Dogmatix

There are transactional taxes for buying and selling property, regardless of the buyer or seller’s tax residence. It depends on appraisal value and how long the seller has owned the property. Generally around 3.5-5% of the appraisal price payable at the time of transfer at the land office. An individual seller doesn’t need to include in his tax return but corporate sellers do. Non-tax residents have no tax to pay on remitting the funds in to pay for the condo under current or future rules but a tax resident might have to under the current rule. If you rent it out, a non-tax resident or tax resident both pay Thai tax on the rental income which has to be done twice a year for rental income because that is considered a business done in personal name. Tax liability in this case or not, I guess the condo market is already taking a hit from the current rule, although developers are not complaining yet. Expats already tax resident but currently renting can’t be rushing to remit their savings to buy condos under the threat of a letter from the RD asking them to clarify the tax assessability of the remittance perhaps several years after the event. Retirees looking for a spot to retire may think twice about a place that was a tax haven for expats with no tax on offshore income since taxation started suddenly introducing a remittance tax and then announcing they will do global taxation 5 months after that. That is not to mention the introduction of LTR visas with tax exemption for remitted income with great fanfare. Then folk who have submitted all the detailed personal information to apply and paid the steep fees find that less than a year into their 10 year visas the government will blow up the tax exemption on remittances and tax all their offshore income whether it is remitted or not. That is not to mention the chaos of introducing the first rule precipitously without producing any clarification in the complex applications of 61 different DTAs and with no way to claim tax credits on tax return forms. They give the impression of being angry, xenophobic 5 year olds suddenly put in charge of the country’s tax system pulling this lever and that in quick succession to see if they can make foreign cash tumble out on to the ground like playing a one armed bandit and hoping for a quick jackpot.

The Post article didn’t say it would be effective from 2024, as stated here. It didn’t give a start date.

Could be a random pic of any couple blurred out

Those with overseas stock portfolios who are not liable to foreign capital gains tax will be bed and breakfasting just before it comes in, i.e. selling stocks with gains and buying them back to reset Thai taxable gains to zero. Some may be able to do the same with property by transferring to another name, although gift tax rules may apply. Thai gift tax rules presumably apply too but they have no way of knowing that a change of ownership of overseas property has taken place.

One of the major concerns is the same as for the remittance tax. That is that RD officials will demand the same type of documentation that is available in Thailand, i.e. foreign tax receipts certified by the tax authority, proper contract notes for stock transactions, official dividend receipts showing tax deductions etc. Otherwise they might just make you pay tax on the gross amount with no tax credit. If the proceeds from a stock sale of $100k is appears in the CRS report for your bank account and you have made a $50k profit but can't produce an official contract note for buying it 10 years earlier or for selling it, that's you paying 35% tax on the whole $100k. The Thai system is not the same as countries like the US and the UK where you file a self assessment and they accept that in the vast majority of cases without demanding documentation - only if they do an audit. In the Thai system you file your tax return online like that but a letter follows a few months later demanding original documents to support your income and documents in every case. If you file in person with an RD officer, which I have never done, I believe they will ask for the documents on the spot.

There is a thread on AN today saying this proposal has only just been approved by the cabinet. Next stage is a finance ministry order in the Royal Gazette that could happen soon. Then it will come into effect 15 days later. It is going to be in effect till the end of this year and will be reviewed to decide whether it will be extended or not. I guess a foregone conclusion that, no matter how much chaos it causes or how costly it is to collect amounts of tax under 10 baht, it will be hailed as great success and made permanent, assuming the government is still in power.

Thaksin can also change his mind quickly, e.g. he refused to agree with MFP on amnesty for lese majeste offenders when they were negotiating over a coalition but now he has been charged with LM himself PT is suddenly proposing amnesty for LM offenders. He is smart but impetuous and stubborn and doesn't always think things though. He could have avoided the first coup by just volunteering to pay quasi tax on the SHIN sale. He could have made a large donation equivalent to tax to the poor that he controlled and got huge brownie points from the reds and thwarted the yellows. He could have recovered the "tax" very fast by staying in power. He didn't think of that or was too stubborn and tight fisted to do it. Next he didn't think though the rice pledging scam or didn't listen to advice about it. He believed he could corner the global rice market by buying up Thai stocks with taxpayer money and storing it. But he used historic numbers over the prior periods when India had continuous droughts and floods that allowed very little exports. He didn't take into account the risk that India would have good weather and a bumper harvest which it did allowing it to export big time. Vietnam also had a good harvest that year and made big exports trashing the global price and leaving the Thai government sitting on huge losses, totally powerless to corner the rice market as he planned. He also didn't consider or care that he was putting his sister at grave risk of going to prison or having to flee. In spite of all this there was still money to be made from the fake sales to China that were actually pledged back to the Thai government. But whatever was made from that part, it is hard to argue that this scam was not a catastrophic failure on many levels. Several minions went to prison for taking fairly modest bribes to facilitate the scam and are still there. In the current context, I feel that Thaksin had already organised his overseas affairs long ago to avoid having to pay significant Thai tax as a result of this tax change.

He is a lawyer and says he doesn't know what steps are involved in amending laws in Thailand which is odd. On the other hand he is right to point out that the director general of the Revenue Department doesn't have the power to amend the Revenue Code herself. What her predecessor did in reinterpreting the law to introduce the remittance tax is highly questionable legally and could be challenged which may be a reason for the haste in moving on to try to amend the law. Since he was unable to inform what steps are involved, here they are. 1 Cabinet approval 2 Vetting of the proposed draft by the 'Council of State, the government's official legal advisor. 3 a, Royal Decree amending the Revenue Code. OR 3 b. Bill to amend the Revenue Code. 4. Three readings of the bill in parliament. 5. Announcement in Royal Gazette of Act to amend the Revenue Code. The Royal Decree is supposed to be used for urgent legislation that can't wait for the parliamentary process and is frequently used for fairly minor tax amendments. An amendment like this is a major change and it would be appropriate to use the full parliamentary process. However, Thaksin sponsored administrations in the past have been quite notorious for using Royal Decrees for non-urgent legislation when an Act of parliament would have been appropriate. It is a bit of a risk because a Royal Decree can theoretically be challenged and overturned in parliament later with negative consequences for the government that issued it. However, if you very confident in your parliamentary majority, you might not care about this risk. They could argue that collecting more tax is a matter of great urgency. Hopefully the parliamentary process would be used to follow democratic norms and legitimize a major change but no guarantees with this government.

I agree with you that it feels like a serious of electric shocks and you didn't even mention, if you are a medical cannabis user or not. You are now living under a Thaksin regime. Authoritarianism doing things in a hurry with great confidence, often taking legislative shortcuts, ignoring democratic principals, without thinking them through or worrying about any unintended consequences that can be mopped later or blamed on someone else. With a dose of xenophobia thrown in.

A practical idea but I doubt they could get their minds around that because they have to base everything on what is in the Revenue Code from which that would be a huge departure. They would also think there are people with income massively above that they wouldn't want to let off the hook. The UK introduced something like that for non-doms who are foreigners living in the UK with exemption from overseas income. They told them they could either go on to full UK global tax or pay a flat rate of tax on a notional quite high income which meant they didn't have to file anything else, except on remittances. But the non-dom scheme has all but been blown up by the Sunak government. Essentially the reality is that they are not going to carve out exceptions for a group of foreigners they consider to be making only a marginal contribution. If they do, it will be along the line of the LTR visa to attract multimillionaires and then change the rules on them a couple of years later.

Here is what looks like a fairly accurate translation of an article I found in Thai in Today. It also contains the bit about a billion baht platform and I have found something posted in Thai on Pantip.com with the same wording. So I take back what I say about The Thaiger and the Post conflating the billion baht platform from another story about taxing mulitnationals but it is still unclear to me what is meant by the platform. It seems hardly likely that it refers to individuals earning a billion baht plus who will have no problem avoid most of this tax anyway. Also the Thai version refers to "platforms" earning a billion plus, not individuals. Perhaps it is to do with catching out local tax dodgers who are selling stuff on e-commerce platforms at home or abroad. Hopefully there will be follow up statements that will clarify this and other details. I still cannot find an original official Thai source for any of this, such as Thai PBS. Apart from the obvious fact that all revenue, customs and excise heads are under huge pressure from the Thaksin administration to help pay for the digital wallet, one reason for wanting to move on to global taxation so soon after introducing the remittance tax may be that that reinterpretation of a 1985 ruling is questionable legally and could easily be challenged. But if proper legislation is on the way, that could head off legal challenges.

I know the Thaksin govt is putting the RD under huge pressure to get more tax from anywhere it can but, having just reinterpreted the law to tax post 2024 remittances, you would think they would be well advised to make that work first. There is still nowhere to claim tax credits for foreign tax on the tax return forms, nor any reference to them in the Revenue Code. Application of DTAs is a very complex subject and usually involves hundreds of pages of regulations which they have obviously not intention of doing. They started off saying this was aimed mainly at Thais investing overseas and for fairness but have dropped all that pretence already. Wealthy Thais can still easily avoid paying tax on current overseas income under this proposal because then can do their investments through family office companies in tax efficient jurisdictions that don't tax capital gains or dividends like Hong Kong and Singapore. That way they only have to pay Thai tax, if they decide to pay some of the income out in dividends, and can otherwise continue to accumulate their wealth tax free. I am sure Thaksin has a whole army of these family offices working for him overseas. Given that wealthy Thais have an easy way round this, it is extremely questionable that it will generate significant incremental tax revenue. As with the current remittance tax, the wealthy retirement sector that they seem keen to attract, will take a hit. It blows up the LTR visa tax exemption on remittances as the LTR visa holders will have to pay tax on their overseas income before they remit it, rendering the Royal Decree exemption redundant.

That is correct. Under the 2024 system if you remitted less that 120k of income from employment or occupational pension or less than 60k from other sources and had no local income, there is no need to file. Or probably in practice, if you have no income over the threshold. You could easily have enough savings in Thailand or income from Thai dividends taxed at a flat rate of 10% that don't need to be declared.

Since gains on funds are tax exempt, this will be a way to hold bitcoin tax free under global taxation. However, I am confused by the article that says it is an ETF (exchange traded fund) that will be restricted to high net worth investors. How will they stop low net worth investors from buying it after the initial distribution to HNWs? Is it really going to be a open ended mutual fund that is only tradable through the fund manager and not an ETF at all? If anyone can buy it once it is listed, there is no much point restricting the initial distribution. If only HNW's can buy it on the exchange, liquidity will be a problem and it might trade at large discounts to the bitcoin it holds which would make it fail. Curious as to what the real plan is which is not apparent from the press release.

The Thai online version is quite hard to use, as it not made user simple because they have to base it on the sections of the Revenue Code and messages keep popping up in tiny Thai characters telling you something is wrong. I doubt they will do an English online version, as they don't allow you to use the English hard copy versions which are only for guidance and often full of mistakes. The most common mistake is that they don't bother to update the English version when a new clause is added and just cut and paste the old one for a year or two but change the date, so the enumeration of the English doesn't match. I have spotted this several times over a few years. For most Americans that file fully to the IRS, this should not result in much extra tax but for non-US people with investments offshore structured to be non-taxable, this will be devastating. What is quite unfair, in a sense, is that domestic Thai investments have a very benign tax regime. Capital gains on Thai stocks are tax free. Dividends are taxed at a flat rate of 10% which does not affect your tax rate. Sales of Thai property are taxed on a transaction basis which also doesn't affect your overall tax rate and is usually works out at much less than, if gains were just lumped in with your income.

I expect they plan to use the CRS data. You have an overseas bank account and they receive a CRS report that says income and inflows into that account were x thousand widgets last year. You receive a letter from the RD asking you to clarify how much of that inflow was income. Doesn't mean that will be done efficiently but I guess that is what they have in mind. They have been getting AI on board to track down local tax dodgers and should be able to devise platforms to use AI to sift through CRS reports.

Actually Sheryl there is a requirement to file a tax return, if you have assessable income from employment of 120k a year and income from other sources of 60k and the penalty for not filing is 2k. I seem to recall this was introduced a few years back in the Prayut govt. However, there is no known case of low income people being fined, if they didn't owe any tax. The RD has an ongoing initiative to track down people who should be paying tax and write to them to tell them to file tax returns which they claim to be quite successful. But there has been no mention of tracking down people who should have filed nil tax returns but didn't and I think they would be wary of a backlash, plus the cost would not be worth it to try to collect a 2k fine from people who can't afford that. The latest stats showed that several million more people filed tax returns than actually paid tax but many of those were probably claiming tax refunds.

Can do online but it is only in Thai and they give a week's grace after the 31 March deadline, then shut down the online filing and force you to do a hard copy filing. There is no clear logic to this, if folk are willing to pay the 200 baht fine to file online late. I was caught by this, thinking I could file online late. The result was I put myself to hours and hours of unnecessary work to claim tax credits from my Thai dividends that was worth a few hundred baht refund and had to compute the tax myself. Filing online you can opt to have the TSD stock registry feed all your dividend details direct to the RD. Click on an icon and in less than a minute all the dividends are shown with the tax credits neatly calculated.

No. Unfortunately the Thaiger and Bkk Post both combined bits from two different press releases using the same phaseology about a billion baht platform. The billion baht platform came from an unrelated press release from the finance ministry confirming that, following a cabinet resolution on 27 May the government will initiate legislation to impose a top up tax on subsidiaries of multinationals in Thailand that use transfer pricing to reduce their Thai tax rates. This is following the EU which imposes this tax on MNCs with total revenues of 750 million euros plus. A billion baht is a lot less than this but it was not clear, if the RD meant global turnover or turnover in Thailand. Thaiexaminer put out a far more coherent article here but they don't attribute quotes and it is not clear, if the commentary if from their own reporter or indirectly quoting Revenue Department officials. What is important here is that Thaiexaminer claimed they want to impose global tax from 2025 which would be a tall order, given that it has not yet been approved by the cabinet and would have to be vetted by the Council of State and go through 3 readings in parliament, unless they choose the short cut route of a Royal Decree which is risky as parliament can theoretically overturn that later, since it has the right to review Royal Decrees retroactively, given the decrees bypass parliament. Since I can't find the original press release or comment from the Revenue Dept or finance ministry, I can't say how accurate this article is, particularly in the planned timeline. https://www.thaiexaminer.com/thai-news-foreigners/2024/06/05/thai-taxman-now-plans-to-tax-foreigners-on-all-income-whether-it-is-remitted-to-the-kingdom-or-not/

This is not the case. Thai shopfronts on Shopee and Lazada have been drop shipping from China direct to Thai customers for a long time. I can't say if these shopfronts are owned by Thais or Chinese but they save the cost keeping stock and don't have to pay Thai import duty and VAT, or didn't. The whole premise is nonsense. They want to benefit Thai Chinese middle to import the low end products, pay import duty and VAT on them, finance the cost of stocking and unsold products and mark up 30% over the landed cost to sell to naive Thai consumers. But it will still be cheaper for the Thai consumers to buy from China, either through Thai shopfronts or Aliexpress and just pay 7% VAT instead a Thai Chinese importer's mark-up. Also everything will be backed up hopelessly at the post office and customs, if they have to open every single package and charge 3.5 baht on a 50 baht item. The cost of the collecting small amounts of VAT will greatly exceed the tax collected. From something else I read the VAT is only thin end of the wedge. They are not charging import duty yet because Thai import duties are at different rates and that would slow things up even more but they are considering a uniform import duty rate for small packages. If they make that 10%, they would be adding 117.7% to each package as the VAT is applied to the landed cost including import duty. . They can also add in an imputed postage cost to the landed cost.

Constant stories in Thai media about expectations for low end chinese tourism reflects desperation and lack of proper planning and economic management going back 20 years to maintain Thailand's competitiveness in sectors other than tourism. Now they are reaping the arid harvest from this ant and grasshopper fable and still doing nothing to enhance education and R&D or support targeted industries other than low end tourism for a better economy in 20 years when they will be lamenting that their low end tourism offerings are now longer attractive to wealthier Chinese who have moved on to higher quality destinations. When Thailand was getting double digit growth they called it the lucky country and sat back and ate all the seeds instead of planting for the future. How sad!

With global taxation, you would have to pay Thai tax on income before you gifted it to your wife. I am assuming there would be no longer any remittance tax. So no need to gift to wife, if already declared for Thai tax, you could remit it to yourself with no more tax to pay.

Thanks. If correct, that is certainly worrying. We should wait for direct quotes from the RD or at least corroboration from Thai media to confirm that is their intention. Getting it approved by the cabinet, vetted by the council of state and passed three readings in parliament would require some prioritising to get it enacted this year to make it effective on 1 Jan 2025. They could attempt a short cut by using a Royal Decree to avoid parliamentary scrutiny and process but there is some risk in that, as it could be overturned later in parliament. For comparison the finance ministry announced that VAT would start being charged on all postal packages from May but to date the order has not yet come back from the Council of State and that is just a Customs Department Order, not legislation.

Circulated by an expat tax advisor this afternoon. We are bringing to your immediate attention a significant development reported in the Bangkok Post today regarding potential amendments to the Thai Revenue Department's tax law. The article reports that Kulaya Tantitemit, the Revenue Department's Director-General, indicated that taxes may be extended to worldwide income, not just remittances to Thailand. If implemented, it would represent a significant extension of the changes announced last year concerning the taxation of foreign-sourced income in Thailand. You can read the article here. Our sources at the Revenue Department have confirmed high-level discussions on this issue, indicating that approval is likely. However, there is yet to be an indication of when any changes might take place. We stress that this is not an official Revenue Department policy change announcement. We will continue to keep you informed of any updates.

There is an article in Thansettikij that says that about the mulinational tax that was approved by the cabinet on 27 May but doesn't mention the plan to amend PIT to be a global tax for which there is mention of which I am aware that it has been put to the cabinet yet. https://www.thansettakij.com/business/economy/597774 . Even in that case there is a hint that the BOI will resist that timeline. Here is a google translate of the whole Thansettikij article. Can you post a link to the article you saw? Treasury prepares to collect taxes on multinational companies Collect additional income of 20 billion per year economic base 04 June 2024 | 1:21 p.m. Deputy Finance Minister expects that within 2 weeks the Cabinet will give the green light to tax multinational companies. Supporting driving additional revenue into the country by 20 billion baht per year, confident that the law will be completed this year. It came into effect in 2025. Mr. Chulaphan Amornvivat, Deputy Minister of Finance, revealed that progress is being made on the issuance of the Act (Act) to collect the Global Minimum Tax or to require businesses to pay a minimum tax rate of 15%. According to an agreement with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: OECD) is currently being considered by the Finance Minister in preparation for submission to the Cabinet (Cabinet) within 2 weeks. On May 27th There is a meeting of the Economic Cabinet. We discussed the matter. The Board of Investment or BOI has expressed concern that it will not be able to proceed within the time frame. Because there are many economic issues that must be given importance, however, he answered the meeting that it is currently in the process. and confirmed that it will be able to be implemented within the same time frame, that is, it can come into effect in 2025 and by the end of 2024, the process of amending the law must be completed. “We confirm that The legislative process will remain within the same time frame. By the short-term law He will be the one who will sit as president. This matter is beneficial for the country. Because it will help to collect additional revenue of not less than 20 billion baht per year.” The concept of the Global Minimum Tax is that if taxes are paid in the country where affiliates do business at a rate lower than the minimum tax rate of 15%, the country where the parent company is located can collect additional taxes on top of the difference between the rates paid. and the minimum tax rate The scope of taxation considers multinational companies with total revenues of 750 million euros or more. As for the idea of bringing back long-term stock mutual funds (LTF) again, At this time, it has not yet been concluded whether or not it will be reused or not. However, information from the said fund has now been studied. By the economic cabinet meeting They discussed the need to stimulate the economy. Between now and the end of the year, measures must be taken. To take care of the economy. As for whether to bring out LTF or not, this part depends on policy. and at the same time Now there are Thai ESG funds which still have options. The government may expand the said fund. to stimulate investment. Must wait to see details of the policy again.