Dogmatix

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.

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.