Dogmatix

If you remit this month, the old rules apply, i.e. it is assessable if the income was earned this year. Of course it depends on your deductions and how much other income you have remitted or earned on shore.

Earlier in the thread there was a lot of discussion about standard deductions for Thai income tax which is quite important for determining whether you will have assessable income and estimating tax on it. What is most confusing is the 100,000 standard deduction up to a maximum amount of 50% of income. Although not expressed clearly on the RD's own website this 100,000 deduction is only for those earning income from employment. The standard deductions are: 60,000 personal allowance 30,000 for a spouse, if filing jointly 30,000 for a minor child 190,000 for being over 65. There are many more deductions for charitable donations, life and health insurance premiums, RMF investment etc but the standard deduction for a pensioner over 65 will be 250,000.

I expect gifts have been made to spouses from offshore but there is no record of any test cases or rulings on this.

Basically the section oh gifts in the RC which talks about gifts to "provide patronage" to a direct family member being exempted up to 20 million is at odds with the concept of conjugal property in the Civil and Commercial Code. There are no specific exemptions for Americans or any other nationality in the CCC but it is worth noting that Thai courts have never attempted exercise jurisdiction on property overseas which has effectively meant that any assets held overseas are not conjugal property.

Unfortunately they have not said anything other than that they intend to avoid double taxation according to the treaties. But this still needs a lot of clarification and maybe some new rulings. The RC doesn't even mention that DTAs have to be taken into account for PIT but there is one ruling from I think the 80s that said they would. Treaties are normally held to have higher force than statutory law but statutory law normally explicitly states that treaties will be adhered to, eg the Land Code. It could be a serious problem, if the RD decides to only accept tax credits issued in respect of the same tax year that the income is remitted, as it does for corporate income tax. In this case there a mismatch of tax years, e.g. the UK's April to April tax year could create problems.

Some of the UK, Oz and NZ rules that are more liberal than Thailand would be welcomed by sports shooters here. Those countries have vigorous hunting and target rifle communities. Thailand has no hunting but a growing community of target rifle shooters. In those countries you have to keep rifles and ammo secured but you are allowed to hand load ammo and buy replacement barrels which are not allowed here. You are also allowed to taken your gun and ammo to the range, unloaded and properly separated, whereas Thai cops will shake you down and say ridiculous things like you should have a concealed carry permit, if they find your rifle and ammo in the car, despite the fact you have a license to use it for sport. This is, of course, an excuse to shake down sports shooters for cash because the law is vague on this point. How can you use a rifle for sport, if you can't take it out of the house? Personally I am not so interested in handguns any more and wouldn't care too much, if they stopped issuing licenses for them. However, I would like to keep one or two of the licensed handguns I have at home to protect my family, since I already have them. Nevertheless it has to be said that that there is a huge sports shooting community in Thailand and over 90% of it is handguns. This is huge business and it is going to be difficult to shut this down. Anyway over 90% of gun violence involves illegal guns. If the police could shut a fraction of that down, it would be a big positive.

It is true. A soldier in charge of an armoury in Chonburi and left in the same job for years was found to have sold a couple of hundred thousand rounds of military grade 5.56 ammo. This stuff is sold all over at much lower prices than legal imports of 5.56 and .223 ammo. The military also destroys stocks of rifle and pistol ammo that is over 10 years or so old. A lot of this ammo is not actually destroyed but gets out into the black market.

Maybe someone else has a clue what this means.

I am thinking that it may make sense to sell shares and funds in overseas accounts that may be needed for remittance to Thailand in the remaining trading days before New Year. The proceeds could be reinvested, even in the same investments afterwards but safest might be to remit to TH in the early days of Jan, if you are sure you want or need the money here. They would probably not bother trying to argue that all income arose in a few days in Jan 2024. According to the two P. orders, all divs, interest and cap gains arising from 1 Jan 2024 onwards is assessable income. You should be able to remit tax free anything you can show was realised prior to that, regardless of what happened to it subsequently. But Gods knows how they will attempt to police all this.

They look like victims of ISIS. I wonder how many of these guys were actually Hamas combatants. Not very many I would guess.

PT's digital wallet will save the day.

That sounds fine in respect of Thai income tax but do you have UK tax liability on the transfer of the sales proceeds from the company that owned the flat to your personal account? How will you book that transfer in the company's accounts? It may depend on how you funded the company in the first place. I would guess it has to be booked either as a dividend, a director's bonus, repayment of a director's loan or a combination. The first two would be taxable in the UK if it is a UK company. If it is an offshore company, maybe not.

I paid my 1,000 baht to listen in on the Amcham seminar this morning. They had tax advisors from Mazars, KPMG and one other firm, the name of which I forget and the guy from Mazars led the discussion. It was very lucid and well done and they presented a very good overview of the story so far but emphasized that it is still work in progress at the RD, since they have launched the tax change at half cock. I not am sure there was anything new for many of us here who have read the print off everything that has come out on the issue so far but it was good to know we are on the same page on most aspects. Points arising that struck me are below. Re gifts. They thought gifts from offshore to a spouse or other direct family member should be OK but cautioned that the RD could regard such a gift as conjugal property and, as such, interpret things so that only half of the tax is tax exempt because you own half the conjugal property. Gifts to people other than direct family members should have a reason, e.g. wedding gift, according to the Mazars guy. I don't see anything in the RC saying gifts to non family members need a reason but I have seen cases like this, e.g. the transfer of SHIN shares free of payment by Potjaman to her brother was claimed to be a wedding gift (about 2 years after the wedding). It was suggested that gifts should be documented. They thought a 'genuine' loan from an offshore company controlled by a Thai tax resident to himself could not be construed as income as there is nothing in the RC to suggest that loans could be deemed to be income. But they cautioned that this is not confirmed, rather that there is nothing in the RC or elsewhere that suggests a loan can be deemed to be income. Re tax credits. The RD has told people verbally that tax credits will be recognized in respect of DTAs but has not clarified how this will be done. It pointed out that the RD only accepts tax credits for corporate income tax the tax credit applies to foreign income earned in the same tax year the same tax year as it is remitted to Thailand.

These Sig Sauers were imported by the interior ministry for the civil service welfare scheme. The deal was negotiated by the police chief on the basis the guns for police to buy from the civil service welfare scheme. But obviously a lot them went to civil servants other than police or anyone qualified for the scheme which includes state enterprise employees and village defense volunteers. When negotiating with the US they always emphasise the scheme is for law enforcement officers and for self protection for people like teachers in government schools in the south that have been targeted by terrorists. Anyway I hope that answers your question.

There has been plenty of grandstanding on this by Anutin announcing ineffective measures like registering all BB guns, which he doesn't have the authority to do without amending the law, and stopping the issuance of carry permits, which is also doesn't have the authority to do because that is the police chief's turf. But this is all designed to get him attention, not to have any impact on gun violence which he probably doesn't care about. On the other hand the new police chief, Pol Gen Torsak has publicly acknowledged that the problem is the estimated 4 million illegal guns which are used to commit about 90% of gun violence.

Your arguments are somewhat contradictory. You want no new licenses to be issues but admit there is huge demand for guns that can't be stopped. So not issuing new licenses would make those who really want guns for legitimate purposes and would have been able to afford a legal gun buy on the black market, thus increasing the supply of illegal and untraceable guns. Also, if the current gun laws are fine, why not just keeping on issuing licenses according to the current gun laws.

I tried some decarbed weed with a spoonful of coconut oil to bind it and stirred into a flavored yoghurt. Worked well. Coconut oil is one of the best fats to use and tastes OK too.

If you look on Alibaba you can find some inexpensive decarb machines with minimum quantity one piece and low cost shipping from China. I got one called the Herboven or something like that for about 30 bucks and it works well. Exactly the same model was available on Amazon and other farang websites for 2-3 times the price and very steep shipping. Of course they are exactly the same thing made in China. It came straight to the door with no tax because it was sent by mail and under 15,000 baht value. On Alibaba make sure you order the right model that 220v with the right plug for TH.

Of course this is the cops' job but the local cops won't take any action because the bribes from these big pubs are a big source of income to them. If they are brought in the loop, they will warn the pub and it will be closed that night. Anutin uses the excuse that the licenses are issued by district offices which are under DOPA at his interior ministry. In this case the pub didn't even have a license which is quite common because the licenses for a large entertainment venue are quite hard to get and need to meet some basic standards like fire exits. Many are designed in a way that they can never pass anyway. The owners find it easier to just pay a flat fee or even a share of profits to the local station commander, some of which gets shared out amongst his men. If any other cops were involved, you can be sure they were not local police or even Bkk Metropolitan police HQ which gets income up the pipe from the local cop shops but from one of the national police units with SWAT teams like Central Investigation Bureau or Crime Suppression Bureau which is part of the CIB that are not benefitting from the revenue flow from pubs. The interior ministry also has its own DOPA SWAT team which is now Anutin's private militia. Since he didn't have police to the pee pee tests, he brought in the Office of the Narcotics Control Board to handle the golden liquid. Having said all of that I would not surprised, if the pub was back in business after a year or two after greasing the right palms - perhaps when Anutin is gone from the interior ministry.

Yes, the real volume in wee hours drinking is from Thai yuppies, particularly this crowd doing drugs to stay up all night, not foreigners. The whales on the beach in Phuket don't go out till 4.00 am and most the sex tourists want to take their prey back to their hotel rooms long before that.

Anutin's paramilitary DOPA SWAT team.

Pub goers should be advised to carry a clean pee sample with them and pour it into Anutin's sample bottle when no one's looking.

I can't imagine that Anutin cares about this stuff very much but it is just a way for him to get in the news and show off his power to the police who are losing a lot of income when these pubs are closed down. He remembers the evil Purachai's social order campaign under the first Thaksin regime which also involved the minister taking pee samples from adolescent girls and made him so popular that Thaksin started to see him as a threat and extinguished his political career. Easy to do because Thaksin created him out of a nobody with no political faction and let him go back to being a nobody.

The girls from ONCB preparing the pee pee samples for Anutin's enjoyment. Apparently he read out the results of the pee pee competition from the stage.

Anutin is happy as interior minister as he has his own private militia, the DOPA SWAT team. SOPA is a catch all part of the interior ministry which manages district offices, which in turn manage licenses for entertainment businesses in their districts. It also handles gun licences PR and citizenship applications and many other unrelated stuff. Definitely needs its own SWAT team. It looks like there was a police SWAT team there too and a couple of senior cops, probably from CIB - anyone other than the Lardprao cop shop, or the place would have been shuttered when they arrived with no adolescent pee pee samples available for the minister's delectation.