Dogmatix
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7 minutes ago, Mike Lister said:
That also has to be assumption and opinion. I personally think that if somebody was gifted 20 mill, the RD would look at both the giver and the receiver.
They might but in that case would they worry, if the giftor claimed a 60k spouse allowance or a refund of 3k in withholding tax? In the only case study we have so far the only things that the RD investigated was that the gift was not over 20 mil and that the couple was lawfully married. Of course more cases may follow but anything more to do with irrecoverability and separation of assets is going to hard for them to argue, given that the CC&C makes impossible to keep ownership of conjugal assets separate. More likely they would push the finance ministry for a Royal Decree to reduce the exempt amount which is on the cards anyway along with a reduction in the 100 mil exemption on IHT. I believe gift tax will continue to be looked in tandem with the IHT, rather than in tandem with this remittance reinterpretation.
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49 minutes ago, UKresonant said:
I'm surprised if the genuine gift from overseas from legitimate source would be problematic. Reading the posts on the UK tax Comunity forum, it does not seem to be other than straight forward there. Unless then re-transfered to a 'relavant person' (like the sender).
Perhaps the gift in a Thai context, could not be then used to purchase property.
I think it would be hard for the RD to argue in the Tax Court that a spousal gift could not be used to buy property or a car or something that the giftor might get some benefit from, when the gift already became common conjugal property the moment it arrived in the receiving spouse's bank account. So I somehow doubt the RD would want to dig into this sort of thing and risk lengthy court cases they might lose, given the lack of law and regulations to support their view. Bear in mind that this is not going to be just an expat thing. Wealthy Thais who have made millions from investing overseas in stocks on the NASDAQ etc are also going to be gifting untaxed capital gains back to their spouses.
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33 minutes ago, Klonko said:
Thanks for the case doc.
Based on marital agreement concluded in Switzerland, which is honoured in Thailand, I will not have conjugal but separated property. Else it could be argued that my pension income in Switzerland is conjugal property and transfers are partially a gift from my wife to herself.
With respect to joint tax filing, I consider it a little contradictory to claim THB 60k spouse allowance on the one side and keep the gift tax exempt on the other side.
I could organise myself with zero taxable income and provide respective documentation, but I consider to come up with a tax payable equal to the withholding tax on the interest on my Thai bank accounts, not reclaiming the withholding tax and hopefully keeping the tax man happy and less motivated for cumbersome inquiries.
Thai RD bureaucrats don't make these type of judgments. If the Revenue Code allows you to claim a 60k allowance for having a spouse, they will let you claim it without question. Unless they investigate your wife's remittances, they won't know, she has received a tax exempt gift from you anyway because the tax return form only requires declaration of gifts in excess of 20 mil from a spouse. You don't have to declare a gift under 20 mil and then claim exemption. They will also not care whether you claim a refund of withholding tax which is likely to be fairly miniscule, since the maximum tax free interest is 20k which at 15% withholding tax and 0.5% interest on savings accounts gives a maximum refund of 3,000. The kind things they might look at would be someone with huge interest income reported by Thai banks but very little income declared on tax returns to explain where the savings came from.
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17 minutes ago, Yumthai said:
Agreed.
Hence, it should be noted in the tax guide that:
53) Note: Only funds that are exempt from Thai tax or funds on which Thai tax has already been paid, can be Gifted. It is not possible to Gift funds that are assessable income, in order to avoid Thai tax.
is an opinion/interpretation and not from Thai official source.
Agreed. Opinions and assumptions can be useful but should be clearly identified as such, if not supported by any evidence.
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56 minutes ago, Klonko said:Thank you very much for case evidence.
You are welcome. For your interest I have attach the RD case study which is quite recent from Feb 2023. At the beginning is a google translation but the original is at the bottom.
A further complication in considering gifts to spouses is the provision in the Civil and Commercial Code that any income or assets acquired after marriage become part of the the common conjugal assets means that the gift to your spouse immediately becomes your joint property, not her sole property. I think that will make it very difficult for the RD to pursue spousal gifts to try to argue they were not irrecoverable gifts, as also defined in the CC&C. It would also be a nightmare to try to establish that, for example, you got benefit from a house or a car she bought with the gift because you used it. If she used it for household expenses, as the person in the house study claimed, you would obviously get some benefit too.
Your point about filing separate tax returns is an interesting one. I hadn't thought of that, although I just filed a separate tax return for the missus for the first time because she started to get some income that would have been taxed in a higher tax bracket, if I had continued to file jointly. I am not sure though it would make any difference. Filing a joint tax return doesn't imply that you have pooled your assets, which are legally pooled under the CC&C anyway. It only implies that your spouse has not much assessable income, so that you can take advantage of her allowances without being affected by her income. Anyway the clause in the RD about spousal gift exemption is very broad:
42 (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.
The clause does mention maintenance or support but adds "or gift" which presumably means that exempted gifts to spouses are not restricted to sums needed for household subsistence but that any gifts under 20 million. whatever the purpose, are exempted. At any rate there are very few households that need 20 million in after tax income to run smoothly, which if restricted to half the maintenance costs would limit it even further to 40 million households. Looking at the history of gift tax, it was introduced in 2016 on the same day as the revival of inheritance tax and was intended to be used in tandem. The gift exemptions were intended as sweeteners to get IHT through the coup legislature and Council of State and avoid a backlash. Inheritances to spouses are tax exempt but the 20 million exemption allows billionaires to pass on their estates to children tax free while they are still alive. That can be the only reason for a 20 million cap and it is unlikely that the RD has been audition offspring from ultra wealthy families to check that their living expenses are 20 million a year. Will the RD take an different approach when the gift exemption emerges as a loophole in its new remittance tax. Who knows? They might wish to but also might not find much support in existing laws and regulations which are bare bones. The big problem for he RD is that they are imposing this remittance tax by themselves with no supporting legislation or ministerial regulations and there is a limit to their powers to change laws.
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10 minutes ago, Klonko said:As per Mike's comprehensive and deserving tax guide: "Only funds that are exempt from Thai tax or funds on which Thai tax has already been paid, can be Gifted. It is not possible to Gift funds that are assessable income, in order to avoid Thai tax.".
I understand there is the argument that funds transferred from a Thai resident benefactor's untaxed foreign income to the Thai account of the beneficiary may be assessable income in Thailand.
On the occasion of the Swiss embassy town hall February 27, 2024, after discussing tax qualification of foreign income , the senior Thai RD tax expert answered to the question "How are pre-inheritance and gift funds taxed when transferred from abroad?" with "Under Thai domestic law, exemptions are for example provided for gifts to ascendants or descendants or support payments to spouses and children. In these cases, up to THB 20 million per year are exempted. Exemptions are also provided for payments to persons who are not ascendants,descendants or spouse, if they have moral purpose or and or are in accordance with customs (maximum exempted amounts = THB 10 million).".
The quote is from the embassy's transcript and I would assume that the transcript was verified with Thai RD. The quote would not make sense if funds gifted from foreign income accounts were assessable income and not exempt from Thai taxes in principle.
Based on this statement, I deem it legal tax optimisation and not illegal tax evasion to transfer untaxed pension funds from my Swiss bank account to my wife's Thai bank account, provided the amounts transferred are less than 50% of our joint living expenses and not passed on to my Thai bank account, and we do not file a joint tax return.
Is there any official statement of Thai RD to the contrary? I would not put too much weight on tax consultants with their fee based bias, but rather plan my taxes based on the recent statement from Thai RD.
There is no evidence for the view that gifts are only exempt, if they are made from income on which Thai tax has already been paid. The provision on gifts in the Revenue Code makes no mention of this and there are no ministerial or RD regulations to this effect. The only case study on the RD's website about gifts is an example about a foreigner who sent remittances from abroad at irregular intervals to his Thai girlfriend. Some of the remittances were of a size that could have been regarded as maintenance and others which significantly larger than this. The RD didn't question that the remittances were from abroad and therefore obviously not out of income taxed in Thailand or that some were too much for regular maintenance. The only point at issue for the RD was that the couple wasn't legally married and therefore the gifts were assessable for the woman's PIT. I seem to recall they said in the commentary that the gifts would all have been exempted, if they had been legally married. As you say, a gift from overseas is unlikely to have been taxed in Thailand, unless you earned the money in Thailand and remitted it overseas before gifting it back to Thailand and the RD official talking at the Swiss Embassy would probably have mentioned that gifts from overseas were effectively not exempted, if this were the case.
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For one of the webinars I attended I made the foolish mistake of giving my real phone number, thinking the guy was on the level. The advice was like the curate's egg. It was good in parts and rotten in others. But what is the point of an egg like that? A week after the webinar I started getting scripted cold calls from expat financial advisors offering investment services. You know the type - unregistered anywhere and unqualified selling investment products with very high front end loads and withdrawal penalties. Some of the investments end up worthless too, like the famous football fund and tree farms.
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2 hours ago, Mike Lister said:The “Simple Tax Guide” has been substantially updated and is linked below. When a newer version becomes available, it will replace the version in the OP and members will be notified. Readers of the guide should note the following para, from the guide:
9) We are aware of several activities that are under way currently that may affect what is written in this guide but they have not yet concluded decisively. Readers should remain vigilant for changes in the following areas:
a) We understand that several Dual Tax Treaty Agreements (DTA’s) are being renegotiated at present, you should check to see if the agreement between Thailand and your home country is updated because this may affect you.
b) It has been rumoured that the new interpretation of the tax rule might be challenged in court and potentially overturned, to date we have not seen news about any challenge.
c) We are told that the tax return forms are being redesigned, the new forms may yield some clues as to what additional information will be required of taxpayers. Readers should remain alert for news about the new forms, when they are issued.
Anyone who has questions about the guide or how the contents affect them, can raise them here where several people should be able to help. If anyone has tax guide or related issues they can’t get answers to, they should feel free to PM me and I will see if I am able to help further.
The Tax Guide thread is locked to prevent debate about tax occurring in too many different locations that are difficult to keep track of for both members, Moderators and me. Another major reason is to avoid confusing readers who are only looking for answers to basic questions, without scrolling through hundreds of pages of frequently unclear and complex debate.
We are aware of a graphics issue when a link to the guide is cut and pasted into a thread and displays an old graphic heading in green, which is misleading but erroneous. Said graphics character has proved elusive but the display can be safely ignored, the guide applies to taxpayers with overseas income also, even if the heading suggests it doesn’t.
The Simple Tax Guide is a community project that has been viewed over 70,000 times. It has helped several hundred AN members with their taxes and alleviated a lot of unnecessary worry, particularly from older members. If you would like to participate in the construction of the guide by suggesting ways to improve it, or by drafting new sections for the guide, you are most welcome to do so and should contact me via PM.
It will be interesting to see what changes, if any, will be made to the PND 90 form and its onllne equivalent. The 2023 online version already allows you to fill income from overseas. So they just need to add in a space to deduct tax already paid that is deductible according to a DTA. You can already fill in tax withheld in Thailand but that requires the TIN of the entity that deducted it that can be linked in the RD's system. Currently they have a pretty neat system for online filing, compared to what it was 10 years ago. Thai dividends can now be loaded straight into your tax account with their tax implications calculated in a second by clicking on an icon, whereas previously you enter all them manually with the tax rates paid by the company. The e-filing system is now getting real momentum too. My tax deductible purchases in the shopping rebate scheme were all loaded straight into my tax account along with insurance premiums and most of my charitable donations. Even temples are now able to input donations into the RD system. In the past the system was hard to get into near the deadline and used to crash a lot, forcing me to start the whole thing again a few times each year. Now it is usually possible to do the whole filing at a sitting without being forcibly logged out, unless you pause too long.
Given the near state of perfection of the RD's current system (surprising in and of itself), I doubt they will want to allow taxpayers to fill in foreign tax credits that can't be verified by the system and which require cross referencing with DTAs. So I imagine that, even if they add a place in the hardcopy forms for tax credits., it will remain a manual face to face system. Of course, there is also a strong likelihood that individual RD officers with demand a level of government certification of foreign tax documents that is not possible in most Western countries.
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Not mentioned is the government also effectively decriminalised possession of small quantities of cocaine, heroin and ecstacy at the same time as the 5 speed pills.
Unfortunately Thaksin is the 400 lb gorilla sitting in the corner. He has pulled off a skillful coup after losing the election and now calls the shots. He has a bee in his bonnet over drugs due to his son's out of control fondness for various high so substances when he was PM. He is no doubt pushing for complete recriminalisation of everything. Apart from that he is a dead weight damaging the Thai socio economic structure and development. His cupboard is bare now. He had some reasonable ideas in the beginning like universal healthcare. Then came the disastrous rice pledging and now the digital wallet. A real liability for Thailand.
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I just completed my PND 90 tax return online as well as the wife's a few days ahead of the 9 April deadline for online filing (the deadline for paper filing was 31 March. I have filed hers separately this year, as she started earning enough of her own money to make it worthwhile. I used to file jointly. I will get a tax refund of nearly 450k and the wife will get a small tax refund too. That is more than we paid in withholding tax due to the way taxes on Thai sourced dividends are calculated to recognise that they are paid out of already taxed corporate income,. The process is not particularly user friendly towards farangs. I would say you a need pretty good knowledge of Thai and how Thai personal income tax works to even bother trying. You need to get everything prepared before you start and be ready to do the whole thing in one sitting. Otherwise you are likely to get logged out and have to key most of the data in from scratch.
Nowadays there is a lot that is filled in automatically due to e-filings which get linked to the individual taxpayer. Most of my charitable donations and the wife's insurance premiums were already up there and dividends on Thai stocks can be downloaded directly from the share registry. Possibly the RD will eventually be able to pre-load all overseas remittances to personal accounts and let the taxpayer deduct DTA tax credits. But that is probably many year away.
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Generally the hookers do very well in casinos. It's lucky that Thailand has copious capacity and won't need to import any, except for specialties like Russians etc. Places like Sri Lanka need to import hookers for their casinos and guess what country to they turn to - the LOS of course. The girls will be happy to work the casino gig at home in stead.
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4 hours ago, freeworld said:This is what CRS reports
Financial Account Information to be Reported
Under the CRS, financial institutions are required to report specific information about their account holders and their financial accounts. This information includes:
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Account Holder Information: Name, address, jurisdiction of residence, and tax identification number.
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Account Balance or Value: The total balance or value of the account at the end of the reporting period.
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Gross Proceeds from the Sale or Redemption of Financial Assets: Proceeds from the sale or redemption of assets held in the account.
This is correct. One of the expat tax advisors who also sells investment services scared people in his webinar which is on YouTube by saying that the Thai RD already receives detailed quarterly reports in Excel format of credit and debit card payments and ATM withdrawals from foreign banks and credit card issuers on all Thai tax residents, regardless of whether the payments are in Thailand or elsewhere. This is a pure of invention by him for what reason it is hard to fathom. I think it will be hard or impossible for the RD to isolate foreign ATM and card payments by Thai tax residents, at least initially. Also I doubt they would even try at this point. In future, perhaps it will become easier.
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9 minutes ago, Mike Lister said:
FWIW we have been through that posters finances in great detail, several times and there is no Thai tax liability but there are anxiety issues which are not helped by all the uncertainty. This is one of the problems trying to comment on different peoples tax situation, you never understand the person behind the post you're reading so everyone needs to be very careful.
I made a general comment on the situation as I see it which I believe is entirely appropriate in an open forum such as this one. Of course I have no idea what the poster's detailed personal financial situation is because he didn't disclose it and I have no interest in knowing it or commenting on it in detail. But at any rate, no one really knows how the RD is going to handle foreign pensions, probably not even the RD.
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5 hours ago, whitefarang said:
In general, many people would argue that it is not fair for visa holders to pay taxes without receiving any benefits in return. Taxation is typically viewed as a social contract between citizens and the government, where individuals contribute a portion of their income to fund public services and infrastructure that benefit society as a whole. When individuals are taxed without receiving any benefits, it can be perceived as unjust or inequitable . And that is exactly the way I perceive it !
The Thai bureaucrats and politicians don't care. The Thai Revenue Code has always said anyone who spends more than 180 days in the Kingdom is a Thai tax residents and liable to pay Thai income tax, regardless of nationality or benefits they think they get from the tax. Many Thais are also not happy with how their tax money is spent and it is very clear that much of it is wasted or outright stolen but nothing they can do about it. Most can't leave like you can.
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8 hours ago, Badrabbit said:
I pay tax on my 3 pensions in the UK do I now pay tax here too?
Yes. Most likely you will need to pay the difference, if the Thai tax is more than the UK tax. But they haven't clarified that yet and maybe never will, nor have they clarified what documentation will be acceptable to claim tax credits for tax already paid, assuming tax credits can be deducted and they don't force you to pay full Thai tax and try and reclaim what has been paid elsewhere. Thai bureaucrats would like tax receipts certified by a government but you will never get that from HMRC. They won't ever respond to a request for that. Also, bear in mind the tax years are out of synch with the UK being 6 April to 5 April and Thailand being 1 Jan to 31 Dec. So you, if you remit your pensions to Thailand monthly, you will not have anything to show you paid tax on remittances from May to December when you file your Thai tax.
To date there is nowhere on the Thai tax return form to claim a tax credit and the forms are only in Thai. There are translations for guidance only but they are usually inaccurate. I have found the translation to omit new item, e.g. the new tax return may have added an item 17 in Thai but the English translation finishes at item 16 because they just cut and paste the previous year's one without adding the update. You can go along to RD offices with you information and ask the ladies there to fill in your tax return for you but God help you, if you live in the sticks and they are only used to doing tax returns for rice merchants and the like.
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Problem is that Thaksin is the one calling the shots and he wants it recriminalized. Srettha has no power, so it doesn't matter what he thinks. Anutin is unhappy about it but pleased with his money making opportunities and power at the Interior and also jockeying for position in the casino project.
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2 hours ago, Nick Carter icp said:That is not true .
The recent one off bombing was a mistake and Israel has apologised for the error
It is not believable that this was not a deliberate attack. The cars were unmistakable and the journey was cleared with the IDF in advance. The IDF and Israeli government have an extremely wide credibility gap. Anything they say about this sort of thing should be assumed to be a lie, until proved otherwise.
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2 hours ago, Nick Carter icp said:
What does that have to do with the thread topic ?
We have also been asked numerous times to stop giving history lessons
Of course, the history of Palestine and Israel began only 7 Oct.
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No need to worry about Big Joke. His father was the police driver for Thaksin's father-in-law and Thaksin is now back in power and looking for a new police chief available to start in October.
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"Murderers" in the title is a bit of an exaggeration. The men who were convicted of the murders would be more accurate. The murderers are still at large on Murder Island.
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6 hours ago, Hummin said:
Don't even bother, just a few spineless cowardly typewriter worriers! They think they express themself with emotions when have nothing better to say, or just constantly ignorantly hammering the same statements over and over, again and again defending war on terror with terror!
Israel using overwhelming excessive force because they can!
They lost my respect and sympathy when my friends started to come back from serving in Unifil Battalion early 80'ies.
7. October was a result of decades of suppressing palestines, and the western countries who supports Israel, did not manage to keep them or the palestines in check. Right now after bombing the Irani consulate, they again violated international rules. I see New york Times tey to explain why this was not braking international laws, but, really?
The constantly interruptions with western countries supporting different loose fractions of rebellion groups in midle east as well, wars and revenge bombings, contributes to unstabillity in the whole region. And for every innocent civillian killed and mutilated (especially kids and women) you create x new terrorists/freedomfighters, choose your own definition.
Still this do not legitimate Hamas action against civilians, just explain why it happened because of decades of hostility, abuse, use of excessively force every time they revenged incidents and attacks, as well continuesly establishing new settlements on stolen land.
The connections and clean up after ww2 formed how many countries today see the west, and one of them is Iran who supports and use the Palestinians for their cause and revenge for what was done to them when they had their first democratic election, who was overtrown in coup, and the Sha became the puppet for the new world order.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état
And that is only one of the details innthe aftermath of ww2, + other despots who was played and used as long they where useful, and for then turn the back on them, and create caos in the name of democracy.
Iraq, Lybia, Zyria
For those who is interested
Israel bombing Iranian consulate/embassy. I got to read it for free once.
Israel bombed an Iranian Embassy complex. Is that allowed?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/world/europe/interpreter-israel-syria-embassy.html
Now back to my holiday. Just thinking how lucky we are, to be allowed to express our thoughts and meanings from a safe distance without risking anything worse than an confused emotion or two! Have a great safe journey and a good wherever you are, and remember how lucky you are!
Nice pic. Is that the view from the waterfront condos in Gaza that Jared Cushner and Ivanka Trump are going to develop?
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On 3/30/2024 at 8:40 AM, Ben Zioner said:
More TBA [Thai BellyAching].
But the Merkava looks great, mighty.
Some people think the mighty merkava looks better being towed away as a blackened hull with a hole punched in the weak spot near the engine compartment by a Yasin RPG. It's purely a matter of taste.
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I hope that police call centre gang will get the message and stop trying to call me within 30 days.
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17 minutes ago, Wobblybob said:Let's not, let's remember who started this war.
Yes, but why did they start it and who decided to leave the border undefended after receiving credible warnings from Egypt and their own troops at the border?
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Thai government to tax all income from abroad for tax residents starting 2024
in Jobs, Economy, Banking, Business, Investments
Posted
Indeed the Civil & Commercial Code definition of a gift contradicts itself. In the first part it says that a gift is irrevocable. In the second part it outlines conditions for a gift to be revoked. Furthermore the CC&C definition of common conjugal property means that spousal gifts immediately become common conjugal property.
I don't think we can get much help from unattributed views in expat blogs and the RD probably doesn't pay much attention to taxability of gifts in other countries. The Revenue Code is very open in exempting gifts up to 20 mil between married couples. It doesn't define gifts or make any limitations. It doesn't even say that a spouse, who has received a gift may never make a gift back their spouse. If there are other cash flows into the receiving spouse's bank account, the RD is not in a position to argue that the re-gifted amount came from the initial gift or other funds. Plus the fact that all funds received after marriage are conjugal property anyway.
The only way to get greater clarity is to find individual cases of gifts. I found one and posted it. Then there is the case of a Potjaman's gift to her brother-in-law that was initially ruled taxable on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence that this was a gift made on a special occasion because it occurred 2 years after his marriage. Then the appeal court ruled it was in fact a wedding gift. The fact that there may not be any others since the gift tax amendment may suggest it is not a controversial subject for the RD. Both of these cases relied solely on what was in the statutory law and didn't bring in any other regulations or reinterpretations of the law.