suzannegoh

7 hours ago, Mapguy said:

What justifies a retired non-resident in Thailand have this advantage over a US resident?

 

If you’re fishing for a way to rationalize it on moral grounds, one reason for retirees outside the US to not be required to pay US taxes on retirement disbursements might be because if they are legitimately a  resident of a foreign country then they are unlikely to be able to take advantage of the US’s public services and infrastructure. Try to claim Medicare from Thailand, for instance, you can't do it.

1 hour ago, jeffandgop said:

What about Article 1 para 3 and Article 20 para 2 as I wrote. Pensions ARE specifically discussed 

I see pensions mentioned there but not distributions from retirement accounts.  Is it a given that for the purposes of the treaty that a lump sum distribution from an IRA account would considered to be a pension?

56 minutes ago, JimGant said:

It's called the "saving clause" found in every US tax treaty, allowing the US to tax your worldwide income as if there was no treaty in effect. There are a few exceptions to the saving clause, but private pensions and IRAs aren't among them.

Read the below thread for clarification; article 84 may be helpful:

https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1008555-tax-specialist-in-chiang-mai/page/6/

 

That’s great info.   I guess that if one is thinking of hiring that EA for purposes of invoking that tax treaty that the first thing that they should do is ask him how he’s getting around the “saving clause”.  I suspect that he’d have a ready answer for that, though I’m not sure that I’d be able to distinguish between a valid one and one based on some pseudolegal theory.

4 minutes ago, JimGant said:

Gosh, it's been a year since the last post on this subject. But, you would of thunk that Thailand would now be in the headlines as the only country in the world that allows an American expat's traditional IRA to be cashed in tax free, from either Thailand or the US. Yes, if you haven't converted to Roth, your tax deferred IRA, which begins to require taxation (the so-called Required Minimum Distribution) at age 71, is already subject to US taxes -- unless you live in Thailand and believe in an IRS enrolled agent (EA) based in Bangkok. He somehow has interpreted the treaty language to exclude your IRA from the "saving clause" (described in detail in earlier posts on this thread).

 

And, magic upon magic, Thailand, with exclusive taxation authority over your IRA -- if you lived here for over 180 days -- doesn't require you to file a tax return. Thus, expat heaven -- if you have a traditional IRA -- as nobody is interested in taxing it. At least according to one EA.

 

Why, then, is no expat publication singing the praises of Thailand, the only country that allows complete escape from taxation on your IRA ---- which for many would amount to five figures in taxation? Could it be this Bangkok EA is a charlatan .....? Duh.

 

Tired of the Swiss example re the saving clause -- try the Brit version:

https://www.kpateloffice.com/how-to-read-tax-treaties/

 

 

 

 

 

 

I tried reading the Tax Treaty and didn't get the same meaning out if it as that guy but I'm not an accountant and I verified with the IRS that he is in fact an IRS enrolled agent. 

I will not be clicking on his "Blog" if that extract posted above is an example of the best of his output.  If the OP wishes to get a meaningful point across I would suggest he cuts out the religious hyperbole and gobbledegook and actually produces verifiable proof of his scurrilous allegations. 

If a "conspiracy theorist" can't even get the background, meaning, application and source of such a simple and easy to find label (conspiracy theorist) it leaves me with absolutely no faith in any other utterances from the same source, whether self seeking and probably monetizing or not!

 

PS;  I am not "mocking him"!  I pity him and others with the same/similar delusions.

 

 

1 hour ago, scottiejohn said:

Ah I think you mean "in the author's opinion without any facts to back him up he/she believes they are the work of the devil".

Do we assume that the author would not wish anyone to use a Cell Phone or other mobile device to call an ambulance or use one in an emergency to either help themselves or the author!

Read his blog and you will feel bad about mocking him.

2 hours ago, XBroker said:

I posted my blog to my profile as was suggested. I did a status update, but have no idea where that disappeared to once I hit publish. I no longer see it. ????????

The link to your blog is visible in your profile.  Nice work on the blog, it lays out the situation quite clearly.

5 hours ago, boonrawdcnx said:

I have just watched a video about the 5G network development in European countries - and though I am very much pro-new technology - what I saw was frightening!
During tests in the Netherlands hundreds of birds fell dead out of the sky while water birds where trying to hide their heads under water during the tests.




Sent from my iPhone using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/5g-cellular-test-birds/

28 minutes ago, Skeptic7 said:

Yeah, rarely hear people admit they lost money anywhere, really. Always hear about the $1000 won at the casino or lotto...whatever...but selective memory omits the $5,000 they lost. 

The key is to track your net worth in Bitcoin.  Then you can say that Bitcoin didn’t go down, the dollar went up. 

2 hours ago, quandow said:

I've been stuck in the US for 6 months with no relief in sight. I forgot about the ISP spying thing, and within the first week here got some VERY nasty emails from the ISP with a direct threat to cease service for downloading movies. I got a vpn, only to discover this <deleted> ISP throttled downloads during daytime if they detected a vpn. THEN I discovered if I use a tablet with a vpn, this ISP isn't sophisticated enough to throttle. What a PITA it's been getting there, though!

Which ISP in the States is it?  And if doesn’t happen on an Android tablet but only with your PC, is there their conclusive evidence that the problem is throttling by your ISP rather than something that’s going on with your PC?

In the US a relative received a notice about something he downloaded, it was a while back but I believe he downloaded a movie. It was a warning so he got off easy compared to others who have their service terminated.

 

Do the ISPs do that sort of thing here too? 

If you're worried about it use a VPN and test it to make sure that it doesn't leak.  I don't worry about it through, I sometimes use a VPN for other reasons but not to conceal piracy.

Or drop again and become a "South Sea Bubble". 
 
Caveat Emptor. 

That's a year old article that says:

" today (Jan 2nd) the value dropped back at 13,000USD, so an extremely sharp loss. It is impossible today to predict which way the Bitcoin will go, however there are many signs that indicate that it will climb back to 20,000USD and continue to climb."
 

31 minutes ago, Pattaya46 said:

Why do you say that?

The link I gave show premium until 100yo...

 

Not sure that many people are interested in an US Insurance company...

And a link please to show their premium for similar required coverage ? 

 

 

PS: This page https://longstay.tgia.org/ lists the 3 Thai companies who participle to this scheme.

They propose an health insurance that qualifies for O-X (and will for O-A if ever it's required)

 

Bupa is now Aetna, their rates are shown below.

50 minutes ago, Jaxxper said:

Joebrown makes a good point. Interest on savings accounts are taxed, plus there is VAT/GST on almost all purchases.

Plus stiff import duties on may products.

I have been using Cloudflare DNS over TLS for the past two months over my WAN interface.  I have three VPN tunnels for streaming media and for privacy concerns.  I am not seeing any evidence where the services are using your DNS location to determine your geo location. They are only using your WAN endpoint IP address that is reported from sites like iplocation.net, whatismyip.com, etc.  When I do an ipleak test (dnsleak.com, ipleak.net), it reports my end point as being the location of my VPN server and the DNS location as the Cloudflare Data Center in Bangkok.  No issues with the streaming services or sites that check your geo location so far. 

 

I have been researching how to configure firewall rules to route DNS over the same VPN tunnel I am connected to on pfSense though.  I can get it to work if I only have one OpenVPN tunnel.  But since I have three tunnels, DNS Resolver (Unbound), selects one of the three VPN tunnels in random order.  I found a possible solution on a forum. Need time when no one is using the internet to experiment with it though.   

isn’t the reason that Cloudfare's DNS servers are not giving away your geo location because you are using it with a VPN? The behavior that i’m seeing with the free version of Cloudfare's DNS is that when I use it without a VPN that websites like whatsmyip show me as being in Thailand. And when i test with ipleak.net it shows my DNS servers as being in Singapore.

1 hour ago, KhunHeineken said:

Does anyone know a bit about these companies that protect your privacy by changing DNS addresses?

 

I'm not an IT guru but as far as privacy, are they similar to a VPN? 

 

I'm on this one at the moment.  They claim to be the fastest and keep no logs and reduce data mining.

 

https://www.cloudflare.com/

Cloudfare's DNS servers are fast but they do not spoof your geographic location; sites that you visit will still know that you are in Thailand.

8 hours ago, Xentrk said:

For those who like to tinker and want to chase bandwidth when using OpenVPN on a router, I encourage you to look into pfSense firmware. Bit of a learning curve but there are good blog and YouTube set up guides on the net. Go to your local computer mall and pick up a used PC with at least an Intel i5. Make sure the CPU supports AES-NI. You may also have to buy a second network card. You then download the firmware img file on a USB and boot up with the stick plugged it. You follow a few prompts and the web GUI will be installed. There are guides on how to flash on the net. I’ve also seen some small desktop units made by third parties on two major Chinese Amazon type stores on the net. The units are not endorsed by the Netgate, the company that supports pfSense development.

I’m tempted to setup a pfSense device to have a project to work on but I’m not so sure that it would be solving a problem that I presently have.  One thing I’m not sure of it whether it makes more sense to do that rather than to just wait for Asus’s AX routers to become more widely available.  Would you expect a performance improvement from using pfSense on an i5 machine versus the newer Asus routers that you mentioned?  Also, now I’m using PIA’s windows client app on each of my PCs and android devices.  Usually when I benchmark to speedtest servers in the US I get 20 to 40 Mbps download speeds with or without being connected to the VPN.  There aren’t  a lot of things that I do online that actually need faster internet than that, so it occurs to me that taking on a project like that would just be for the sake of learning and perhaps getting better benchmarking results.
 

Incidentally, I love your blog.  There’s lots of useful information there.

That can be a consideration, However if you own your home and are on medicare, expenses for most other items are less than in Thailand. You can live cheap here or in most countries if you really want to? You just have to avoid high cost areas.  I personally spend far more here than in the USA.  

That’s an understandable first reaction but I suspect that most of those who say that they will leave will change their mind when they stop to consider the cost of living in farangland. 

1 hour ago, Skeptic7 said:

Well that totally sux. Glad I haven't experienced any of that. It ranks very high on all the ratings sites. I have used PIA for years here and also USA...Netherlands, France...Japan and Korea...all just last year without any problems. Fast, reliable and cheap. Have never considered changing and will continue to be a loyal customer. 

 

Plenty of other good VPNs out there, but perhaps the problem lies on your end? To test it out, as usually don't connect to the USA servers...just connected to Silicon Valley using 4 mbps mobile hotspot from telephone. Here are the results...FAST. Full 100% speed on the DL and nearly full on the Up!

 

My experience with PIA has been better than that.  I just ran a speedtest.net while connected to a PIA server in Miami and a speed test server in Miami.  I got 36.70 Mbps down and 5.22 Mbps up.  Then I disconnected the VPN and tested to the same speedtest server in Miami and I got 36.76 Mbps down and 7.44 Mbps up.   I’m in Chiang Mai, the Internet connection is AIS’s 200/50 Fibre, and I used the default encryption settings in PIA, and for the speedtest I used a Windows 10 PC connected to Wifi on the 2.4 Ghz band.

Cheers, this is all new to me.

 

On one test I pass 80% only, hmm.

14 minutes ago, guzzi850m2 said:

Matador007 many thanks for the link testing for "leak" and disable WebRTC.

 

My Firefox was leaking so I new followed https://www.privacyend.com/disable-webrtc-in-various-browsers/

 

and Firefox via Express VPN is now "tight" after I did another test with doileak.com

 

As mentioned I normally uses smart VPN connection which is Singapore but I sometimes watch some Danish TV and I have to move my address to DK.

 

Using a proxy sound interesting, I have to look more into this.

 

Cheers for an excellent topic with many good posts.

Two other websites that might turn up slightly different leaks are these:
https://whoer.net/

https://ipleak.net/

1 hour ago, tweedledee2 said:

You don't need a VPN to stream geographically restricted content.  I stream US TV, AUS TV, BBC I-Player, VUDU, Netflix US and other content using a Proxy that costs me less than 35 baht a month. I have never been denied access or experienced any speed or latency issues in the nearly 2 years I've been using it. It has worked flawlessly using 3BB 20/4, 30/10 VDSL and with my current 100/30 Fiber connection.

Sounds interesting, what proxy are you using?