Dogmatix

I don't know anything about the application of the HCCH in Thailand and it may not be relevant here anyway but Thailand doesn't have a uniformly good record on application of international treaties. I think the Foreign Ministry gets everyone on board to sign them for the sake of image abroad but when it comes to the implementation domestically by other ministries it may be a different story. A case in point is the Convention for the Reduction of Statelessness to which Thailand is a ratified signatory but flagrantly ignores its obligations under the convention by deliberately leaving a few hundred thousand minorities born in Thailand stateless, or makes it very difficult for them to acquire citizenship, even though most speak perfect Thai and have Thai names. A completely pointless policy that causes harm to Thailand and wrecks the lives of the minorities, motivated only by racism. Also in the old days of the international treaties that up until the early 1970s allowed foreigners among other things to own land in Thailand, the government was notorious for stonewalling applications to buy land in accordance with the treaties, even though they were and still are acknowledged in the Land Code. This discussion pertinent to the application of double tax treaties which Thailand accumulated since 1970s because the other states offered to negotiate them, even though Thailand has not had much use for them until now. Up until today none of them are acknowledged in the Revenue Code which creates difficulties in producing regulations for them. Thus there are none and probably never will be. I am sure that the RD will abide by the letter of the treaties but, since they are only bare bones with most of the important details open to interpretation and agreement between contracting states, abiding by the letter might not be very helpful.

If the poison was in their tea or coffee, Anutin should act swiftly to require permits for sale of tea and coffee throughout the Kingdom and assure Vietnamese tourists they are safe again, similar to his measures when a Chinese tourist was murdered at Siam Paragon with by a deranged teenager with a blank gun. He did a good job reassuring Chinese tourists they were safe by telling them he had required registration of blank guns and even BB guns. The message went out and owners of blank and BB guns were requested to register them but when the interest had died down, there was no follow up and, as of today, there is still no law or regulation to facilitate the registration of blank and BB guns. So it is not actually possible to register them.

My understanding is that the Thai civil courts would disregard any foreign agreement under foreign laws that overrode the provisions of the C&CC regarding division of Thai conjugal assets. But they only claim jurisdiction over Thai assets. Cases have only arisen in respect of divorces AFAIK. Interestingly there is a Supreme Court case where a farang paid for purchase of landed property by his wife and, despite the piece of paper signed in the Land Office agreeing that the property would not form part of the conjugal property, the Supreme Court ruled that the property did comprise conjugal property and ordered that it should be sold with half of the proceeds paid to the farang as part of the divorce settlement. So you can see that the Supreme Court upheld the provisions of the C&CC over the Land Code and the workaround of the prohibition on foreign ownership of land devised by the Interior Ministry to allow Thais married to foreigners to own land. So I am sure the C&CC would be upheld over any foreign laws or agreements.

Good point re Section 1471 of the C&CC excluding gifts from conjugal property. This is applied very easily to gifts of property but it is much harder to segregate gifts of cash. Section 42.27, in fact, gives exemption up to 20 million not only for gifts to spouses but also for support and maintenance " Income derived from maintenance and support or gifts". So what about remittances that are for support or maintenance which are not segregated from conjugal property in the C&CC? If your wife received a piece of land as a gift from her parents after you got married, it is very clear cut under the C&CC that when you get divorced, you cannot claim this as conjugal property to be divided up between you. But, if you paid her a million a month for support or maintenance, under the C&CC the cash and anything she buys with it are conjugal property. Even, if it was clearly in the form of gifts, it is difficult to segregate, particularly, if she has cash and income of her own. If she buys a house or a car with that money and you make use of them too, it would be difficult for the RD to go through the weeds to prove that this disqualified the tax exemption and I doubt they would attempt to. If you have children in common she uses your remittance to pay their school fees, the RD would have a hard job arguing that was the father's personal obligation only and anyway, if you paid them yourself, you would probably be paying out of conjugal assets. Furthermore a remittance used to pay your kids' school fees could also be argued to be a gift to your descendant relatives who didn't have the ability to pay the school fees themselves. Personally I think the issue of the exemption for support, maintenance or gifts to a spouse under 42.27 is not nearly as clear cut as some have tried to maintain by citing non-existent rules. It comes as no surprise that there are no cases to be found where the RD has challenged exemptions claimed by Thais under this section in the 9 years since the amendment.

The Revenue Code taxes pensions on the basis that they are income from employment. There is not a class of assessable income that covers pensions that are not income from employment. The Australian suparannuation is now payable to citizens who have never worked in their lives. The RD might claim that all foreign state pensions are income from employment and therefore taxable but that is not what the Revenue Code says and will therefore be contestable in the Tax Court.

I don't see how you can do that without trying to override the Civil and Commercial Code. You may keep property acquired before marriage but not after marriage. Thai lawyers may charge for agreements of that type but, if you tried to enforce them in court, the judges would strike them down. I was drinking with a Thai lawyer who did a lot of work with farang clients once including pre-nuptial agreements. Because she is female, it was her job to get the bargirls to sign on the dotted line without understanding what they were signing. But she admitted that the pre-nups were not enforceable in Thailand because they were a device to override the Civil and Commercial Code. They are only enforceable, if they give are more generous to the financially weaker party than the law provides, just like pre-nups under English law. These were simple boiler plate agreements and they made good money from them from farang clients who were not informed about the lack of enforceability in Thailand. However, they had a value in scaring ignorant Thai wives into believing they had signed away their rights and not going to court in the case of divorce.

I think it is important to point out that these are not rules derived from the Revenue Code or from case studies from the Supreme Court or the RD's own website or the Civil and Commercial Code. There is very little information or case studies on gifts, other than the bare bones section in the Revenue Code and the one case study on the RD website. It is up to members to decide how useful are purported rules that don't cite the references from which they are derived. The thing about gifts having to be connected to some special occasion is not in the Revenue Code but it is to be found in case studies. However, the case studies only stipulate the special occasion test for gifts to those who are not spouses or ascendant or descendant relatives. The case study about spousal gifts doesn't make this point at all. It is also logical that spousal gifts for the purpose of maintenance should be permitted but not to less immediate family or friends. Incidentally, no allowance is made for gifts to common law spouses and a case study specifically excludes this category of gift. The thing about gifts to a spouse being personal property of that spouse and not conjugal property is a pure concoction that has no basis in the Civil and Commercial Code or any case studies that I am aware of. According to the Civil and Commercial Code all assets acquired by either party to a marriage after the date the marriage was registered automatically become conjugal property. The only exceptions are income and gains derived from person property of either spouse that was acquired before marriage. One of the accountants from Mazars pointed out in a webinar I attended that the Civil and Commercial Code was in conflict with the Revenue Code regarding spousal gifts because there was no way to separate the gift from conjugal assets. This would probably have to be resolved by the Tax Court, if challenged.

I wouldn't recommend this. If she remitted the money to herself, it would not be considered a gift. In this case, half of the remittance is technically a gift and the other a transfer to herself but the RD might choose to consider all of it a transfer to herself. I don't know of any Thai cases where ownership of assets in joint accounts is considered by the RD but, in other jurisdictions the assets are deemed owned by the account holders pro rata. For inheritance tax which is a common area where jointly owned assets are taxed, this is usually the case. The US goes further and asks surviving account holders to prove they funded their share of the account themselves.

I came across the following Q&A on the UK HMRC community forum. It is a pity that the RD has not studied how the UK and other developed countries handle DTAs and the regulations and spaces on tax return forms they have developed to cope with them. Only a few months to do now and the top RD officials are just sitting on their backsides waiting for the deluge to hit their untrained and inexperience staff. Breathtaking negligence and incompetence! How to correctly enter US dividends in online tax return? Posted 2 years ago by I have >£2000 of foreign dividends and therefore need to fill in the foreign dividends online pages. The US dividends have been charged a 15% withholding tax at source by the US authorities since a W8-BEN has been filled in. How do I enter these dividends into the online self-assessment form? I understand I have to submit the gross dividend and the tax paid. But should I tick the "foreign tax credit relief" box or not? And it I did so, what is the correct rate of relief allowed? I cannot understand the guidance on the HMRC website. Thanks, David Posted 2 years ago by HMRC Admin 32 Hi, Article 10(2)(b) of the UK and USA double taxation agreement allows for both countries to tax the dividends and limits Foreign Tax Credit Relief for dividends to a maximum of 15%. Uk/USA Double Taxation Agreement - 2002 In the section of the online tax return for foreign dividends, you should enter a reference for the dividends (to help you identify them), the country they are from, the amount of dividend and the tax deducted. The special witholding tax box is for tax deducted under the terms of the European Savings Directive and equivalent third party agreements. This tax will be in addition to any foreign tax deducted by the country of origin of the payment. Please select the rate of 15% and then select yes to the Foreign Tax Credit Relief, only if you want to claim this relief. Click 'add'. Repeat this process until you have entered all of the dividends. You should complete all of the tax return before viewing your calculation. Take a note of the tax due on your dividends. The FTCR is up to a maximum of 15% of the tax deducted in the USA. Thank you.

You would just get a confused look and she would repeat her answer.

US porn producers often go to Brazil to shoot porn movies and the Czech Republic is a favorite destination for this too. I am not sure, if it legal in Brazil but I believe it is in the Czech Republic. Costs in those countries are obviously much less than in the US and Western European countries. Small outfits, usually individuals with a camera and tripod, come to Thailand to shoot porn and Thais post their own sex movies on Only Fans. It makes sense to legalized and develop something that already exists in a small way underground. Thailand certainly has a lot of movie "talent" that would be happy to earn extra money doing what they doing anyway. It also has nice locations to film, although not necessarily with action.

I agree and also feel sure he would have shared it with us, if there was severe pressure from one man who is still unhappy that his son became a coke head. He was parachuted in as health minister, despite voting for cannabis decriminalization when he was justice minister in the Prayut government, to replace the previous minister who was resisting that person's instructions and working on a bill to restrict cannabis use while leaving it legal, so as to at least allow the medical cannabis sector to develop without placing it under impossible restrictions.

Strange that will all these staggering achievements he ranked ever lower than Pita, Prayut, Anutin and Ung Ing in a poll of who Thais would prefer as PM. In the case of Srettha and Prayut they already know what they get. Still Srettha was beaten by Prayut and came last. Goes to show that a political system that ignores the results of general elections doesn't produce popular PMs, even though they resort to singing their own praises because no one else does.

It's interesting that Srettha as someone who has spent his entire career in real estate seems unaware of the flaws in Thai leasing law. It is simply a contract between the original lessor and lessee and is not binding on anyone else. That means the residual part of a lease cannot be transferred or sold without permission of the lessor. Moreover nothing is binding on a new lessor, who acquires the freehold by purchase or inheritance. Under such flimsy leasing law 30 year leases are problematic enough but 99 year leases are pointless without a proper legal framework guaranteeing transferability and making the lease binding on any future lessors or lessees. Without that there will be no secondary market in residual leases. So, if you want to sell up or leave it as an inheritance to your heirs, forget it. There seems to be little point for the Thaksin government to create waves in Thai society when the whole concept is unviable because they are too lazy or stupid to think it through and look carefully at what legal framework is necessary to create a secondary market in residual leases in developed legal systems with proper rule of law. Even 99 year leases become problematic in time without an automatic ability to renew them at price dictated by a fixed formula. I bought a 99 year lease in the UK with 87 years left in it. It was a converted townhouse with four flats in it and one of the first things I did was to organise everyone to withhold the exorbitant service fees being charged by the freeholder for non-existent services plus the ground rent, because legal research told be that tenants were entitled to withhold all payments to freeholders until a dispute is resolved by agreement or it court. After a year the freeholder folded and sold us the freehold for a reasonable price because we had made it worthless to him and he couldn't sell it. After owning it for 20 years, the leases were down to 67 years which is not very attractive to buyers. So we renewed all the leases to 990 years. Problem solved. That is an example of the legal framework in favour of lessees in the UK.

He is right about the digital wallet being a ruinous economic policy and it is tantamount to vote buying. I don't see the problem with 99 year leases though. I believe that more Thais would benefit than foreigners. Thai businesses frequently have to take 30 year leases to get business premises in locations they want. I central Bangkok much of the desirable land is owned by large estates that will never sell, just like London, and therefore leasehold only. 75% foreign ownership of condos is also neither here nor there. Most of the buildings foreigners want to own more than 49% are in resort areas where there are not many Thai buyers. In these cases it will make zero difference to affordability for Thais. At any rate Thais can rest easy that the government is doing its level best to dampen foreign demand for real estate but taxing the living b' Jesus out of remittances by foreigners and threatening global tax. Who would want to bring 20 million into Thailand to buy a condo or a 99 year lease, if they have to pay 35% tax on it?

Both behaved badly but the American should not have used the F word in my opinion. Telling her that she didn't understand English (when her English is very good) and didn't realize that the F word is not rude was childish and racist. So on balance he was worse than her.

I went to the RD today to present documents following my wife's tax return submission that I filed for her online. She didn't receive the letter saying what docs they wanted but I received the SMS reminding her to send them. So I went along in person carrying everything under the sun in case it was needed. As sod's law would have it they only wanted one of the documents and returned all the rest. I took the opportunity to ask the lady about the case of someone earning 15,000 a month which puts them in the situation of not having to pay any tax but having to file a tax return, according to the RC. I said that someone had been advised at the RD that they shouldn't file a tax return because it was a waste of officials' time (as someone reported in this thread). Her reply was that anyone with 120,000 income from employment (including employment pensions) should file a tax return and RD officials should not be advising the public not to file in those circumstances. I was not surprised as I was dubious about the post that said the RD had advised not to file. I doubt if the poster talked to the RD himself. Notwithstanding the above I am not sure that I would want to get onto their radar, if I were in that situation. Anyway bear in mind that there is nowhere on the tax return forms to declare state pension income, so you can argue it is not assessable.

Permanent residents of Thailand who go through a rigorous application and vetting process and paid fees in the region of 180,000 baht still need to have work permits but any Joe Blow can just show up and work for 6 months at a time without even having to apply for a work permit. Now there's consistency for you. Why not go back the status quo before 1972 when work permits were not required. Or better still before 1927 when visas and passports were not required. That would boost tourist numbers no end.

They are recriminalizing cannabis because Tony wants revenge for his son’s cocaine habit and many business will now have to close down, so no more legal dope industry to tax. So why not develop the sex industry as an alternative tax base and shut that down after two years?

You are right. A key point in a rule of law jurisdiction would be the fact that the government issued licenses to the shop owners and growers which implies that all was totally legal and they were encouraged by the government to invest in the new sector opened up by the government. If they have proper licenses, they should be compensated for this pernicious flip flop in government policy. If the government didn't want them to invest in the businesses, it should not have issued the licenses and collected the fees. That fact that someone else was prime minister doesn't negate government actions. Imagine if they suddenly decided that all of what we consider prescription drugs would only be available in hospitals and that pharmacy owners were ineligible for compensation. When Britain made the slave trade illegal it borrowed so much money to compensate British slave owners at home and in the colonies that it had to borrow so much money that the debt was only paid off in the 1980s. Now there's responsibility for investment losses due to legal changes for you.

From what I can see there is no confirmation that the ONCB met and voted to recriminalize today. Only English language media Bkk Post, Nation and Pattaya Mail are reporting this. Thai Rath reported that the ONCB is awaiting the official draft of the Health Ministry's order to recriminalize, following the vote of the ministry's Narcotics Control Committee on 5 July to recriminalize, and will meet to vote on it at the end of this month, since the ministry cannot change the law without approval from the ONCB. I agree that it is a foregone conclusion that the ONCB will approve the draft, given Pheua Thai's current dominance of the political scene and its founder's extreme desire to recriminalize for personal reasons. However, the OP's report and the English language reports from which it is presumably gleaned and which may have also gleaned from each other appear to be misleading. It is just not credible that not a single Thai language outlet would have come out with the news. I think it is likely that one English language writer or sub-editor confused the Narcotics Control Committee with the Narcotics Control Board and others followed like sheep. Perhaps it doesn't matter in this case as the outcome will be the same, despite Anutin's negative voted on the NCB. However, a fact is a fact and jumping the gun is jumping the gun.

The entrepreneurs got licences, made legal investments and followed the law. They deserve compensation from a capricious government that was pushed to do this by one man whose party lost the election, just because he blames these people for his son's past drug abuse. What a way to run a country.

Definitely there is more flexibility on declaring overseas rental income to the RD under the current remittance tax regime but this thread is about the RD's intention to introduce global tax. That would require you to declare overseas rental income on the same basis as Thai rental income, i.e. file a PND94 in September and a PND90 in March and pay tax twice a year. The basis for tax of property owned by individuals is that you pay tax on 70% of the income. A deduction of 30% is permitted and, if your expenses and renovations are more than that, you may pay tax on the actual profit but will need to submit audited financial statements audited by a Thai auditor and I doubt that any would accept the job of auditing a foreign rental business. So the tax you pay in the UK is likely wildly different from the tax you pay in Thailand. If you sell the property in the UK under Thai global tax, it will be taxed as income at your top marginal rate of tax. The current concessions vis a vis UK CGT obviously don't apply. That the principle private residence exemption is not allowed. The stepped up valuation as of 5 April 2015 for overseas owners who qualified for the Non-resident CGT scheme prior to 5 April 2015 will which make a huge difference to hose who have owned UK properties for decades. A real problem for those selling up in the UK to move to Thailand will be Thailand's lack of principle private residence exemption from capital gains tax. Say a British couple sell their house in the UK free of capital gains tax because they lived in it the whole time they owned it. Then they move to Thailand in the same year as the sale and before July, so they become tax residents. Under global tax they will pay full Thai income tax on the gain that was 100% exempted in the UK. On the remittance tax basis they will get the same tax hit, if they remit the entire proceeds to Thailand, perhaps to buy property in Thailand. A great start to life in Thailand for the unwary! I thank you for your plaudits but you are jumping to conclusions by saying my experience of Thai tax is limited to corporate taxes. I have been filing my PND90 online in Thai for over 10 years which I think very few in this thread have done even once. This requires greater knowledge of the Revenue Code than those who go to the RD office and ask an officer to complete their tax return for them. I also take the documents requested by the RD to the office and, apart from the COVID years, I take the documents requested to the RD office in person, where they open them on the spot and engage in some discussion of my tax return. Last year my Thai wife started to earn enough to be worth doing her tax return separately. I have also done that for her online and this week will take the requested documents to the RD and discuss her tax return with them. She is too busy to bother with that herself and, despite being an accountant by training, she has never done any work on tax.

I said banning cannabis would eliminate all its contribution to GDP, employment and tax revenue. How is that nonsense? Are you saying the contribution to GDP, employment and tax revenue will continue after the prohibition? The fact one shop owner, who may be a tax dodger, hasn't paid tax, doesn't mean there is no tax revenue from the entire industry. Apart corporate or individual income tax, employees have personal income tax deducted at source and businesses with turnover over 1.8 million are obliged to register for VAT. The above board contribution to GDP is already estimated close to the size of Thaksin's digital wallet scam which the government claims will miraculously boost GDP growth from 1.5% to 5%. So, if you remove a nascent sector from GDP entirely what do you assume will be its contribution to future growth or do assume nil real effect because the business will remain the same size but all will go into the black economy which benefits liquidity and indirectly boosts official GDP, even if not counted in the official numbers?

In this example you discuss your Us government pension which is clearly taxable only in the US and your IRA which, according to your post has no tax deducted at source and the US is not claiming a right to tax it. So lucky Thailand can tax it all and no US tax to claim a tax credit for. Most Europeans will have tax deducted at source and will need to claim a tax credit but, in many cases, won't have filed home country tax returns in the home country by the time they have file thai tax returns. Also take the case of rental income. The UK for example makes clear that it exercises its right to tax UK rental income. . Because all its DTAs say it may tax rental income, so it does. But Thailand may also tax overseas rental income and has said it will exercise this right. Rental income is taxed on completely different bases in Thailand and the UK. Moreover, the RD requires a half yearly PND94 tax return and tax payment in addition to the year end PND90. It will be interesting to see the reaction of the UK HMRC if someone writes to them and informs them from now on they will not be filing tax returns or paying tax on their UK rental income because they will only be paying tax on it to Thailand. You probably wouldn't get a reply at all but demands for a tax return and fines for late submission. The UK expects overseas tax authorities to enter into a gentleman's agreement not to exercise their rights to be primary tax authority for UK sourced income on a reciprocal basis. But the RD doesn't understand this and is under pressure to exercise its right to collect as much tax as it can to pay for fiscal incontinence planned by this government. European tax authorities are happy to enter into these gentlemen's agreements as it saves them and taxpayers a lot of trouble and in most cases doesn't make much difference to their tax takes. In Thailand's case, even if they understand that this is the way that DTAs are applied by grown up countries, they will not see the benefit to them because income earned by overseas resident individuals in Thailand is a fraction of income earned overseas by Thailand tax residents. For a start very few Thais have a pension at all.