Dogmatix

I think we can assume that there were two press releases that were posted together in some source listing a number of items of news from the finance ministry: 1) following up on the cabinet resolution on 27 May to amend the RC pursuant to the OECD minimum tax of 15% tax for MNCs; and 2) from the RD and 2) that the RD is going ahead with the plan to amend the RC to introduce global taxation announced alongside the reinterpretation last year. That was mentioned in various sources including Pracharat Thurakit https://www.prachachat.net/finance/news-1432180?fbclid=I The relevant part of the Pracharat article is at the time that order P. 162/2566 was issued is roughly translated thus: However, recently there was a report from the Revenue Department that It has been concluded that In the first phase, there will be relief in the case of income generated abroad before 2024, if it is not imported within the same tax year as the year in which the income was generated. It will not have to be checked. Because finding document evidence will be difficult. It is considered to be releasing the ghost. “Income generated before 2024 will use the old rules. That is, if it is not imported in the same tax year. The department will not collect it. As for imports across the year, they are no longer collected according to the original criteria. But income generated abroad from January 1, 2024 onwards, imported at any time will be subject to tax. In the future, Section 41 of the Revenue Code will be amended to immediately calculate tax in the year in which income is earned abroad,regardless of whether money is brought into the country or not, however, amending the law may take 1-2 years. The Post may now be using AI to translate and summarise Thai news stories which would be a problem for farang subeditors who have no clue what the original stories meant. Either the Post must have used the flawed Thaiger article as its source for AI paraphrasing or vice versa. I leave that to your imagination. The implications are somewhat scary. Expats and Thais with investments overseas are in the middle of grappling with very unclear rules regarding last year's reinterpretation. Now another spanner is potentially being thrown into the works, if the RD is now pushing ahead with the final phase of global taxation. It would help taxpayers plan their investments and lives, if they could give a reasonable timeline, of course taking into account that they won't know how long it will take for amendments to pass through parliament. They are talking about the MNC 15% thing being enacted by 2025 which may be possible, if not controversial politically. For global tax 2026 might be more realistic to get through 3 parliamentary readings and would give taxpayers a bit more time to adjust (and leave the country) but who knows? They might try to do one amendment act to cover everything.

Right. The billion baht platform comment refers to multinationals that the RD will target to pay their fair share of tax on revenue earned in Thailand, following the OECD's minimum of 15% corporate tax initiative. Ebay is not a good one to target because the sellers are not multinationals even if they sell multinationally. Amazon would be better, as it sells as a principle and the sales contracts are I believe with Amazon, even though supplied by a third party seller. Then of course there are the services suppliers like Netflicks and Facebook who have been pursued for tax by the EU. In addition there are multinationals with a presence in Thailand that may import products or components to Thailand via lower tax countries and overstate costs to Thailand to reduce tax bills in Thailand. Finally it can be applied to Thai multinationals that are saving tax in the same way and can be charged top up tax in Thailand, as can happen to EU multinationals in their EU HQ countries.

It is not a ploy. It is misreporting by the Post and the Thaiger but that doesn't mean global taxation is not coming at some stage. So your exit plan is probably a wise precaution.

I don't think this can be considered confirmation by the Thaiger as they same to have repeated the same the story with the same mistake in it conflating global PIT with the corporate income tax bill that was approved by the cabinet on 27 May and reported by the Nation. There are no Thai sources confirming the global personal tax story, although it may well be true, as the RD announced an intention to do that in September last year. If and when global taxation does come, it will torpedo the exemption from remittance tax in the LTR visas because there will no longer be any remittance tax.

if and when global taxation is legislated by Thailand, it will torpedo the LTR tax exemption from remittance tax which will be made irrelevant, since there would no longer be a remittance tax. The best they could hope for in compensation is a 17% flat tax which the government is offering on some of its new long stay visas and applies to some LTR visa types in respect of Thai source income. The Srettha government is coming out with its own visas and is not going to feel any concern for the relatively small numbers who have bought into the Prayut government's LTR visa scheme. Anyway offering anyone a total exemption from income tax is unlikely, as the RD would argue it goes against the concepts of the OECD which the Srettha government wants to apply for membership of. The BOI which administers LTR is already being forced into a corner to scrap BOI corporate tax privileges, which are frowned on by the OECD, as the RD prepares the legislation to tighten up on global corporate tax.

The Nation refers to a legal amendment to the Revenue Code that was decided at a cabinet meeting on 27 May to try to enforce the OECD standard of a minimum of 15% tax on multinationals. This means that tax authorities can assess tax on earnings booked in overseas subsidiaries by transfer pricing to avoid tax in their jurisdiction and that tax authorities on parent companies can impose a balancing tax to make the overall tax rate at least 15%. In addition it is a problem for BOI corporate income tax exemptions, long considered as dumping by foreign governments, as they will have to be scrapped. The Post and the Thaiger have both published the same story with the same gaping error in it conflating this proposed tax amendment with another one to introduce global taxation for individual taxpayers. Perhaps there was a separate announcement that the RD will be attempting to introduce global taxation in the same amendment bill or another one. I have been unable to locate a Thai language source to corroborate the part of the story about global PIT, although the RD made clear this was its ultimate intention when P. 161/2566was announced last year. There are Thai sources corroborating the story about global corporate income tax. It is possible that the RD will attempt to introduce global PIT at the same time.\ but both will require proper amendments to the RC involving 3 readings in parliament. I would expect a move toward full global taxation to be considered major news and to be reported in Thai language media.

Get them in with all kinds of extravagant promises from the BOI and then, change the tax laws on them without providing any details as it is all left to the discretion of of individual revenue officers. That's the way to do it.

A rather confusing story but 200 cigarettes can be imported to Thailand duty free. So I guess this was a genuine extortion scam. At about that time there were cases of Excise Department officers lurked outside departures at Suvarmabhumi Airport and demanding to search luggage. They had found out that Brits were coming via the Gulf and loading up with hundreds of cigarettes at the duty free. Then they would put them into their check in baggage to fly back to the UK, hoping that that UK customs officers would not make them open their check in bags. If they bought them on the way home, they would have them in carry one bags and customs watch to see, if passengers put stuff in their check in bags in the baggage halls. The Thai excise men sometimes took the people they caught downtown to the Excise Department office or to the local police station. The Excise Department's job is to collect local excise taxes, not import duties. The conclusion was that some of these scamsters were genuine Excise officers moonlighting with their bosses and local police in on the scam. I think it stopped after many people complained of extortion but it may still be going on or may have been revived.

It is just that they don't see the point of giving it to older men or that it doesn't work on older men?

You can now come without a visa for 60 day business assignments but they haven't changed the working of aliens legislation. So you can still be busted for working without a work permit. Seems to be a trap. You can also be forced by pay tax for the time spent on a business assignment. It happened to me years ago when I was new to Thailand. Immigration gouged me for 40,000 baht income tax based on the officer's assumption from looking at Thai stamps in my passport that I was working on several visits of a few days each and his personal assessment of what he thought my salary might be, which I just agreed to because it was much less than I was earning. I needed to get a NON-B visa from him, so I had little choice but to given in to the extortion and my company was decent enough to reimburse me. I got some sort of receipt, which at least facilitated the claim from my company, but doubt that the cash was forwarded to the Revenue Department.

Nowadays with a few exceptions it mainly means rich Thai Chinese kids, rich Chinese Chinese kids, a few look krung and kids of foreign teachers studying for free. The international element is mainly in the teachers and the syllabus.

Definitely not a good idea to close bank accounts, if you don’t even stay long enough to be tax resident. They are making it harder to open accounts and you might find you need one in future but can’t get one. When they first introduced money laundering laws banks blocked the opening of accounts by foreigners without work permits completely for over a year. It could happen again. I had permanent residence but no work permit at the time and Bangkok Bank actually tried to close my existing account until I called someone in HQ and persuaded him that farangs with PR actually ranked a lot higher in the picking order than farangs on temporary visas with WPs.

There was an article in today's Post which I am not allowed to link about tax refunds delayed by false submissions. You can search for it yourselves, if interested. The problem is apparently too many people claiming tax refunds based on fake 50 bis forms. 50 bis is the form an employer gives you stating the total amount of income paid and tax deducted in the year. You submit with a paper tax return or after an online one, if you have income from employment. The article said there were 11.9m PIT tax return forms filed for 2023 of which 4.25m were claims tax refunds. I guess the fraudsters made up their own 50 bis forms understating their income to get them below the threshold and therefore get a refund of tax deducted by their employers. Seems quite easy to get caught, since the company also files a copy of the 50 bis form direct to the RD but it must require tedious cross checking by the RD of all tax returns of employees just below the tax threshold with allowances. They say they will solve the problem next year but refusing to accept paper 50 bis forms from companies next year, so the correct salary and tax deduction can pop up automatically in tax payer files. In our context the implications are that the RD is now wary of Thais forging domestic documents to evade tax. When they come to look at evidence of pre-2024 income and foreign tax payments they are likely to be quite demanding in terms of verification, since they know that things like pdf files can be easily tweaked or completely forged.

Tips are income and taxi drivers and waitresses should declare them. So you may leave now.

Despite the severity of the assault, Pattaya police have not detained the security guards involved. Sergeant Major Arthon of the Pattaya City Police Station explained, “We can only pursue a case if a complaint is filed. If both victims went away and died from their injuries, there will be no complaints from them and no need to detain the security guards. It seems police are aware the Helicopter Bar is owned by British nationals. So why haven't they investigated the ownership structure and arrested the owners and their Thai nominees for flouting the foreign business law? Police in resort areas have been ordered to crack down on businesses illegally controlled by foreigners. I guess we know the answer to that one.

No mention of the horrendus taxi mafia that operate throughout Samui, Phangan and Murder Island. That must put a lot of tourists off. They confront the taxi mafiosi as soon as they land and realise that they will not be able to use local transport to hop around the island. They are stuck in the place they are staying or forced to rent their own transport which often means seriously injury or death from riding motorcycles without knowing how to drive them and without a driving licence.

Not on income or interest earned prior to 2024 but on all interest earned after 31 Dec 2023.

Not enough medical marijuana. Keep on toking Anutin.

I find the advice to get a gift agreement drawn up and notarised overseas strange and I am not sure who suggested it, since it is unattributed. Certainly there is no basis for it under the RC or the Civil and Commercial Code. There is no public notary law in Thailand and technically there are no public notaries. Has anyone ever come across a Thai government department asking for a notarised documents? There are Thai lawyers that call themselves notaries and provide notary services for use overseas but that is based on an internal regulation of the Lawyers Association of Thailand, not national law. Thai government departments ask for things to be certified by another government, not by a notary. There is no requirement to get loan documents notarised, even in countries that have notaries and there is far greater likelihood of a dispute over a loan than a gift. So why for a gift document? Personally I think it would suffice to draw up a simple gift agreement which could be drawn up retroactively, if needed.

I don't think the RD can deem a repayment of a loan from offshore as assessable income. They are already stretching that para that they have reinterpreted and their authority by reinterpreting it at all. They can't just decide that what they would like put into the RC by way of amendment is already there because they have wished for it. Anyway the lender could make it a 100 year loan. I have made loans to Thailand that were for an initial 10 year tenor but extendable indefinitely via a board resolution of the lender company. Eventually it suited me to repay them from onshore as the company had sold the property it bought with the loans. However, no one ever queried those loan agreements, not the auditor, the RD or the bank on remittance in or out. In some circumstances loans for more than a certain period can be deemed as income e.g. UK company loans to director. But this has to be written down somewhere. The RD cannot just invent it. I am pretty sure that wealthy Thais will use this sort of mechanism including back to back loans, as was suggested by Prof Kittipong in his article in Thai on the reinterpretation. I was originally planning to do this myself but came across a problem in the BVI which was that BVI companies making interest free loans that are more than short term can be deemed to be lending institutions and therefore "in scope" which means they have to hire local staff in the BVI which is no longer the benign tax haven it used to be following relentless pressure from the EU. From this year unaudited accounts are required for the first time and although these are not filed with the BVI government, your BVI has the right to request more clarification of the accounts submitted and could well challenge the loans, as they stand to make money from providing you with the unnecessary onshore staff. Theoretically you could have a loan from an individual but I don't think from yourself.

This income is assessable for Thai tax, if it was earned in 2024 or later and it puts you over the threshold for Thai income tax plus deductions.

K) The RD publishes an order setting applicable exchange rates for a multitude of currencies from time to time. I think it is quarterly. You can find these orders on the RD website. For the rest there are no regulations or guidelines AFAIK which implies, unfortunately that it is left up to the discretion of individual officers to interpret. International accounts for Thais to invest abroad have existed at Thai brokerages for over 10 years. So these cases must have come up quite a lot where Thai investors didn't want to wait till the next year to remit gains. You or your wife could enquire about opening an international account with a Thai broker and ask them to clarify these matters which they must have had to advise their clients about over the years. P) A straight reading of the RC and orders P, 161/2566 and P. 162/2566 suggest that any foreign source income earned in 2024 or later and remitted by a tax resident is assessable. The RD's Q&A addressed a Thai working in China for some years and wishing to move back home and remit her savings to Thailand. The RD's advice was to remit the money before she becomes a Thai tax resident again. I don't see any latitude to claim exemption once you are a tax resident. Q) The RD stated in the French embassy video that it considers expenditures on foreign credit cards in Thailand by tax residents as remittances and therefore assessable. I doubt they would provide wriggle room to say it was actually a loan from the credit card company or that the bill was later paid with pre-2024 income. The question is how would they find out about, if you failed to declare it. R) An offshore loan remitted to Thailand is not assessable income. There are many instances of this. S) I don't see why a foreigner (or a Thai) remitting a gift to a Thai tax resident should have to report that as income. There is nothing in the RC to support this idea but the only RD case study on gifts implies this is not the case. If it is a gift over the threshold, the recipient has to declare the amount in excess of the threshold and pay gift tax on it. If it is not qualified as a gift at all the recipient has to declare it as regular income and pay tax on that..

It was scary but I figured it out after about 5 minutes of the first call. I asked for his name and rank, unit and office address and said I would search online for that unit and it's phone number and would call him back on the fixed line. He kept giving me the name of a police unit but when repeated my request for the other details he just kept rabbiting on. So eventually I hung up. About 10 minutes later I got another call from another voice but with the same background noise. So I hung up. Then I was showered with calls that I didn't answer for about 3 hours. After the first two or three I noticed they were all 06 mobile numbers which are TRUE I think. I guess someone bought a job lot of TRUE pre-paid numbers. So I blocked any 06 number that tried to call since then. In the first few weeks they came nearly every day two or three times. Then less frequent. I may have blocked some genuine callers with 06 numbers but I figured they would send a message, if it was important. Doing some research I later read a quote from a senior cop well acquainted with this scam who said the police never contact people by phone regarding an investigation. They either send a witness summons by mail or show up with an arrest warrant. I didn't report it to the police because I hadn't suffered any financial loss and didn't expect they would do anything, even though they could trace the buyer of the pre-paid numbers. I am sure many of the master minds have police protection. It is tempting to swear at the scammers or at least report them but I thought twice because they have my name and address and other personal details, may be well connected with police and I have a 3 year old who plays in the streets or our village. It is a clever scam because people get scared when they think it is the cops and many people have done illegal or grey area transactions. One actor, I think, paid the scammers a couple of hundred thousand not to investigate him further which implied he felt guilty about something. It is a digression but my original point is that there are tax scams around and once you are in the tax net, you can be more easily scammed. One that a lot of people have been caught by is scammers pretending to be RD inspectors who have discovered some undeclared income, something many Thais are obviously guilty of doing. They also demand a pay off to drop the case. Another is that they call to let you know you have a tax refund coming and ask for your bank details to pay it, then syphon money from your account. One thing worrying here is that RD officials do call taxpayers on their mobile phones and there is no easy way to verify them. They will give their names, if you ask them but not otherwise. I have had them call about my company and personal tax accounts. But they have no need to call to ask for bank details for a refund. They make refunds via the PromptPay system and have the ability to find you PromptPay account, if you have one, and will make the refund automatically, just sending an SMS to inform it has been done. Given the level of corruption and cybercrime in Thailand, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that a scammer will have all your personal details including your TIN to help convince you. Best thing if you are not sure is to ask for their name, department and address and you will find it online call them back on the fixed line. If it is hard to make out what they are saying, tell them to send you an SMS, if they are calling your mobile. Personally I don't think RD officials should be allowed to call taxpayers direct, as it opens the way to corruption and scamming but sometimes they are just calling to be helpful, i.e. requesting missing documents for you to claim deductions.

Something to watch out for. Scammers are sending letters that look exactly like letters from the RD saying they have received details of your income that have been posted to your tax accoubt and asking you to log in to a fake RD site from a QR code to check but actually to provide personal details in a phishing scam. I saw it in a Thai language LINE group. Once you have a TIN you could fall for something like this, if you get a Thai to read the letter for you. Thai government officials, bank staff and others sell genuine names, addresses, phone numbers and ID numbers to scammers by the thousands. Foreign names don’t necessarily deter them. I was harassed by one of the fake Thai police station call centre scams for months. They make background noise that sounds exactly like a Thai police station from somewhere in Cambodia near the border and intimidate you claiming you have transferred money to someone involved in money laundering or drug dealing. They try to get you to disclose bank statements to prove you didn’t transfer to that person and you are done. They had all my personal details including both my middle names and ID number which could only have been provided by a corrupt government official, banker or similar. The other issue raised is that the RD might eventually get details of overseas remittances and genuinely post them as income to your tax account.

That is not correct. The new finance minister was chairman of the stock exchange in September 2023. The DG of the RD who signed P. 161/2566 is now permanent secretary for finance.