ronnie50

I've seen a few of the Thai DTA's as well (but not the Thai-Australian DTA). As @oldcpu says above, what I've also noticed in common is they refer to a former 'government' worker's occupational pension that would not be taxed in Thailand, but all other pensions, like the ones most people get in their old age from their governments, no matter where they worked - let's call it the State Pension - is taxable here. If I had to guess at why that's so common, it's probably because it allows the source country to keep the tax directly - so most countries would want that. Other Aussies can probably best answer this case.

'Biometrics' is quite a sweeping category. Scanning our passports at ports of entry is also a biometric data piece. The article doesn't go into detail, but could this mean the photos and finger printing wasn't recorded/matched properly with the 17 million passport scans?

I guess you're not taking daily low-dose aspirin for artery/heart issues (or anything else)? Aspirin can cause bleeding almost anywhere.. Could be a kidney issue.

Neither did we (break ins) nor the one who had sentimental jewellery stolen.

Happens more often than you might guess. So yes, you should keep valuables locked in a safe. Common sense. I had a friend whose Thai wife had her mobile disappear along with their maid one day. They went to the police, and the police were quite quick in narrowing down the location of the phone and thief. Another friend/co-worker living in a spacious apartment had sentimental jewellry and other valuables stolen. Police figured it was an inside job (people who worked in the building). She never got any of it back. Both cases in Bangkok. We used to rent a house and it was broken into at night and some minor things were taken. Two other unsuccessful attempts after that. Now everyone should have a safe and CCTV - and a baseball bat would come in handy.

So that's 18% increase since 2019. The US household debt rose 13% over a slightly shorter period (2020-2024) sitting at an average of USD 105,000 debt per household in 2024. I'm not suggesting you can compare US and Thailand household debt, but it's been rising significantly in many places. It's understandable since the worst pandemic years are included. I wonder if the IMF gave Trump any advice..

Good report and appreciated. Does anyone have a recent report for documents required at CW for a first extension of the O Visa (retirement)? Trying to figure out if there are any differences required between the first one and subsequent extension applications. Cheers.

There is probably more to the story than has been published. But it doesn't look like there was a 'supplier' - the parents of the first girl were conned into thinking the richer foreigner would help with the daughter's education - pretty naive - but plausible. In the Brit case, he met the girl on a dating app. The company needs to do better screening to avoid kids getting access to its dating app.

Thailand is Upper Middle-Income, according to the World Bank. Then again so is Papua New Guinea (Upper Middle-Income) - a country where the poverty, and related violence, is right in your face (how WB comes up with these rankings is anyone's guess - perhaps because PNG has energy and minerals, but the populace are poor as poor can be).

I use both. Regarding track and trace, every time you use an ATM you leave a footprint. And of course your mobile can be tracked everywhere you go.

Nah. Headline didn't match the story..

Wasn't it all to do with needing facial recognition on the App to transfer more than 50k? I seem to be able to still transfer more than that with the same old App (SCB) - no facial feature.

Agree. There's also sense that Thailand is sort of a Wild West - where you can really do whatever you want. What we see daily on the Thai news channels of the fighting and the drunken disrespect kind of proves it. How many of these people would behave that way in other countries while on a holiday? Even Benidorm, Ibiza and some of the other downmarket 'sun spots' get passed out drunks, etc., but brawls and the kind of behavior we've been seeing here are much less common. They'd get arrested and face real consequences in other places. For some reason these idiots think there are no consequences here - maybe they're right?

The Thai-Chin families driving around in Benz's usually bury it in the garden.... so I'm told. Imagine all that burried treaasure 🙃

I seem to recall the banks had no facility to do the face recognition for foreigners (because they could only enter Thai ID numbers, not passports into their facial recognition system). Maybe they worked it out. Dunno.