Dogmatix

Very useful comparison. It would be much more of a nightmare in Thailand because they are incapable of setting up clear rules like this and so much is left to the discretion and interpretation of different government offices and individual officials, not to mention endemic corruption and extortion. One of the recommendations made me laugh - open a new offshore account every year. Did it occur to the writer how difficult it is to open offshore accounts nowadays or just onshore accounts with an overseas address? You have to find a bank that will do it first. Then go through their KYC and compliance regulations. One Swiss banker told him he tried to open an account for a guy who had made many millions from crypto. The bank's compliance department spent months demanding document after document and finally rejected the application. I can see the point of opening new accounts to segregate funds but I don't think this is a viable approach for expats here.

He is listening to Thaksin's faceless team of spin doctors who arrange his PR schedules and write his scripts. This one was presented as a fantastic way to refute the opposition attacking him over the funding for the 10k digital wallet and other populist wastrel schemes. It served a purpose for a few days on the evening news to make it look as they would force foreigners and rich Thais to pay for those schemes. Then they move on to new PR initiatives without worrying about the long term damage done to the Thai economy as well as the wreckage they will cause to the lives of many expats with Thai families.

By back to back loans what Kittipong meant was, for example, X Co based in HK borrows HK$ and lends them to a subsidiary of Thai based Z Co in HK. Meanwhile Z Co in Bangkok reciprocates by borrowing in baht which it lends to a Thai subsidiary or affiliate of the HK based X Co which uses the funds to invest in a Thai project. X Co in HK is, of course, a shell company established in HK by a wealthy Thai investor for the purpose of repatriating funds to Thailand tax free. The profits of the new Thai venture remain in Thailand but principle can be remitted offshore with interest if desired. Alternatively, the loan could perhaps be structured as a convertible with an option to convert to equity and not bother with servicing and the debt. The super wealthy will find ways around this. For regular expats some type of loan mechanism may be possible, if you have an offshore company with a bank account or another name you can route money through. A loan agreement could be set up that rolls up all interest as a bullet payment for a 10 year term which is extendable indefinitely at the discretion of the lender. Perhaps naturalized Thai citizens can adopt a Thai name and lend to themselves from an account in their birth name. 555. The RD might need to come up with another reinterpretation to reclassify this type of loan as income but it would probably take them many years to track the unrepaid loans. One could also issue a new loan to repay the principle and forgive the interest which would be taxable in remittance and restart the clock.

RD officers showing up at the homes of octagenarian farangs enjoying quiet retirement - “You farang, you live Thailand. You pay money now”. It has happened already to younger retirees under the existing rules.

Someone sent me Kittipong’s article in pdf format but it was published by Krungthep Thurakit here https://www.bangkokbiznews.com/finance/investment/1091100# Krungthep Thurakit is part of The Nation. So perhaps they will publish it in English on their website (still miss the print edition). Another point raised by Kittipong that I don’t think I included in my quick summary was that the RD order failed to instruct RD staff to take into account DTAs when applying it’s apparently off the cuff and unlawful reinterpretation of the Revenue Code. The RD spokesman mentioned DTAs but that was only a verbal comment to newsmen. You would think the order would include at least a basic principle regarding the application of DTAs, such as in cases where a DTA allows either contracting state to tax an income source, will the RD’s policy be to allow tax credits and tax the differential or tax the whole lot and let the taxpayer claim a tax refund from the other contracting state. The UK’s HMRC for example, has an established mechanism for claiming DTA tax refunds with a form available online for this purpose.

Here's the first rebuttal (in Thai in Pdf file attached). l have seen from a Thai legal expert, Prof Kitipong Urapeepatanapong, who is or was chairman of Baker McKenzie and many other things. Here is a resume from 2019 https://www.psh.co.th/storage/content/about-us/management-structure/board/2021/kitipong.pdf. I will summarize the salient points of Prof Kittipong's article. Kittipong argues that the RD order is only a directive to RD staff and doesn't have the force of law. So RD staff are ordered to tell taxpayers about the new distorted interpretation but taxpayers should follow the established tax law and ignore them. The RD doesn't have the power to reinterpret the law which has stood without challenge for 38 years. If there is to a be a reinterpretation, this should be the role of the Tax Court. He says the reinterpretation flies in the face of established tax law principles which require that, if a law is unclear and has two possible meanings, it should be interpreted in the way that is more favorable to taxpayers. He states that, if the government insists on changing the law, the correct way would be to amend it through a Royal Decree or an Act of Parliament. In this respect he urges a complete overhaul of the Revenue Code through parliament along principles similar to Singapore which incentivize taxpayers to pay tax by making laws fair and easy to comply with without excessive rates of tax that encourage taxpayers to avoid tax and keep money out of the country. If they insist on going ahead with a type of global taxation, it should be properly thought through with all types of income and overseas tax practices and DTAs thoroughly reviewed first. He urges the government to consider carefully the potential revenue that can be collected from this reinterpretation vs the likely long term damage that would be caused to the Thai economy by discouraging taxpayers from bringing their money to Thailand due to the tax and general uncertainty caused by a suddenly hostile tax regime for investors. He also urges them to consider Thailand's competitiveness vs Singapore and Hong Kong that don't tax any foreign source income. He also said that wealthy Thais would avoid repatriating funds but would still be able invest in Thailand through back to back loans with offshore entities. He concludes that, in his opinion, the proposed reinterpretation of the law will be a net negative for the Thai economy and recommends ditching the idea. Prof Kittipong on foreign source income taxation Sep 2023.pdf

I note that the list of financial service provides having to report stuff in the KPMG link includes credit card operators which gives rise to the possibility of tax residents having to pay tax on the use of offshore credit cards in Thailand. It would probably be challenge to shift out tax residents from the thousands of daily tourist ransactions but the risk to putting significant amounts on a foreign credit card seems there. Interesting that trustees are on the list when there is no trust law in Thailand. Perhaps that was on the international list and the Thai side just thought they would include it to have access to overseas trustees and to cover themselves for a future Thai trust law. Reporting person(s) Banks and financial institutions Securities companies Governmental financial institutions Authorized life insurance licensees Derivatives business operators Escrow agents Credit card operators Trustees Other persons with financial accounting information as prescribed by Minister of Finance

Then not such a great group and of course most likely the case. If Joke shot fired the shots himself he would be careful to avoid extensive damage to his car.

Big Joke might end up dead in a ditch somewhere this and the RTP would not be able to find who did it. The Kamnan Nok case would come to a dead end too. Powerful forces are lined up against and his big boss Prawit, who got him off the hook last time is no longer in power.

Actually a nice little group apart from one flyer on the left.

The RD is trying to give the impression that that there is irresistible international pressure to implement the major change to the taxation of foreign source income in the way they are now doing, related to their signing up to this CRS agreement. This is simply not the case. It is just a pathetic excuse as the two issues are unrelated. There was indeed pressure to sign up for CRS and Thailand was about 5 years late in doing so but changing the Revenue Code because of it is a complete non-sequitur. Hong Kong and Singapore joined CRS reporting in 2018 and since then they have made no moves in the direction of taxation of foreign sourced income which applies also to companies there. What the RD meant is that they themselves wanted to do it and felt that joining CRS would give them enough information about overseas accounts of Thais to make it easier for them to go after Thai overseas investors and Thais with overseas employment income to make the whole thing viable. It is quite pathetic the way they lie and blame foreign countries for their own actions.

Yes. I remember having to get these tax clearance certificates to leave the country. It was necessary for NON-B visa holders. The expat got a tax number and the first year that was enough to get the certificate. After you had to file a tax return and all tax had to be paid up-to-date. A messenger went to the RD and came back with the certificate after waiting a couple of hours there. It was a lot of work for the RD and a hassle for us. If they did anything like that again, I suspect it would be getting a tax clearance certificate in order to renew visas which is much easier to administer. When I applied for my first NON-B the IB accused me of working without WP before I moved to Thailand from looking at my passport entries which showed a lot of visits. They asked me my salary (I gave a low ball number) and did a calculation of the number of days spent in Thailand to assess income tax, even though I hadn't stayed enough to be a tax resident. I got a bill for 40k and receipt which I suspected was fake but I needed that WP and my company was decent enough to pay the "tax". The RD's unilateral amendment to the Tax Code could easily open the floodgates for that sort of extortion again.

A couple of the passports used to check in on MH370 were obtained from a Phuket bike rental shop that held renters' passports as surety. A couple of guys who looked like a farang to the owner dropped by and asked to get back their passports for a few minutes to change some money. He just handed them the pile of passports to let take out their own. Then they disappeared with two the passports. I think they were sold to Iranians.

Not only that but by donating his remuneration he gets a tax break - double tax break if donated to hospitals, schools or youth organizations. So his 80k donations become only 24k if donated the right way because he must be paying 35% on his other income, although his dividends from Sansiri are taxed at a flat rate of only 10%. Everything about Srettha seems to be designed by Thaksin's spin doctors to have something new to appeal to the old red shirt loyalists on the evening news every day but nothing for the young voters. He just looks like a 2D carboard cut out wheeled around from event to event. After the meeting for him to confirm his nomination of the police chief following the Big Joke controversy, reported were told to wait for hours to interview him by the government PR staff. He just rushed past them without saying a word to avoid answering questions on what criteria made him recommend the candidate he did, doing nothing to allay suspicions it was all decided by others and he had no say in his own recommendation.

This is an old thread but i have just heard of WrLife which seems to over reasonable healthcare quotes for older expats. However, reviews on Trustpilot seem to be mostly negative - excuses for not paying claims in full and it is a UK broker unlicensed in Thailand and possibly operating here illegally. So no protection from Thai regulators.

If a DTA says “shall be taxed in that contracting state”, it is very clear, eg US social security and most pensions of former government employees” But in most cases the wording is “may be taxed in that contracting state” which allows governments to tax anything, including already taxed income. The mechanism to avoid double taxation can be accepting tax credits and just charging incremental tax where the tax rate is higher or taxing the lot and telling the taxpayer to claim a refund from the other country. Either method may satisfy the obligation to avoid double taxing citizens of the contracting states.

That is indeed the implication of the order. Just self-declare remittances that you consider income and pay tax on them at the highest progressive rate. Then wait for the RD to visit your house, possibly a few years later. However, most of the DTAs are unclear about where income is to be taxed. They often say "XYZ type of income may be taxed by the other contracting state". That means that a Thai resident investor can be taxed again in Thailand after paying withholding tax. It also can mean that Thailand can tax income from which income has been withheld at the full Thai rate and tell the taxpayer to claim tax refunds from the jurisdiction that deducted the tax.

One wonders whether they will bother with any of this. If they say nothing, which IMHO is quite possible, everything remitted that was earned from the year dot onwards is taxable at the progressive rates going up to 35% on 4 million plus. That would just leave it up to tax residents to file in 1Q25 using their own judgement , or choose not to file, and see what happens. There are definitely many things to do with investment income that need clarification and which apply to Thai overseas investors as well as foreigners. Since Thai investors are a main target group, they ought to have a stab at make things clearer ASAP but no guarantee they will bother. Thailand has no specific capital gains tax and treats all capital gains as income in the period they arise. But this is not particularly onerous on domestic investors for two reasons: 1) capital gains on listed Thai stocks sold by individual investors are tax free; 2) Property sales in Thailand are taxed on a transactional basis at the time of transfer at the Land Office based on appraisal price or declared sales price, whichever is the higher, regardless or gain or loss. This is not overly burdensome as the total tax on a property sale is rarely more than 5% and, being done on a separate transactional basis it has no effect on the progressive tax rate you pay on your other income for the year. Capital gains taxes in other countries are usually at a lower rate than the top marginal rates of tax (eg CGT in the UK 28% flat rate vs, top rate of income tax 45%) and often allow inflation indexing of the purchase price in calculating the gain. That means that, if the RD just applies the top rate of income tax to an overseas capital gain that has already been taxed, the Thai taxpayer is likely to have more Thai tax to pay, even if the RD accepts his overseas tax credit. This would hit Thais who invest in overseas property (a lot of rich Thais buy property for their kids to live in while studying in England and then sell they graduate and the UK now charges CGT to non-residents) and stocks. Similarly with overseas dividends and interest. Thailand charges a flat rate of withholding tax of 10% on Thai dividends and 15% interest but offers no such beneficial rates on overseas dividends and interest. So an overseas dividend with a tax credit of 10% could be charged another 25% by the RD. Thai investors who invest overseas have never complained about high Thai tax rates because they haven't had to worry about it under the existing rules, if they can wait a year to remit gains. But now they seem to making representations about the unfairness vis a vis domestic investors of a system that is being touted with political spin as a way to introduce equality. Let's hope they can shout loud enough.

The LTR visa came from the previous government and in particular was the brainchild of ML Chayothid who was an advisor to the energy minister who pushed this project at the cabinet level for him. Chayothid was hoping for a ministry or at least a deputy minister role in this government with UTN but unfortunately was left out in the cold completely. So there is no champion for the LTR policy in this government and the BOI, which runs it is under the PM’s office. Of the million LTRs targeted by the Prayut government I think they have only bagged a small fraction of that so far, while the government seems focused on low end tourists from China, Kazakhstan et al for the moment. I don’t see any likelihood of reneging on LTR visas or the Royal Decree at the moment but I can also see them making a fairly restricted interpretation of the Royal Decree. We have already got the interpretation that only income earned after the visa was issued is exempt which is quite restrictive. Srettha and the RD may well feel that the LTR exemption is irksome in that it is inconsistent with his spur of the moment brainfart policy and clearly the LTR exemption would never even have been considered by this government. So I would guess the chances of erring on the generous side in future interpretations of the exemption may be limited.

There is indirect impact from the PT flaky popularist economic policies which are the motivation for this. Market are not convinced that about ramping up govt debt for stuff like digital wallets, debt moratorium, mass transit prices that are unlikely to have any sustained impact on productivity or growth. Also the inflationary effects of the minimum wage hikes without contingent productivity gains is worrisome from a macro perspective.

I was picked up by a cab driver who was in tears because he was scammed by a couple who looked wealthy and talked as if they were. He picked them up in Pathum Thani and asked him to pay the expressway fee as they needed to go to an ATM. He took them to an ATM in Sukhumvit and they just scarpered. Nice.

Srettha definitely doesn't give a toss what farangs think of his party's policies or even what Thais think for that matter. The policies were thought up by Thaksin's spin doctor team with minimal or zero input from him and he has to do what he is told by his boss or face the axe, due to lack of support from Pheua Thai, which will happen anyway when Ung Ing ready to take over. Meanwhile, his reward for toeing the party line will be snout to the trough for as long as it lasts.

What is Happy Water? Sounds like the name of red indian squaw.

True but giving themselves the right to tax income arising in any prior tax year with no time limit, rather than just the one previous tax year, as before, also allows them to assess all savings/capital as income because it was obviously earned at some time in the past. While you can produce evidence that income was earned, how could you produce evidence that savings were never derived from income earned in any form whatsoever? If no evidence is required showing how the funds in a remittance were derived, it will be too easy for everyone to avoid tax by claiming they have remitted their non-assessable savings/capital only which by the way is likely to be comingled with accumulated interest which is also taxable. CRS reporting is not going to show enough detail to help determine any of this.

35% is the top marginal rate of tax in Thailand kicking in at 4,000,001 baht. In saying 35% the implied situation is a large transfer well above the 35% threshold, so most but not all, of it would taxed at 35%.