TheAppletons

"The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts because the servers were overloaded. In the field, office managers have resorted to answering phones at the front desk as receptionists because so many employees have been pushed out. But the agency no longer has a system to monitor customers’ experience with these services, because that office was eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon Musk." and "The federal agency that delivers $1.5 trillion a year in earned benefits to 73 million retired workers, their survivors and poor and disabled Americans is engulfed in crisis — further undermining its ability to provide reliable and quick service to vulnerable customers, according to internal documents and more than two dozen current and former agency employees and officials, customers and others who interact with Social Security." https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/long-waits-waves-of-calls-web-crashes-social-security-is-breaking-down/ar-AA1BBnUP

"The Social Security Administration is rushing cuts to phone services at the White House's request, the agency's acting commissioner told Social Security advocates in a meeting on Monday, two sources who attended tell Axios. Why it matters: These changes will strain the already struggling Social Security system and deprive some people of benefits entirely, according to current and former employees and advocates for retirees." and "These new developments leave us deeply concerned that DOGE and the Trump Administration are setting up the SSA for failure—a failure that could cut off Social Security benefits for millions of Americans—and that will then be used to justify a 'private sector fix,'" Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who both serve on the committee, said in a letter to Bisignano on Monday." https://www.axios.com/2025/03/24/social-security-cuts-doge

Horible too.

Yes, the UK sucks so much that the US President is considering joining the British Commonwealth: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-suggests-us-could-join-british-commonwealth-offered-king-charles

"Acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek said Friday that he is consulting with agency lawyers and the Justice Department as he threatens to shut down the agency in response to a court ruling blocking Elon Musk’s team from accessing sensitive taxpayer data." and "Everything in this agency is PII,” Dudek said. “Unless I get clarification, I’ll just start to shut it down. I don’t have much of a choice here. Dudek first made his threat to close down the agency during a Bloomberg News interview Thursday night. Such a dramatic move would be unprecedented in the agency’s history and would immediately begin halting benefit payments for millions of Americans." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/ar-AA1Bpp38

"The Pentagon was scheduled on Friday to brief Elon Musk on the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China, two U.S. officials said on Thursday." I'll link to the story since OP didn't. And no, no one in their right freaking mind, thinks this is a good idea. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/politics/musk-pentagon-briefing-china-war-plan.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5k4.SRAZ.aIZGK_LvUkAE&smid=nytcore-android-share

The only one making a problem is.....you.

If by "recently" you mean since 1965, then yes, I agree. Cheers for not mentioning pedophilia.

Article in the Bangkok Post, dated 17 March 2025, states that visa exemptions are reverting back to 30 days. Title of the article is (not surprisingly): "Visa-free stay in Thailand to be cut to 30 days."

You can easily "get by" with just public wi-fi (security issues notwithstanding.....VPN would be a good idea.) Where it can be tricky is if you want to call a Grab or use google maps while driving or something like that while you're "on the go" - phone service pre-paid plans are very inexpensive in Thailand so if you want to guarantee you'll always have coverage..... Additionally, if you want to order things online (Lazada, FoodPanda, et al.) you'll need a Thai number (I think.)

Poop accumulated prior to 2024 is also tax free.

A bit like asking if roses are cheaper on St Valentine's Day, isn't it?

Interesting. You took this in a direction that I hadn't considered when constructing the thread. FWIW, I don't think Americans are much in an uproar about the President ridding the country of illegal citizens. My original thought was that Americans may, at some point, begin protesting about job losses, higher costs, threats to entitlement programs, etc. And that those protests, would in turn, spur the action specified in the OP. Especially if those protests intensify somewhere around the mid-term elections (hence the 18 months timeline.)

Since I have no assessable income, I didn't file. The TRD officials with whom I did not interact all seemed very nice. When my mail was delivered, there was no audit or demand to appear at the TRD. Departing the country recently, no one at Immigration asked me about taxes nor was I asked for the mythical "tax clearance certificate." In short, I found the experience to be relatively stress-free and I recommend it to all other Thai tax residents who have no assessable income.

Title says it all.

Anyone who is concerned that the OP may be accurate might want to log on to their SSA.gov account and download your lifetime earnings page, your benefits verification letter, and your "manage workspace" page, if you've never done so previously. I download the latter two annually (after the COLA increase). (Semi-pro tip: If your earnings record is longer than one page, you can save it as a .pdf file by starting to "print" it, then preview it as a .pdf, then save that .pdf).

The post was intended as a dig at one particular AN poster....which is why under the pronoun section I changed the official definition to read "one anonymous internet user" and under the adverb section it reads "isolated posts on a small corner of the internet." In other words, the "lot of speculation" can be attributed to one particular individual with whom you have much interaction on the topic. Of all people, I thought you would get the joke. Guess not.

Oops, too subtle for you. Missed the point of the post completely, lol. People who post a lot on the tax threads will understand the reference.

lot /lät/ https://ssl.gstatic.com/dictionary/static/promos/20181204/pronunciation.svg pronoun one anonymous internet user "there is a lot of speculation on this topic" adverb isolated posts on a small corner of the internet "he speculated a lot on this topic"

This is starting to get irritating. When are the 3-6 year olds going to get their 10k handouts?

^^ This is the answer.

That's putting it mildly. Many social security recipients in Trump's base electorate. "I never thought leopards would eat MY face", sobs woman who voted for Leopards Eating People's Faces party.

As you have pointed out, if you have no assessable income then you don't need to file. That makes your "lady" wrong when she stated that "if the total is higher than your tax free allowance, you need to file, regardless if they are assessable or not." No, you don't. You can remit non-assessable income well in excess of the "tax free allowance" and never have to file.

Hua Hin has minimal water splashing. It's confined to certain designated areas, for the most part, and those are easily avoidable depending upon where you want to go and what you want to do. Malaysia has none of this nonsense.