Dogmatix

You will probably be in big trouble if you file showing non-assessable income from remittances earned before 2024 or DTA exempt pensions. That will just invite them to summon for a grilling with all supporting documents which they may or may not be able to understand. They may ask for notarized versions and god knows what. They are used to the Thai system where a taxpayer can waltz into a tax office without an appointment and get certified copies of tax returns which implies tax paid. They are also used to Thai systems of contract notes and dividend statements which have to be sent in hard copy. Some online brokers don't provide formal contract notes. There is also the problem of varying tax years, so that expats will yet not have overeas tax returns covering some remitted income. The worst situation with the RD is being caught not filing when there was a lot of tax to pay. If there is no tax to pay, you can be fined 2k a year but, in practice they don't enforce this law on those who have no tax to pay.

The threshold to file a tax return is 120k for income from employment and 60k for income from other sources. The RD considers pension income as income from employments AFAIK. It used to be that there was no need to file a tax return, if your income minus deductions below the taxable threshold which is currently 150 but the Prayut government amended the law to require tax returns from those over the 120k/60k thresholds even though they have no tax to pay. The idea is to try to trap people into the system when they not earning enough to pay tax and don't mind getting in so much and keep them in once they are earning more. They also added an inducement that would pay welfare to low income earners who file for tax but never have. I don't think this system has been at all effective. Most Thais don't realise they have to file for tax when they don't earn enough to pay it. The fine for not filing is 2k per year but not enforced on low income earners because it would be a lot of work and expense to round them up and take them to court for small fines and it would create a horrible political backlash to fine poor people for not filing when the supposed benefits for filing have never been delivered to them. BTW the Revenue Code is nationality blind. So all tax provisions apply equally to Thais and foreigners.

If the money remitted to buy a condo was earned after 31 December 2023 and you don't have a the appropriate LTR visa for tax exemption, the answer is yes. Otherwise no. Despite the fact that the PM at the time was a condo developer, the government didn't think to make any exemption for money remitted to buy property. Duh! Similar exemptions to investment in Thai stocks, private businesses or Thai bonds might have been a good idea too. But this was clearly not thought through by the government. In fact they were not even involved. There was no amendment to the Revenue code that would have had to go through parliament and no ministerial regulation that would have been approved by the finance minister. They just allowed the director general of the Revenue Department to issue a departmental order which is only binding on Revenue Department staff, not on taxpayers. A few days after signing the order, he vacated the position. So the badly thought out order was his parting shot for Thai taxpayers and expats. This situation is the type of mess that results from government not doing its job and just allowing bureaucrats to do what they want without any parliamentary scrutiny or public scrutiny.

I went on a business trip to India as a young impressionable chap out from London in the 80s. Stayed at the Taj Mahal in Bombay and went out for a walk near the Gate of India. After nightfall it was a a complete horror show - people sleeping all over the streets and peeing and pooping wherever they could. And that was near a 5-stay hotel in the city. Imagine what it was like and still is in the rural areas.

This is what you need for your car. https://shopee.co.th/Male-Female-Emergency-Urinal-Go-out-Travel-Camping-Car-Toilet-Pee-Bottle-i.1058865732.25517018400

If they pee in their hotel, it will end up untreated n the sea anyway but will just take a bit longer. So why the fuss. I remember as a boy in Edinburgh that bus drivers and conductors would jump up of the bus at a bus stop near a telephone kiosk and relieve themselves in the telephone kiosk. I suppose better than doing it on the drivers seat.

The Shin family has always put personal advantages and enrichment to the fore when governing Thailand but Thaksin implemented a handful of worthwhile policies, such as universal healthcare from the amongst the ideas offered by his advisors. Now the decent advisors have fled and his policy cupboard is bare leaving only free handouts, casinos and a disadvantageous oil and gas deal with his buddy Hun Sen. Whoever get the casinos and the oil and gas done can potentially make a pile of cash on the side but nothing there for the hai people.

She was set up by her brother. She was convicted because she was president of the Rice Commission which approved the rice pledging scam, even though she only attended one or two meetings. The conviction was perfectly sound IMHO. There was a scam which she approved, even if she knew nothing much about it. The others who went to prison included the minister and deputy minister who signed approvals for the fake exports of rice to China which never left the country but were actually re-pledged to the Thai government. They knew what they were doing and were paid for their approvals. Yingluck probably didn't know the details of the individual frauds but must have known something was badly wrong, or would have known, if she had looked into it. She got the sentence she deserved but the junta let her escape because they were scared of making her a rallying point for Thaksinites, if she went to prison which probably would indeed have been a problem for them.

Definitely need a TIN to register for online filing of PND 90 or 91. These only in Thai and are quite difficult to fill in, unless you have a good knowledge of the Revenue Code. Income and deductions are based on their enumeration in the RC. Little pop ups tend to occur in tiny Thai letters. But, if you can use them, they save a lot of trouble as they calculate tax for you. Thai dividends can be automatically input from the Thai Stock Depository and calculated out with tax rebate benefit too. Last year some of the self proclaimed Thai experts here assured everyone the Revenue Department was going to produce English language PND 90 and 91 forms and that the Thai and English versions woul be amended to provide space for claiming relief under double tax treaties. I said that wasn't going to happen and, as expected, it turned out to be a fantasy. Now the only way you can file, if you can't read Thai and/ or want to claim DTA relief is to go along to you local tax office in person and let them do it for you. Can't wait for the thread with farangs' experiences of trying to do this and for news of farangs audited/shaken down by revenue officials for not declaring remittances.

In Thailand ordinary people would probably be awarded 80,000 baht which would never be paid. In England they are ordinary people too.

I don't think they have made vaping illegal in Thailand yet- just the importation of the equipment. That seems to be why it is on sale so widely. The sellers are not the importers and just pay off the police. Thais are not arrested for vaping. It is just a shake down for foreign tourists.

Russians?

Thai police pathologists are likely to hand over the body with all internal organs removed and dumped somewhere to prevent a proper autopsy overseas. This has happened before when families went to some expense to repatriate bodies.

I get calls from Thais calling from unknown mobile numbers speaking in English with heavy Thai accents. They often repeat my first two names a couple of times asking me to confirm that is me. I shoot back with who are you in Thai and they usually just repeat their own question. I won't talk to an unknown caller who refuses to identify themselves. I hang up and block the number. They could be scammers or tele sales people. If they are legit callers, they will find a way to get their message through to me. When I was less cautious a fake police call center got on to me claiming to be investigating a money laundering and drug dealing scheme and pretended a money transfer had been made by me to one of the suspects. They had my full name, address, 13 digit ID card number, presumably sold to them by someone from a Thai bank or government department. I asked the guy for his name, rank and police unit and told him I would look his details up online and call him back on his office's direct line to verify him. Of course he didn't provide this information but a gave a vague answer about his unit and continue to rabbit on in a threatening way. So I hung up and blocked him. They continued trying to call me for a few weeks after that, using different numbers and voices including a woman, but just hung up without saying anything and blocked the number each time.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14249839/Spanish-student-killed-elephant-knocked-trunk-Thailand.html How sad! A number of foreign tourists are killed by elephants every year at venues where elephants are used as tourist attractions. The government does nothing because there is no political backlash from the “accidental deaths" of random foreigners and elephants a money spinner that may just be abandoned, if no longer profitable. Elephants are wild animals and should be admired from a safe distance.

Thai and British police are only responsible for custody in police cells. Thai police cells are usually just one open cell for men and women together with a concrete floor to sit and sleep on and a bucket in the corner to pee and poop in. Rapes of vulnerable prisoners such as illegal aliens are a common occurrence in Thai police cells with Thai police senior sergeant majors, which seems to be nearly all of them, exercising a medieval droit de seigneur (right of the feudal lord or slave owner) over the helpless captives. British police are probably jealous of the Thai interrogation methods with black plastic bags over the head and a boy in Kalasin who was castrated by police colonels trying to get a confession of motor bike theft. They then hung his body from a tree in a neighboring province to make it look like suicide but his aunt was skeptical about how he lost his balls and why he travelled so far from home to commit suicide. Of course none of the police colonels ever faced appropriate punishment. As we all know, this is all for show. Thai police and their government have no intention of doing anything about this stuff.

How illegal is this in Thailand? Having a Thai gf and acceding to her requests for money for financial support is certainly legal. Faking cancer and death may be over the line, as it demanding money on false pretenses. So could be fraud. But would a Thai court convict for it? What evidence can he present? Is there anything in writing or was it done via unrecorded phone calls? She can just say he was welly lich and loved her. So he sent money money she never even asked for out of love. Then he fell out of love because he found someone else and regretted all the love gifts he sent. Anyway the guy needs to ask himself why he was sending so much money to a prostitute, rather than paying the market rate per session.

The dumbest was the lonely middle aged spinster Thai CEO of the French spectacle lens company in Thailand who transferred millions of dollars, not baht, to an African scamster posing as a handsome Chinese American doctor. She cleaned out her own savings and then the company's Thai bank account and was working on the company's US bank account that she got access to when she was caught.

All blank guns modified to fire live rounds bought online and a home made air gun according to Thai media.

It's not like in England where it may take hours to get a clamp removed after paying a large fine. In Bangkok and Pattaya the cops arrive within a few minutes to removed the clamp after you have paid in the cop shop. Last time I paid 500 baht. So why bother with this tedious rigmarole and risk being arrested for a more serious crime?

Another common scam is a bilingual message purportedly from Thai postal customs saying a package has arrived for you from overseas with some tax to pay. Since Thais now order tons of consumer items from China there is always gonna be a certain percentage of SMS recipients waiting for something coming from China. If they fall for it, the scammers will try to get their bank account details and suck it dry. Another version of the scam involves a phone call to your number with a recorded message in Thai from a “customs official” with a pleasant, polite female voice telling you to click on a click being sent to you by SMS. Thai postal customs repeatedly posts notices advising the public that they don’t send SMSs. They send all notifications about tax on incoming parcels by mail. God knows how much this scam has netted so far. Since scanners now seem able to use Thai mobile numbers, it is a pretty safe bet that mobile phone company staff are involved in the scams in addition to police and other government officials.

I had been transferring money from overseas to make various property investments for about 10 years. That investment project was terminated the day the initial announcement was made. The last investment was made in June 2023. Used to use my Thai credit cards for everything. This year I set up a new debit card arrangement with a foreign bank that allows me to maintain balances in major currencies and the debit card automatically debits the currency of the payment. So I can pay directly in USD, EUR, GBP, HKD, SGD, AUD etc without incurring hefty credit card forex charges. I haven’t used the card for Thai purchases but have used it for overseas tickets and travel and all my online shopping from Amazon, AliExpress, Temu etc. The missus has paid our son’s school fees and her life and health insurance premiums from gifts remitted to her from overseas. With these adjustments my local investment income has been enough to survive for the past year. I sold an overseas property, I had been putting off selling, and am putting the proceeds into a bank account in the name of an offshore company. This is to protect from the possibility of a Thailand introducing global tax in 2026. Income in a company name would only be taxable, if the company paid it to me as a dividend. This is what Thaksin and other wealthy Thais woukd do to avoid global tax on their offshore income.

Is Shopee going to stop selling canes for the express purpose of flogging small children? https://shopee.co.th/product/135174251/4881545040?gads_t_sig=VTJGc2RHVmtYMTlxTFVSVVRrdENkVzBLS2xuUGZzMlQ5NjlFWklmRkZjVFBSbU5TZUJMVTY2b2czYmhDaHBRM3l4Qm4xb0tXTHlWMFAxaXhvWnlkV29RZVdZOUJQUWo0NVlPbi9taGpPbUhuUVRZbGtxSW9XSTltWDFzaDIxbGw

Teachers unions in the UK came up with similar arguments in the 70s and 80s trying to resist the abolition of corporal punishment in schools. My experience of corporal punishment at school was that it was at best dished out in a totally arbitrary and unfair manner and, at worst (and this was sadly only too common) was administered purely for the perverse sexual pleasure of teachers and prefects doing the beatings. Floggings at home and at school did nothing to encourage better behaviour but instilled a deep hatred and resentment for the beaters and a disrespect for authority which proved itself irresponsible.

"By converting USD into Thai Baht, these investigations involve substantial considerations, both financially and politically, as the NACC seeks to address the impunity that allegations like Thaksin's can represent." I wonder what this para was supposed to mean. Seems like a non-sequitur produced by the AI scrambler.