-employment income. At the time the government said the requirement was to allow the government to identify and assist low income earners with reverse taxation, i.e. pay them welfare instead of taxing them. This was obviously BS as there have been no moves in this direction and the real motivation for processing millions of zero tax returns remains unclear. Contrary to paying reverse tax to the needy, one of the last moves on welfare by the Prayut government was to axe the old age allowance of 600 to 1,000 a month depending on age. Interior Minister General Anuphong said it was ridiculous for people like him with decent government pensions to receive the old age allowance and that welfare for the elderly should be on a selective means tested basis. It was pointed out to the minster by journalists that he was actually ineligible for the old age allowance because he is in receipt of a government pension. So much for policy due diligence which I fear is also seriously lacking in this remittance tax initiative.

BTW I don't think RD audits for PIT that doesn't include business income are very common. Touch wood I have never had one and have not heard of anyone who had one other than a foreigner who ceased filing tax returns and they wanted to know why. Audits are a lot more common for companies ( I have had one) and possibly sole trader businesses which are filed as PIT but are a lot simpler than company tax returns because most traders opt for a flat rate of expense deductions to avoid having to get audited accounts done. The MO of the RD vis a vis PIT is that after receiving your tax return, they will write to you asking for documents to clarify any income declared or deductions claimed that they don't already have an electronic record of and some that they do, eg PAYE salary and Thai dividends. So it is not like, say UK tax, where you make your declaration and they don't normally ask for any further evidence but may come back and do an audit. The Thai RD is doing a mini audit when they receive the tax returns. The problem is of course that P. 161/2566 and P. 162/2566 plus all the DTAs can potentially cause serious disruption to the RD simple process of verification of Thai income and deductions and will potentially overload the system. That is not to mention the obligation to be placed on RD officers to try to figure out the correct tax filing of expat pensioners for them, as 99.9% will be unable to file for themselves online like most Thais do nowadays. Whether the snap judgements of inexperienced RD officers doing the filings for expats will be accepted or whether the next level up that reviews them will demand extensive additional documents to review remains to be seen.

Most of the DTAs I have seen allow the country of residence to tax all pensions including home country state pensions (with the exemption of government pensions paid to former government employees). The only one I have seen that doesn't allow general state pensions to be taxed in the country of residence is the US treaty. Someone posted that the Dutch treaty says state pensions "shall" be taxed in Holland, which may be true but I haven't looked it up to verify this. Many people get confused with the DTA wording that says "may be taxed" in the country of origin and believe this means that the country of origin has the sole right to the tax. This is only true if the wording is "shall be taxed", as in the US treaty vis a vis Social Security, rather than "may be taxed". That means that Thailand has the option to tax foreign state pensions or not and the RD has already declared its intention to tax all pensions that it can (subject to DTA tax credits). This was affirmed in the Swiss embassy interview. Of course, since nothing has been written down, there could easily be a Thai flip flop, when they understand the cost and trouble of collecting paltry amounts of tax from expat pensioners who are unable to do their own tax returns.

PIT on domestic cap gains is almost unheard of in Thailand. As you mention gains on SET listed stocks traded through the market and domestic funds are exempt. As far as securities are concerned that leaves gains on sales of unlisted equities and gains on private off market sales of SET stocks which are not things the average PIT taxpayer ever home. There is no cap gains tax on Thai property because there is a formula to work out taxes on property which have to paid at the Land Office. The tax computation doesn't take into account the capital gains and it is considered separately from PIT, so that you can sell as many billions of baht worth of property at a huge profit as you like and won't increase your top marginal tax rate. This means that the average RD officer has little or know knowledge of Thai cap gains, let alone how they are treated in foreign tax jurisdictions or what tax credits they may qualify for for.

The OP doesn't mention what is new. Thai banks have had due diligence in place for new accounts for many years already.

I doubt Prayut or Pravit are dope smokers and both were probably not in favour of the decriminalization. It was a policy of Anutin's BJP which Prayut and Pravit tolerated. Neither ever said anything in favour or against to my knowledge.

Obviously purely Thaksin's idea. Puppet PM Srettha didn't mention anything about a policy to completely decriminalize. He talked about stricter control, as already advocated by Anutin from the beginning and told weed shop owners they would still be allowed to continue in business. Now Thaksin is out of hospital and taken off the neck brace, he is showing his fangs and taking control of everything, based on the non-existent mandate of a lost election.

As far as we know, the application of DTAs in Thailand, apart from some odd PIT cases of which only one is recorded on the RD website which very straightforward, has been mainly related to corporate income tax. Large Thai companies do business overseas through subsidiaries which are taxed in the countries they are domiciled and not subject to Thai tax. Cases where Thai tax arises for a Thai corporate would be, amongst other things, capital gains realised on the sale of shares in an overseas affiliate, dividends from an overseas affiliate, capital gains or rental income from overseas property, although they are more likely to own property through overseas subsidiaries. Most of these situations are likely to be isolated tax events where is quite clear how much has been paid and needs to be credited under a DTA. For example Thai company A sells a building in the the UK and pays capital gains tax on the gain. It also receives dividends from portfolio investments in the US. Withholding tax is likely to have been deducted from the US dividends and and UK capital gains tax (payable on UK property owned by offshore companies since 2016) has to be filed and paid before the normal tax year end AFAIK. So it is very clear how much overseas tax has already been paid in these too cases. Contrast someone with various sources of income from the UK, pensions,. rental income, dividends etc. They can show how much UK PIT they paid in the tax year but they can't show how much tax they paid on the individual income sources they might want to remit to Thailand because their income is taxed as a whole after deduction of allowances. So if that person remits his UK state pension only, the RD could argue that it wasn't taxed at all because the UK allowance was applied to it. I have a feeling the senior RD staff would want to do that in cases where someone doesn't remit their total annual foreign income in one Thai tax year. The RD could argue that you remit income against your allowances and lowest marginal rates of tax first to be taxed at your highest Thai marginal rates of tax. But how are individual RD officers in the sticks going to figure all this out when most of them have no knowledge of foreign tax codes or DTAs and can hardly write their own names in English and the RD is unwilling or unable to issue any regulations about it, while the Revenue Code doesn't even acknowledge the DTAs exist, let alone stipulate how they should be applied.

What the OP meant was that visa free travel to the Schengen area is on the Thai wish list but won't be granted by the EU. Just trying to get political credit for asking, then blame the EU for not agreeing to something the Thai side knew it was not going to get from the getgo. Germany used to allow 3 month visas to Thais prior to Schengen,, which kept the German bordellos stacked with Thai women, but the other EU countries would not allow this to continue. It would be great to get this but it is probably still decades away. EU countries have nothing much to gain - maybe 3 months transit visa to Thailand as opposed to 1 month, as Germans used to get.

Again! Baan Kruay was under water in the 2011 floods. Nothing done about flooding since then despite a huge emergency budget awarded to itself by the Yingluck government - probably safely in offshore accounts.

Can you cite any references for this this or is it just your own assumption?