Dogmatix

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.

The problem might be that other coalition parties in the cabinet, that vehemently opposed the digital wallet in the election campaign, might get scared of being investigated by the NAAC for approving the digital wallet, from which they get no political advantage anyway, n a cabinet resolution. PT has less seats than BJP, PPRP and UTN. So a coalition rift over it could cause the coalition to collapse. If so, good riddance to bad rubbish. Never seen such a bunch of crooks and incompetents in a cabinet.

Sounds like a gold trading scam not a romance scam.

https://www.thaipbsworld.com/chada-thaised-ferocious-opponent-of-pitas-pm-bid-has-a-dark-and-violence-racked-history/ Chada is the perfect choice to work on death lists of gangsters appointed as kamnans by the interior minister and on gun control. He is an expert on gangsters and illegal use of guns. One of his sons was killed in a road rage incident after both sons opened fire on a pick up truck that overtook them. They got a big surprise when the pick up truck driver pulled out a gun himself and fired back with greater accuracy and got Chada's son in the head. The PBS article has a different take that the pick up truck driver was an assassin hired to kill Chada but that makes little sense. The people in Chada's car fired at least 10 shots before the pick up truck driver opened fire, according to forensic reports. What a person to have in public office but a good match with the drug smuggler agriculture ministry.

Remember they were going to get a million millionaires with LTR visas. So far only a couple of thousand.

I am already missing the Prayut government. They were ineffective but at least very conservative and cautious in changing things. Right now a military coup wouldn't be such a bad thing to get rid of all these Thaksin appointed goons and put him in prison where he belongs. There is still a lese majeste case pending against him which the army said it would bring but they have dropped it for now.

15 year's ago there was still no reliable mobile signal in the mother-in-law's Isaan village but all networks are there now. At the same time there were also some villages without electricity in Isaan but I think now there are only a few in mountainous areas. But villagers without a smart phone will be a problem. I expect that people like loan sharks will buy digital wallets forward at a discount, i.e. I will give you 5k for it today.

Thanks. So it's possible or was a few years ago.

It's odd that they don't actually say Gift tax. But I don't think there is any other exemption they could be referring to .

Yes, it is only in Thai. Come to think of it I think only Thais can file online because you not only need a 13 digit ID number, which PRs have, but you need the laser code on the back of a blue ID card to register and log in. As mentioned earlier in the thread the English translations of the forms, which are for guidance only, are frequently not updated on time when there are changes. They just change the date on the form. The RD also puts up guidance notes on its website that are years out of date with incorrect allowances. They want to collect tax from foreigners but are too lazy to produce quality materials in English, or, perish the thought, let foreigners file on line and in English. The first time I file a tax return without help, it took me hours to figure out the forms and what had to be filled in. On the paper forms you also have to do all the calculations and figure out your tax for yourself. I am familiar with acounting and tax but I imagine most peoples Thai significant others would really struggle with a tax return, if they've never had to do it before.

The Q&A from the RD on the order appeared to deal with this in the answer to Q4. 4 คําถาม: เงินได้พงึ ประเมนิ ประเภทใดบา้ งทีcต้องนํามาเสยี ภาษีเงินได้ตามมาตรา 41 วรรคสอง แหง่ ประมวลรษั ฎากร คําตอบ: เงนิ ไดพ้ งึ ประเมนิ จากแหลง่ เงนิ ไดต้ า่ งประเทศทอีc ยูใ่ นบงั คบั ตอ้ งเสยี ภาษีเงนิ ได้ ได้แก่ เงินได้พึงประเมินตามมาตรา 40 (1) ถึง (8) แหง่ ประมวลรษั ฎากร อย่างไรก็ดี หากเปqนเงินได้พึงประเมินทีcได้รบั ยกเว้นภาษีตามกฎหมาย ผู้เสียภาษีไม่ต้องนําเงินได้พึงประเมินนัfนมาเสียภาษีในประเทศไทย เชน่ การรบั มรดก หรอื เงินไดท้ ีcไดร้ บั จากการอุปการะจากบุพการี ผสู้ บื สนั ดาน หรอื คสู่ มรส เฉพาะเงนิ ได้ ในสว่ นทไีc มเ่ กนิ ยสีc บิ ลา้ นบาทตลอดปภv าษีนนัf เปนq ตน้ It is very badly written and copying the pdf file messed up some of the words. Here's a bad google translate though. 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 Tax exemption according to law. Taxpayers do not have to bring the assessable income is taxed in Thailand such as receiving an inheritance or receiving income received from the support of parents and trusted people, or marrying a married couple, only the money that is not received exceeding 20 millions of baht for the entire tax year. It doesn't actually state that remitting gifts from overseas is tax free up to 20 mil but strongly implies this. Otherwise why mention this at all in Q&A about RD P 161/2566? It also doesn't mention gifts but AFAIK gifts are the only provision in the Revenue Code that can be regarded as supporting parents, spouse or child and the threshold for gift tax is 20 mil. It is shame we are dealing with people who are utterly inarticulate in their own language.