Dogmatix

No it happens quite often in the LOS. A woman was killed when a power line fell down on her riding her motorbike a couple of years back. Never heard of accidents like that in the West.

You have to remember that this was not a holistic tax reform by the government involving legislation. It was simply the director-general of the RD deciding unilaterally that a clause in the Revenue Code will mean something different from what it was ruled to mean 38 years ago. Srettha ordered the RD around the same time to prepared draft amendments to toughen up the gift tax section of the Revenue Code and the Inheritance Tax Act to collect more tax and the RD said it had already done that but no details have been leaked. The wording on gifts is quite clear and the director-general obviously didn't see any scope for tweaking it to mean something difference with a malevolent stroke of his pen. If it is going to be done, it will need legislation in parliament.

The statistics tell a different story. https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=REVTHA. Direct taxes rose nearly every year from 2001 till 2019. In fact personal income tax rose every year in that period except 2009 due to the 2008 subprime recession year. Direct taxes accounted for 29%of government revenue in 2021, not 2%. It is great that you are proud of your wife's small business and minimal tax payments which you mention with great frequency. But the standard deduction of 60% is not really over generous for a business. That assumes a pre-tax profit margin of 40% which is far, far less than the average pre-tax margin of companies listed on the SET. Combined with personal allowances a 60% expenses deduction is advantageous for a small enough business but for a significantly larger business such a small deduction would result in a crippling tax bill. That is why businesses of any size will incorporate and submit audited financial statements showing their actual costs and benefit from lower corporate income tax rates.

These are interesting questions. There is definitely pressure to increase tax revenues which have been sliding backwards since COVID and Thailand's tax base is too long to pay for the type of welfare that voters are starting to expect - MFP promised an old age allowance of 3,000 baht a month, after the Prayut government stopped the old age allowance of 600 for new oldies and there is a group pressuring the current government to go through with that. MFP planned to increase VAT, introduce a wealth tax plus some other measures to pay for this. So definitely the government would like to see this remittance tax generate incremental revenue. There are no international regulations requiring this type of remittance tax. In Thailand's case the international pressure was to join CRS reporting which they did in March 2023. The RD twisted this round to sound like the pressure was to tax remittances, whereas the truth was that the RD felt that CRS would give them information about overseas bank accounts of tax residents that would make it easier for them to investigate foreign source income that might be remitted. The fact that the international pressure was non-existent and that they need to increase tax revenues doesn't necessarily mean that their will be draconian investigations of remittances but it might. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

New expats will be effectively limited to arriving after 1 July and buying their condo before the end of December that year. No need to think about moving and buying another condo, if you are retired and need to import the money. When selling to another foreigner find another new expat who has arrived after 1 July and is ready to buy before the year end. This a brilliant scheme to encourage expats to move to Thailand and buy condos. Countries like the Philippines and Malaysia will be kicking themselves for not having thought of it.

But the junta is part of the government.

I did a usufruct on house and land in Bkk. It depends on the Land Office whether they will play ball. Some object to foreigners getting a usufruct from any Thai, including their wives or they might just make a fuss to get a bribe. In Bangkok it wasn’t too difficult but we had to be interviewed by the head or deputy head of registrations who said something like he knew the farang had paid for the land. The benefit of having any encumbrance registered on the chanote is that it makes impossible to mortgage or sell the land. It is not too expensive and does offer you some protection.

If we take the RD at its word, the reinterpretation is only a stopgap while they get the govt to amend the RC to provide for global taxation for tax residents, regardless of whether income is remitted or not. That would most likely remove the remittance tax element but require declaration of all income earned anywhere. In that case income earned before global taxation starts could probably be remitted tax free. But who can say what will really happen in this country where things are done on a whim with thinking them through.

I have been busy created transactions by selling shares and funds prior to the year end. Hopefully that will create a pool of funds generated from pre-2024 transactions that can be remitted tax free in future. But it is anyone's guess how they will implement this..

A lot of this stuff on DTAs is not even fixed between developed countries. For example when my father died UK domiciled but owning a house in Spain, we were advised that the UK had a right to charge inheritance tax on the Spanish assets but that HMRC would allow the Spanish to tax assets situated in Spain and the UK would forego its right to tax them. This was advantageous to us because Spain charges inheritance tax to the inheritors individually and has lower rates for property going to direct descendants, like Thailand does, rather than to the undistributed estate as the UK does. HMRC didn't exercise its right to charge the difference, even though UK IHT would have been more. Thailand is starting from scratch with no tacit understandings with other countries on how to implement DTAs and no clue how to do things or how they work internationally. Also they don't give a monkeys what damage they inflict on taxpayers or the Thai economy. They just want to do what they want to do and to hell with the consequences. A spit the dummy outlook.

It was Thaksin's intention to install light weight Srettha to prepare the way for Ung Ing. He didn't even allow Srettha to be an MP for chrissakes and he has no faction of his own in the party. It is working out fine. Srettha is just a clown who does as he is told and racks up airmiles set up to sell land bridges that are known to be unviable but generate consulting fees for cronies. When Srettha's credibility is at a low enough ebb, Thaksin will push him aside, blame him for all that has gone wrong and usher in the airhead Ung Ing as PM while he controls everything from behind her.

It would make sense for them to give exemption for money remitted by foreigners to buy a condo that would have to be kept for, say, 5 years. But strangely there has been no fuss made by condo developers. Just silly articles saying things like sales of resort condos to foreigner to soar in 2024, as if the writers are living under a stone.

Actually the government under Prayut starting telling Thais they wanted them to file tax returns whether they had suffiicient assessable income or not, saying it would help create a system for reverse taxation, i.e. paying money to people whose declared income is below a threshold, even though there is no sign of negative taxation. Not sure, if they really want tax returns from foreigners below the tax threshold though. They certainly won't pay them, if their income is low.

tiresome to keep seeing these shameless lies about Thaksin from everyone from the prime minister down. How do they expect Thai people to believe anything else they say?

When I first came to Thailand I had a Thai teacher who was quite pretty and very friendly, who told me she was a Muslim from the South. After a few weeks of weekly lessons, she hinted strongly she would like to go on a date with me to the movies or something. She had already told me she had trouble finding a boyfriend because he would have to convert to Islam, if they got married, which would, of course, involve an operation for some. Fortunately, there were many more fish in the Thai ocean.

Can't complain about rounded up, if you overstay your visa, specially if your behaviour annoys others, so they report you to the cops. But it is not really very exciting national news.

They keep going on about tourism recovery but we couldn't care less. If you do your promotions and offer visa free travel, there is nothing much more to do about it. Just wait and see. It depends on the economies of the countries of origin, especially China. Far better to worry about things you can change, like upgrading Thailand's appalling public education to facilitate more foreign investment and ability to speak English and work in higher value added businesses.

Let him take a few months off and give everyone a break from his PR photo opportunities around the world and save the taxpayer some travel costs. He can't do anything at home because he would tread on toes and he has no faction of his own at PT to protect him and is not even an MP because Thaksin refused to put him on the party list. Flying to Japan to sell a completely unviable land bridge to Japanese, who know perfectly the Thai government has an appalling track record of ripping off foreign infrastructure investors and refusing to honour international arbitration, was a complete waste of time. The only thing junk projects like that generate is fat consulting contracts for PT cronies from commission can be kicked back.

An air ticket going overseas purchased from an overseas airline website would be more difficult to trace. Agreed. if remitting fees to a Thai school from investments held overseas prior to 2024, I guess the investments may have to sold and realised to show income realised before 2024. but no one really knows the answer to such questions. If you have a child at private school in Thailand and you are also living with a wife, remittance of gift to spouse might be a good way to handle school fees.

I was in the Amcham call and didn't understand it exactly like that. I think he said that paying for services received in Thailand should be taxable, eg you remit school fees to a Thai school from overseas. So an air ticket out of Thailand would qualify but, if you are sitting in Thailand and use a foreign credit card to pay for your hotel overseas or kids college tuition overseas, that would not IMHO. Anyway it would rely on overseas banks and tax authorities reporting it to the RD which is probably a long way off. Probably goods ordered abroad to be shipped to Thailand should be taxable but it would be more difficult to trace that, since the seller is not in Thailand. Paying for goods from a Thai supplier with a foreign credit card would be easier to trace but, if small amounts, it might get lost.

The RD auditors have a big backlog. My company was audited for stuff they found suspicious that had happened 6 years earlier. They couldn't notice anything until the after the end March 2025 deadline passes for 2024 tax returns. If they follow up on your remittance and think you should have paid tax on it, or just want to query it could easily take take them till 2030 but the problem is that they add on heaps of interest and penalties. If they are going that route with expat retirees, many of them may be dead before they catch up with them.

AN keeps reporting these stories about how Thailand is so desperately trying to get Chinese tourists and not succeeding, as if the average AN reader could really give a monkeys whether Chinese tourists are here or not. In fact most would probably prefer, if they never come back. Some members may be running or working in tourist related businesses but most, being largely farangs, are likely to be working in businesses that depend on farang tourists, not Chinese. If the Chinse economy is is down the toilet, no amount of wringing of hands by Thai officials is going to bring them back. But Srettha should try a digital wallet scheme directed at Chinese tourists - 10,000 baht for each arrival who earns less than 70,000 baht a month and has less then 500,000 baht in the bank (documents notarised by Chinese government and translated and notarised by a Thai consulate in China0. Have Srettha go to the airport every day to greet tourists and personally hand over the package, showing how to download the app and block chain technology. That will him from impinging on the turf of Ung Ing, would be PM Anutin and others. The thought of receiving 10,000 baht personally from a 2 metre tall grinning cat PM would definitely dispel all fears of being abducted, shot dead in a shopping mall, blown up at the Erawan shrine, drowned in an unseaworthy and unlicensed tour boat, shaken down by cops for having vapes or being raped by someone met on an adult dating site.

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.