Dogmatix

There has been stony silence about the RD's opinion seeking efforts. It would not be surprising, if they only provide more clarity in time for filing of tax return forms in 2025 and amending the forms may not happen. Judging by their pathetic and poorly written Q&A effort, the RD's idea of clarity is different from most other people's anyway. Since they have started from the position that the finance minister/PM gave them carte blanche to change the Revenue Code unlawfully without going through parliamentary process or even a Royal Decree, there is no particular reason why they should bother with any niceties towards tax payers. The RD DG now feels empowered and we are back under the autocratic Thaksinite rule by edict system, where parliament is bypassed. If taxpayers don't like it, they can become tax non residents or sue in the Central Tax Court but good luck with that.

The US has allowed Spanish tax returns for years and now offers many more languages. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-expands-tax-help-into-more-languages-form-1040-offered-in-spanish-and-more-services-information-available-in-multiple-languages

Have you successfully filed a PND 90/91 in English? I don't believe it's possible, even if that is claimed on the RD website. I have filed online for many years and never saw the option to file in English. In the past they had an option to translated pages, which sometimes sort of worked, but not for filing.

Some neighbouring countries have lower cash export limits. HK never had one before but introduced a limit for import and export of cash without declaration of HK$150,000 and Singapore has a limit of S$15,000. UK is GBP 10,000.

Increasingly obvious that Thaksin is having Srettha wheeled around the world like a cardboard cut out or automatic greeting machine to keep him out of the country, so he can't interfere with Thaksin's faceless back room boys who are actually running things. Srettha can't answer any questions but comes back with unfounded claims of persuading foreigners to invest in Thailand. We saw the same pattern with Yingluck who visited a record number of countries as PM but achieved nothing except for boosting the fortunes of brand name goods vendors in the countries she visited.

The point I was making was the strong possibility that there will be no further clarification from the RD and no change to the RD order.

What I meant was that there is no reason to expect the RD to issue copious guidance on foreign tax credits under DTAs, as many are expecting, since the RD has been dealing with cases of foreign tax credits for individual taxpayers for decades and has issued some rulings on the subject going back 20 years. Also it doesn't seem to be a problem to the RD that there is no place to submit foreign tax credits on the tax return forms. Presumably you have to write them (in Thai) and make your case for the deduction. That would preclude online filing. What a PITA. The topic of the Lorenz partners article was indeed re taxation on foreign dividends but the RD ruling the author referenced, 0706/7556 from 2009, was actually about earned income. You can read the ruling here https://www.rd.go.th/24356.html . It is about employees of a Thai company who were sent to work on an assignment in the Philippines for an unspecified period of time but they must have remained Thai tax residents. The company continued paying their salaries into bank accounts in Thailand after deducting Thai withholding tax and it seems that Filipino withholding tax was also charged, possibly paid by the company. So they were double taxed anyway. The ruling allowed them to claim tax credits for the Filipino tax payments and get a refund of the excess Thai tax paid under the treaty. I couldn't find the other ruling but it was probably something similar. I don't understand why the RD had to make this ruling for the employees to claim the tax credit after being double taxed or why Lorentz said that was wrong, unless it is something specific to the Filipino treaty but that is not what they said. Anyway the point is that RD most likely feels under no obligation to provide any guidance on foreign tax credits for individuals or amend tax return forms to accommodate them, even though their capricious and unlawful reinterpretation is going to mean that tens of thousands of foreign tax residents, most of whom are illiterate in Thai and have never had to file a Thai tax return before, are now going to have claim foreign tax credits vs probably 5 or 10 a year who had their company accountants do it for them.

An interesting comment on foreign tax credits from Lorenz and Partners' website https://www.lorenz-partners.com/taxation-on-foreign-dividend-under-thai-law/ . Not exactly sure what they are referring to but they seem to believe that RD is systematically wrong in allowing individuals to claim foreign tax credits but does anyway. What is somewhat worrying though is that this shows that the RD has already made rulings on foreign tax credits for individuals as far back as 2004, even though there was little need for anyone to want to claim them under the previous interpretation of section 41. So those who are waiting for reams of guidance notes from the RD on the application of DTAs for individuals might be disappointed, if the RD feels its already clarified all that in 2004 and 2009 - job done.

Went Yingluck ran of countries to visit, Thaksin packed her off on official visits to the Vatican City which one of her entourage described as San Marino in a speech, and Montenegro (to pick up her passport and she was glad she did). I would like see Srettha in a photo op with the pope and telling the Thai journos that the Vatican was going to invest heavily in a whole bunch of new cathedrals and churches in Thailand.

This is not clear from the Revenue Code because the gift tax amendment was drafted before RD order P 161/2566. However, at that point they would or should have been thinking of remittances of money in the year they were earned in the form of gifts of support to spouses from Thai overseas workers which appear tax exempt whether they were taxed overseas or not. Some Thai workers are in countries that don't have income tax.

Good points and this gift tax thing may end up being important to many expats. The wording in the RD's own translation of the Revenue Code, incorporating the 2015 amendment on gift tax, is slightly clearer. Let's look at Section 42 The assessable income of the following categories shall be exempt for the purpose of income tax calculation: (27) Income derived from maintenance and support or gifts from ascendants, descendants or spouse, but only for the portion not exceeding twenty million Baht throughout the tax year. You raise a good point that it may not be possible to file a joint spousal tax return, if there are gifts between spouses during the tax year, although this is not specified. And the RD could argue that a gift from offshore to a spouse that is later gifted back to the spouse onshore has been cancelled out, making the original remittance taxable at up to 35%, even though it seems perfectly legal in the Revenue Code. Who, in 2015, would have imagined that spouses might want to this? There are no spaces for gift deduction on tax return forms because gifts under 20 million are "assessable income that are exempt for the purpose of income tax calculation" and therefore don't need to be declared at all. The gift tax amendment was drafted in a very basic way as they just wanted to prevent people from transferring huge estates on their death beds to avoid the new inheritance tax which came in soon afterwards. Previously there was no tax on gifts. I doubt they thought of cases where the donor might be gifting untaxed assessable income from offshore or cases where the donor was not a tax resident or not. I assume they only envisaged gifts from income that was already taxed in Thailand (or had legally avoided taxation) from tax residents to other tax residents. Otherwise why would someone wealthy enough to gift 20 million from offshore not just wait till the following tax year to remit offshore money and be sure it was tax free, even if over 20 million. The gifting could be done from onshore then. Since Srettha has ordered the RD to review inheritance and gift, I guess they will spot this potential loophole and plug it or reduce it before we have time to test it.

Re tax on mutual funds. 40(4)(b) says that dividends from mutual funds are taxable. 10% withholding tax is deducted from Thai mutual fund dividends. For foreign mutual funds that withhold tax, a foreign tax credit may apply, but the Thai tax rate will be up to 35%. 42(23) says that income from sale of investment units in a mutual fund is tax exempt and you are right that it doesn't specify that the mutual fund should be registered in Thailand. But how do we claim exemption and what documents would be required or would the officer reinterpret the Revenue Code for himself and say that only applies to Thai mutual funds. This is an interesting question for those who own mutual funds in overseas accounts. The limited range of mirror funds or Foreign Investment Funds (FIFs) managed by Thai asset management companies paying double management fees is a capital gains free option for those with money onshore. 42(24) Exempts the income of a mutual fund, i.e. the internal income earned by the mutual fund from capital gains, dividends and interest.

How does option C (paying 5% tax) work?

The RD's definition of mutual funds is mutual funds registered in Thailand. Same for everything else that gets tax exemption or low flat rate tax, i.e. dividends, capital gains on stocks, interest, sales of property. All foreign source income of any type is taxable at up to 35%. That is a fundamental inequity in this reinterpretation which was supposed to introduce fairness.

The treatment of gifts is a very good point. The gift tax is a fairly new amendment to the Revenue Code that was added only in 2017 to support the junta's new inheritance tax. There was no inheritance tax before and therefore no need to put any limits on gifts. I don't think there have been many cases to do with gift tax. The initial limits were set high enough to not catch anyone but the PT government plans to tighten up inheritance tax and gift tax. In the context of this unlawful remittance tax, the the RD may come up with new interpretations of gifts. (Since the PT government has given them the authority to amend a major part of the Revenue Code by themselves, why stop there?) However, the RD Q&A on P 161/2566 gave the follow clarification in about gifts and inheritances in very badly written ambivalent Thai: QUESTION #4 What are the types of assessed income that must be subject to income tax under Section 41?, the second paragraph of the Revenue Code? ANSWER: Money has not been assessed from foreign sources at If you stay, you are forced to pay income tax including assessable income according to Section 40 (1) to (8) of the Revenue Code. However, if it is assessable income received that has received tax exemption according to law, taxpayers do not have to include it as assessable income to be taxed in Thailand, such as receiving an inheritance or receiving income received through the support of parents and trusted people, or from a spouse, as long as the money that is received does not exceed 20 millions of baht for the entire tax year. It seems to allow tax residents to remit up to 20 million in spousal support to one's wife from local or foreign sources tax free, which although not specified, must be considered as a gift because there is nothing in the Revenue Code about spousal support. If it is just for spousal support, it can be argued that there is not need to account for it. It can used for shopping at Tops, school fees, buying land, kept for a rainy day or used to buy a condo for hubby. No doubt the RD will just clarify as it goes along by demanding back taxes, penalties and interest from tax residents it decides have misinterpreted the unsaid definition of a gift and it may also be left up to the whims of individual officers, leaving the taxpayer to sue in the Central Tax Court, if he doesn't agree.

The problem is do they care? The super cautious, conservative military style government has gone and you now have a return to the impetuous, autocratic bull in a china shop Thaksinite form of government with the finance portfolio held by his nominee Srettha, who is sent on permanent roadshows, like Yingluck before him, to allow Thaksin's backroom boys to manage everything. The RD announced a focus group to assess the impacts of its unlawful reinterpretation of the Revenue Code, having obviously not bothered to think about that beforehand and nothing has come of these focus groups. The thinking was just let's grab some more tax money and they don't want to draw attention to this superficial planning in focus groups. The digital wallet is also not thought through as a macroeconomic policy. They just came up with it as a great way to buy votes to help shore up their flagging popularity vs MFP. They don't feel the need to translate tax return forms and guidances into a multitude of different languages. They make no effort to make the Thai versions comprehensible to the layman. They are hopelessly confusing. The English language versions that exist are often not updated other than to change the date while leaving the old versions as the text with numbers not even coinciding with the current tax return forms. This is also apparent on the RD website which frequently omits important sections and details in English versions and fails to update things like tax allowances, so that it is dangerous to rely on their English materials which they make clear are just for guidance. Do they plan to cover all this complex situations that arise from different types of income and double tax treaties with different countries? No. You are a tax resident. You are under a legal obligation to file a tax return, if you have remitted assessable income. If you want to make a case for a foreign tax credit or some such, come along to the RD office and make your case. If the officer agrees with your interpretation, he'll then tell you what documents he will require you to bring in to verify this. That is how it has worked for claiming tax credits against corporate income tax for decades. So why would you expect them to set up a complex system for individual taxpayers facing exactly the same issues as corporates?

They do make random checks on businesses that are run as sole proprietorships, particularly restaurants because they are accessible to the public. They sit inside or nearby and estimate the number of diners and average spend and send them a tax bill.

Another of those 4 million unregistered guns. Taxi drivers can't afford 80k plus for a legal handgun.

Losing 3% on buying baht overseas before coming to Thailand to avoid doing the exchange in Thailand and being reported may be worth it, if it means the difference between that and 35% tax. There are also unlicensed money changers and informal bamboo network arrangements where you transfer foreign currency to someone who needs it offshore and they give you Thai baht at a decent exchange rate because you have cut out the middle man. The back street money changers may give you fake banknotes but I have done the other type years ago as a favour. Nowadays it would be safer to keep it in cash rather than deposit to your Thai account.

They all sold their souls to the devil years ago when they signed up with Thaksin. Now that is even more apparent after the double cross of MFP and their eagerness to jump into bed with the uncle parties just to get power and money.

Of course it will not affect Chinese tourism. You can shoot them, blow them up, drown them, abduct them for ransom or do whatever you want with them and still they will flock to Thailand to visit those beautiful temples.

Probably a lot of these will end up back on the black market. Police and military and park are said to be responsible for a lot of arms trafficking particularly over the Burmese border.

The end goal - a thoroughly modern military that continues to buy very expensive arms that are of low quality and needed only for the commissions and continues to conscript thousands of young Thai men it doesn't need and allow NCOs to beat some of them to death for fun with total impunity. I am sure Sutin will be able to achieve this and announce yet another PT win to the gullible peasantry on the 6 o'clock news and keep them happy for another day.

Thaksin being treated for chronic megalomania and corruption. He is now stable but these conditions are incurable and will recur harming the entire Thai population. Interesting that CAT scans and MRI, which is expensive, are often difficult or impossible to obtain in the NHS but the Thai prison service provides them readily to a prisoner with nothing physically wrong with him.

It is also my sense that tax returns claiming tax credits under DTAs have been largely or even exclusively used by companies up until now, not by individuals. Thai companies have been liable to tax on their foreign source income for decades, regardless of whether they remit the income to Thailand. However, there has not been any real for individuals to claim tax credits and there is no space to do so on the PND 91 form which you would think would have been added, if a large number of taxpayers were declaring foreign source income. Anyone with enough foreign source income to make it worth paying a tax accountant to do the filing could afford to wait till the end of the tax year and remit the money tax free. Most people who needed the money before the end of the tax year are expat pensioners, whom the RD has not bothered up until now, probably assuming the incremental tax they could collect by harassing expat pensioners would not be worth the trouble. But all this seems likely to change.