maisodni

I think a lot of thesse properties are occupied my Muslims - because the mosques all seem to be located near canals.

MS

On 11 February, I mailed an EMS package to Kentucky, USA. EMS tracking shows that shipment reached Suvanabumi Airport sorting station on 12 February, and then shows it going to Outbound OE - and then nothing thereafter.

Inquiring to Thai Post, they first advised that US Postal Service had announced refusal to accept incoming mail, due to snowstorms and west cost port strike. They then told me that my shipment had departed late on 12 February, on an Austrian Airlines flight to Vienna. "Not our problem" - but that is not what their EMS tracking site shows. I finally contacted Austrian Post office - by FAX (!) - and they replied to me by e-mail, confirming that the EMS package had not transited their location.

My conclusion: The USA did force countries to withhold EMS shipments to USA for at least a week in mid-February (maybe longer). Thai Post's airport mail handling facility was unable to deal with this, and - did something with backlogged mail other than holding it, and then dispatching it. It appears to me that my parcel was destroyed or discarded, and some report made, saying that it was sent to some irrelevant location.

I will say: I have made more than 600 EMS package shipments from Thailand since 2004, to some 68 countries - including at least 100 EMS shipments to USA - and this February 2015 shipment was the only one that disappeared.

MS

Just FYI - The Smoking' Pug features craft beers from both Beervana, and also from Smiling Mad Dog (Brewdog Punk IPA, as well as Bothers Tofee-Apple Cider).

Cheers!
MS

The answer is pretty much based on whether the allowance is paid to employee, along with salary, at a fixed rate, without receipts. If so, it is generally charged as taxable to employee.

But - if allowances are reimbursed to employee, in return for receipts - or if payments are made directly from employer to vendor, they are generaly not taxable to employee. If the receipts are not valid tax receipts, and the cost is not decalred as income by the employee, then the expenses are generally not allowed as deductible buisness expenses for the employer.

Employer-supplied housing is a special case - the extimated value is supposed to be declared as income by the employee.

Business travel expenses such as airfare, hotel, rental car. and similar - even if in employee's name - can be reimbursed by employer and be deductible expenses for the company (and not charged as income to traveler), so long as there is a justifiable reason for the travel.

There are special rules for certain types of employer-furnished employee health insurance, where costs are deductible to the company, without being taxable to the employee.

There are special circumstances - such as expenses incurred in reacting to an emergency, where Revenue Department may garnt leniency.

Cheers!
MS

"If you pay Social Fund, you also get a 750 baht per month deduction for your social fund payments."

Not everyone gets a 750 baht per month deduction. You get the amount you pay, which for some is less than that.

The only persons that pay Social Fund taxes at a rate les than 750 baht are those employees earning less than 15,000 baht per month.

No one earning less than 20,000 baht per month pays ANY personl income tax in Thailand.

So - the 750 baht rate applies to everyone who is subject to paying personal income tax based on salary in Thailand.

MS

All income above 4,000,000 baht 35% tax rate

not quite upto date believe this has been reduced to 32%

I am not aware of a 32% top personal income tax rate ever even being propposed or considered. Do you have a reference?

Here are two references for the 35% top rate:

http://www.rd.go.th/publish/6045.0.html

http://www.naritlaw.com/Resources/Newsletter No 91 Edition November 2014.pdf

MS

The answer is: Social Fund tax applies only to the first 15,000 baht per month of taxable income. 5% of monthly salary - up to a maximum amount of 750 baht - is witheld from each employee's salary, and the company must contribute a matching amount.

Cheers!
MS

Think about what 25 million additional tourists per year means. Even if you assume five persons per room (!!), if a visitor stays one week in Thailand on average, that mean the number of required room nights for first night of visit is (25,000,000 divided by 5 = 5,000,000 rooms - divided by 365 days = 13,698 rooms per first night, on average. But - to cover a one week stay by each visitor - you need seven times that many rooms. That would be 480 hotels, with 200 rooms each, full to the brim.

If you put just 2.5 persons per room (?), that would mean that you need almost 1,000 hotels - at 200 rooms each, to hold the additional influx

There is opportunity there - for construction employment, hotel employment, and employment to provide all the goods and services needed - but it will also put a lot of strain on a country with only 68,000,000 citizens.

MS

They have reversed the process. I ran into the exact same thing a week ago. Now you get your work permit first, then your work visa, then register your employees. I did this and now have both my work permit and non b visa from Penang as of yesterday afternoon. Now I have a years time to register 4 Thai employees before my work permit needs to be renewed.

Thanks - your response was the only one that directly addressed the situation, and told me something useful and relevant to a CHANGE that has evidently occurred in February 2015. Everyone else's answers were based on old practice.

Cheers!

MS

No - my comment about banking was in relation to needing company account to deposit share capital funds into, such that lease deposit, recruiting fees, furniture purchase, etc can be accomplished in a way that expense can be paid by check (or local bank transfer), the flow of funds can be reviewed by an end-of-year auditor, and there is no need to carry around large amounts of cash.

Based on some more investigation, it appears that Social Fund department has decided to go on a rampage - and has already refused to accept registration of employees for social fund for some 40 recently incorporated companies - saying that they were suspicious about the validity of the employment of these individuals.

If true, and continuing, this will effectively mean no more work permits for newly started companies, until they have four Thai employees actively working at the registered office address, and pass Social Fund inspection.

If this is true, I'm sure there will be more dicsussion developing aout this issue.

MS

New company - need four Thai employees to support application for WP.3 form. Come up with four Thais, gather ID and hospital info, give 4 x 900 baht to service provider to pay first month SF tax at time of SF registration for company, and for its first four Thai employees.

SF office says "no deal" - we are referring this case to our legal department (?), who will inspect the company office address first. Since when does this happen?

Without work permit, no bank account; without bank account; no lease deposit for real office; with no real office, no place to put real employees. So - right now, just serviced office virtual address, and "outdoor" employees (moto taxi drivers).

I am not looking for speculative answers. I am intersdted only in success stories from people who have "found the pattern and the solution" - in 2015.

As far as I know, this new "problem scenario" has just erupted starting this week.

Thanks,

MS

Everyone is quick to pillory Bitcoin, everytime some scam artist walks off with few million dollars worth of Bitcoins. Bitcoins were "invented" in 2008, the Bitcoin protocol was first published in 2009, and the first commercail purchase of anaything (a pizza) occurred in May 2010 - and Bitcoin first exceeded US $1 in value in 2011. So - at most - operators have had less than five years to figure out how to "get things right" with this digital crypto-technology.

Paper/"fiat" currencies have been around for about 600 years, and scams have been going on continually and prodigiously ever ssince - but no one sreams about national currencise being a scam.

"Paper money" had some growing pains, in its early days, as Marco Polo experienced first-hand:

http://youtu.be/NSwkGiZq6rU

Cheers,

MS

Bitcoin may be a losers game, or be doomed to failure. But - the world fiat money system is GUARANTEED to collapse within a few years, as a mathematical certainty - mainly due to gross fraud and manipulation by the United States Federal Resrve system, which will drag the whole word under, at some point.

Could you post a copy of that guarantee...I want to see if you read it right. Thanks.

Well: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/01/17/you-think-the-deficit-is-bad-federal-unfunded-liabilities-exceed-127-trillion/

Since the entire world economy is $78 trillion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy), I'd say hat there is an insoluble problem there.

But - that' s just me.

MS

And just yesterday someone here was recommending Bitcoin as an investment lol

Any frauds or losses involving Bitrcoin over the six years that it has existed are just "chump change" or rounding errors, in comparison to thousasnds of years of frauds involving fiat currencies, and thefts of currencies and precious metals. Just for example:

Enron - Share price goes goes from US $90.75 in mid-2000 to less than $1 by November 2001 - followed by a US $63.4 BILLION bankruptcy filing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal Do you blame the US dollar for that loss?

Parmalat - Italian milk company. Collapsed into US €14 BILLION bankruptcy due to accounting fraud - 2003 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmalat_bankruptcy_timeline Do you blame the Euro for that loss?

Viktor Lustig - 1925 - Posing as a government official, he "sold" the Eifel Tower to several diffferent Parisian scrap metal dealers, by picking up a bit over US $200,000 in bribes to steer the winning bid (on a non-existent scrapping project) their way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Lustig Do you blame the French Franc?

Closer to home, how about Nick Leeson, Barings Bank, Singapore, 1995. Loss of £827 million (US $1.4 BILLION), resulting in the insolvency of Barings Bank. Do you blame the British Pound for that loss?

Ahh, but precious metals - gold - that's a safe sector, right? Well, it is until people start passing off gold-plated tungsten bars as "pure gold": http://ausbullion.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/tungsten-filled-gold-bars.html http://www.zerohedge.com/article/german-prosieben-tv-channel-finds-500-gram-tungsten-bar-wcheraeus-gold-foundary-bank-origin http://www.myfoxny.com/story/19578206/fake-gold-bars-turn-up-in-manhattan

Crooks exist in every niche of any and all financial-related markets. Everyone beats up on Bitcoin because it is "different" in a way that many people cannot understand.

Bitcoin may be a losers game, or be doomed to failure. But - the world fiat money system is GUARANTEED to collapse within a few years, as a mathematical certainty - mainly due to gross fraud and manipulation by the United States Federal Resrve system, which will drag the whole word under, at some point.

Cheers!

MS

Here is the reality: The Thai government institution that would presumably have authority and responsibility for regulating Bitcoin would be the Bank of Thailand.

The Bank of Thailand could exercise jurisdiction over Bitcoin in any of three ways:

1. By declaring it as "legal tender" - in which case it could be used to settle debts/obligations, and it could not be refused.

2. By declaring it to be a foreign currency - in which case they could regulate trade in it under their authority to issue foreign exchange licenses.

3. By declaring it as a permissable tool for delivering overseas foreign remittance services - in which case they could regulate trade in it under their authority to license foreign remittance service providers.

The BOT chose to:

1. Declare Bitcoin to not be legal tender in Thailand.

2. Declare Bitcoin to not be a foreign currency, and not allow Bitcoin to traded for foreign currency within Thailand.

3. Prohibit licensed foreign remittance services from promoting Bitcoin as their method of accomplishing outbound transfers.

By taking these three positions, they effectively said: we decline to become involved with Bitcoin, by keeping it isolated from our areas of responsibility and authority.

The direct text of all Bank of Thailand announcements related to Bitcoin may be found in the PDF files that may be downloaded (from bottom of the page) at: http://www.bitcoinrealmthai.com/thai-government-regulation-bitcoin-trading/

Cheers,

MS

Report it to fbi bitcoins are forbidden and banned in thailand

This is not at all true. You should not make comments when you don't know what you are talking about. If you live in Thailand, you just committed several crimes - defamation, and also a violation of Computer Crimes Act.

What is correct is - www.bahtcoin.com was not operated legally, or by a legitimate company. The same goes for all business conducted in Thailand using localbitcoins.com - that is illegal activity.

There are only two fully-legal, tax-registered Bitcoin exchanges in Thailand, operated by registered companies, with proper E-commerce licenses from Ministry of Commerce:

http://www.bitcoin.co.th and http://www.coins.co.th

I am attaching copies of their E-commerce registration certificates:

Por Kor 0403 Form (E-Commerce Registration Certificate) - Thai.PDF

e-commerce.pdf

A company can always file a company registration change to modify shareholdings, and company may apply for Amity Treaty registration at any time that it becomes eligible to do so.

If you start as an LP without Amity Teaty. then you must be the minority (limited libaility) shareholder, without signature power. Only the manging partner (Thai majority shareholder, with unlimited personal liability) can have signature authority for the business.

I will not address the preliminary shareholder arrangement that you mention, because such arrangements are illegal, and such discussion violates the T&C of this forum.

For Amity Treaty - one thing to be wary of is that some legal services providers (including a major advertiser on this forum) incorrerctly advise that a business must have 3,000,000 baht registered capital to apply for Amity Treaty. This is flatly incorrect - the correct requirement is 2,000,000 baht registered capital - because an approved Amity Treaty company receives a Foreign Busines CERTIFICATE (2,000,000 baht to be eligible), not a Foreign Business LICENSE (which requires 3,000,000 baht to be eligible).

MS

The way they demolish buildings here is from the top down, one cubic meter at a time. No cat is going to get crushed. Be made homeless, yes. Crushed, no.

From my own experience, back in 2011 - if your packet is complete with everything else - and you are ONLY missing the criminal records check results from your home country, you can still apply - you just need a photocopy of your REQUEST for criminal records check, plus the postal or courier payment receipt.

I requested criminal records check from USA at start of October. The results came back in April. Immigration still accepted my PR application in December. My appiication packet was actually forwarded from Immigration to Ministry of the Interior in September 2012.

Cheers!
MS

Violent crime against westerners outside of the hours 11:00 pm to 6:00 am is almost non-existent here. Pickpocketing and purse snatching exist, but that is the case in virtually every city of this size on earth. If you are drunk, with gold chains hanging off you, wandering some side soi at 3:00 am - the law of the jungle will manifest itself - and you will probably be relieved of your gold. Otherwise, if you look alert, and keep your wits about you - predators will go looking for easier prey - which usually means tourists.

A woman does have to be a bit more circumspect about moving around solo at night, via taxi - my suggestion would be to find a place to live within walking distance of a BTS or MRT stop, and go home early enough to catch the last train (roughly midnight).

The reports of police stops were - in my opinion - vastly overblown - and I say that as someone who walked along/through the most frequently sighted intersection almost every weekday evening for the past 12 years. Maybe one in 2,000 foreign passersby got stopped - during maybe a one-week "surge" every four or five months - for years. Then - starting maybe five months ago - the military government shut down a lot of the sidewalk business activity along Sukhumvit - and the Police - having fewer opportunities to exploit the street bars, vendors, etc., stepped up their activity stopping random foreigners for maybe six weeks. Of every 100 foreigners stopped, probably 95 were inconvenienced for five minutes or less, with no ill effects. If urine testing occurred, I doubt that even 20 people - total - were ever affected. If drugs were planted - that might have happened maybe once or twice in ten years - and somewhere else (like Ekkamai bus station). If they ever stopped a 26 year old western woman dressed in "business casual" along Sukhumvit - neither I nor anyone I know ever heard of it.

95% of all bad stuff that happens to foreigners here happens between midnight and sunrise. If you are habitually out during that period, you number will eventually come up. If you avoid being out frequently during that period, your chances of running into problems are minimal.

MS

They seem to report only 1 terrorist.

Nearly reaching the 12 hour point. Dangerous time as his tiredness will start to effect his thought patterns. He has nobody backing him up and can't even rest.

I have been hoping that an Australian SAS assault team has been getting some good, restful sleep this afternoon and evening, before paying a "sandman" visit to the sleepy scumbag terrorist - say about 4:15 am tomorrow morning.

May said scumbag enjoy a long, loooonnnngg - very L-O-N-G dirt nap.

MS

RajeshNL - Possibly you met with Phu Gong Nid, the head of the PR section. She indicated that there is no longer any official at Ministry of Interior that has authority to either approve existing applications, or publish the order to open up a new application window. So - nothing proceeds.

MS