Arkady

11 hours ago, Sophon said:

 

Actually, the standard VAT rate in Thailand is already 10%, and has been for decades. The rate has been "temporarily" reduced to 7%, a reduction which will expire on 30th September 2024 unless again extended by the government. So the government wouldn't have to raise the rate, they can just let the current reduction in the rate expire in September.

This is correct.  VAT was introduced at 10% soon after the 1997-8 Tom Yam Kung crisis at the suggestion of the IMF.  It replaced a complicated sales tax but was more straightforward and was supposed to raise more revenue.  After the IMF conditions were met, which was long before Thaksin came to power and claimed he was the one that got Thailand out of the IMF programme, the government decided to give the hard pressed public some respite from the unpopular new tax and temporarily reduced it to 7%.  Successive governments have been too terrified of voters to put it back up to 10%.  So they have decreed more temporary waivers every 2 years. 

It is pretty certain that with such poor economic growth and low tax revenue it is only a matter of time before the government just allows the 10% VAT to come back by default.  It is such an efficient and hard to avoid tax that, once done, it is unlikely that they will pause at 7% for very long.  They see European countries charging 20% plus. 

10 hours ago, Marco51 said:

What about books that are  internationally exempt? Do the customs bureaucrats know this? Or rather pretend they are waiting for the PM's orders, after all the poor man is everywhere and all the time and is expert on everything. The incredible admin costs may or may not be added too? Do they fill out a formsheet for every 100 Baht? Do we all have to plan in 1 hour daily  pick up of parcels at the post or maybe the airfreight department (farang please bring passports) ? Again the planning and implementation of new ideas is meticulous.

Yes, books are exempt from Thai VAT and import duty but there is an argument I have seen that only the books are exempt, not the cost of freight and insurance.

The French lady allegedly killed herself with a .45 pistol.  Where did she get it from?  .45 caliber is not very popular with Thais any more.  More recoil and needs more practise or training. But army shooters, such as military police still use .45 side arms following the US model up until the 2000s when they switched to 9mm.  Of course it could just be that she asked for a gun and someone happened to have a .45 kicking around at home.

I received a low value item from Aliexpress on 3 May without a demand for VAT payment.  Still no announcement of the new rule from the Customs Dept.

On 5/4/2024 at 1:14 PM, GarryP said:

The Land Office is notoriously corrupt. Not that many years ago, it was ranked as the most corrupt Thai government agency. Probably still is. 

 

On a related note, I am quite a few years older than my wife so am considering having my name removed from our title deeds. May make things easier for her when I kick the bucket (hopefully not anytime soon).

I think the Land Dept has hot competition from the Customs Dept for the prize for the most corrupt government dept.  Some years ago a friend sold his Sathorn condo and the Land officer offered a special service of reducing the transfer tax payable which was over 400k.  They had prepared the cash and he took 100k for himself and wiped off the tax liability. He said he could offer this because he had noticed that the buyer and seller knew each other.  Imagine the amount of tax revenue lost in a year like this. It might be more difficult now that the Land Dept allows electronic transfers to pay the transfer taxes but while there's a will, there's a way

It would make things a bit easier but I don't think it is too difficult to transfer property for inheritances and there is a reduced rate of tax.

A well model got 20 years and a 2 million baht fine for the same offence with only 251mg of cocaine 10 years ago but reduced to 15 years and a 1.5 million baht fine because she cooperated.  I think her original sentence w and fine were the maximum possible and there were allegations at the time that someone influential had it in for her. An unpaid fine of 1.5 million, if paid off at the standard rate of a day in prison for every 200 baht would result in another 20 years in prison

Pity for him he had 420 mg of cocaine and not 200 mg. The ministerial regulation from February 2024 that allowed police to not prosecute people found with up to 5 speed tabs, as long as they undergo rehab, also provided the same let out for small quantities of a number of over prohibited substances including cocaine, LSD, opium, ketamine etc that was not widely reported in English language media.  Here an excerpt.  Realistically though this doesn't include the offense of smuggling and it is doubtful that police would ever exercise their discretion to let foreigners off the hook and do rehab instead of being prosecuted for any drug offense, even the regulation doesn't say it only applies to Thai citizens.  Nevertheless I suspect his lawyer would have been able to make an argument on the possession case, if had less than 200 mg, if not the smuggling case. Interestingly cannabis extracts up to 30 grams are on the list, as they are still illegal.

(2) Narcotics of category 2

(a) Cocaine has a net weight of not more than 200 milligrams.

(b) Opium, net weight not exceeding 5,000 milligrams.

(3) Narcotics of category 5

(a) Opium plants or those with other names in the same genus that produce opium or opium alkaloids. Has a net weight of not more than 15,000 milligrams.

(b) Kwai mushrooms or Kwai mushroom plants or other names in the same genus that produce psilocybin or psilocin, with a net weight not exceeding 135,000 milligrams.

(c) Tetrahydrocannabinol (tetrahydrocannabinol or THC) which is an extract from all parts of the cannabis or hemp plant that is a category 5 narcotic with a net weight not exceeding 30,000 milligrams or, in the case of liquid, a net volume not exceeding 30 milliliters.

(4) Psychotropic substances in Category 1

(a) Flualprazolam (fualprazolam) has a quantity not exceeding 5 units or a net weight not exceeding 650 milligrams.

The 2008 amendment to the Civil Registration Act requires heads of registration at district offices to register everyone that resides in their district.  There is no definition of residence in this context but for foreigners it is generally regards as everyone on more than tourist visa who has been there longer than 6 months or so.  The definition registration is put them in a tabian baan and issue a pink ID card.  But there is no consistency in the application of this amendment and no downside for district officers who decline to comply with it.

I jointly own a house and land and two plots of raw land jointly with my wife. When Srettha became PM Chuvit publicised a case where he alleged that Srettha's company, Sansiri, had aided tax evasion when buying a high value piece of land that was owned jointly by a group of about 12 people. 

All the land I own jointly was previously owned solely by my wife and my name was added to the chanotes after I became a citizen. There was definitely tax to pay, as it was considered a transfer of half the value of the land. Theoretically there is a special low rate rate for transfers to direct family and we had called to the Land Office ahead to confirm this for the first transaction.  But a nasty wrinkle awaited us at the Land Office. We were told that, in order to benefit from the reduced tax rate, I would have to be able to show that I was already a Thai citizen when the land was acquired which I was not.  I thought this sounded like a scam or xenophobia but exactly the same thing happened with the other two pieces of land in another province.

The tax on transfer of land goes down after 5 years because you don't have to pay specific business tax on land you have held for more than 5 years.

I had a usufruct on our house before I became a citizen.  I paid a lawyer a few thousand to organize it but didn't have to pay a bribe at the Land Office. There was a small fee. I assume the bribe is because they have the right to refuse usufructs, particularly if they can say they were concerned someone would be taken advantage of and sign their rights over under duress for very small financial benefit. This is very common when foreigners buy land in the wife's name and want a usufruct.  Land officers may be refuse, specially in places like Pattaya where they see it every day.  They may still view you as a foreign in that context.  As so often in the Thai bureaucracy, vague laws and regulations combined with excessive discretion allowed to officials creates perfect conditions for corruption.  Unfortunately I don't think there is much you could do about it because they do have the discretion.

9 hours ago, bondjames007 said:

Thanks for that, I will look into an RMF,  as I am 59 years old.

RMFs are a good tax deduction option, although the Thai stock market has not been a great performer of late. https://www.uobam.co.th/en/tax-benefit/rmf

That link explains the tax deduction.  You have to hold them for 5 years but the year you buy and the year you sell count as full years.  So you can buy in December and sell in January making it just over 3 full years. 

I have been buying these for many years.  You don't need to be working in Thailand to use RMFs for tax management.  When you retire you can keep on buying them and use them for deduction against any income, such as Thai dividends, rental income as well as the new tax on remittances of foreign source income. When you have set up an account with your chosen asset management company, you can make the investments online.

There are also SSFs but I haven't looked into those much as they didn't interest me because there are not stock investments.

A word of warning.  Thai asset management companies may refuse to open accounts for US citizens or green card holders to avoid FATCA reporting issues.

15 hours ago, Lorry said:

In one European country it works like this:

You order something worth 3 € directly from China. 

Post office in Europe will figure out taxes and customs. This takes about 3 weeks.

During this time, your widget is stored at the post office. Storage isn't free, obviously.  They charge you 20€ for these 3 weeks storage. 

 

European middlemen were not happy that customers ordered directly from China, the middlemen used to live very well from easy profits of 1000%

It is unclear who the Thai middlemen are who allegedly complained about this.  Thais cannot make any of these products.  If they import themselves in bulk, they will have lower prices but will have to pay import duty as well as VAT because the value will be over 1,400.  However, there don't seem to be any Thai wholesalers willing to stock low value Chinese products, since so many are drop shipped from China. 

I recall there was a lot of complaining from a Thai mom and pop store association when foreign supermarket and hypermarket operators were allowed to own l00% during the Tom Yam Kung crisis because their Thai joint venture partners were busy putting out fires in other parts of their businesses and were unwilling to put in new capital to cover losses from USD borrowings.  So the stores would have closed down with huge job losses.  The mom and pop association complained bitterly about many things they couldn't compete with including 24 hour opening. The government passed new laws to restrict the freedoms of the foreign owned stores. The mom and pop association that the government cited as the excuse for these laws eventually turned out to be the CP Group which had refused to put new capital in Tesco Lotus and Makro, so got diluted to minority shareholders when the foreign shareholders were forced to inject new capital. The genuine mom and pop store owners actually benefited from the hypermarkets because they were selling stuff cheaper they could get it from the wholesalers controlled by CP and other big Thai corporations. So they were buying their stock there and marking it up.

I have had a number of people over the years come to me to ask for help after being bilked by these fraudulent expat financial advisors.  Most claim they are licensed but have no qualifications or licenses of any type. Even, if they are licensed in the UK for example and the customer is British, there is no UK coverage for customers not residing in the UK.  The products they sell are invariably registered for sale only offshore and wouldn't be covered.

The worst case was a guy who was invested in a managed futures fund which lost money heavily in the Subprime blow up year when managed futures were the only asset class that did well.  He tried to get what was left of his money back and visited the owner of the advisory company in an office in Sukhumvit and was screamed at to get out of the office or he would call the police and use his connections to have his client deported and blacklisted. After a little research I discovered that the offshore company running the fund was actually owned by the expat advisor himself.  The URL of the fund's website was registered to a condo address in Sukhumvit.  He had set it all up with a a website that showed performance stats and a name that made you think it was based in the City of London.  I lost touch with that guy but assume he lost 100% of his money as it was a pure scam. The fund was fake and the idea was to get as many suckers in as possible and then start showing terrible performance figures and keep their money, or most of it. The expat advisor was later exposed in relation to a football fund and is hopefully no longer operating in Thailand. No doubt he had been bribing Thai police to allow him to run offices with young farangs doing cold calling without WPs and who knows, if he could have got someone deported in his heyday.

Another guy was put into a string of shady investments which seemed in the UK but were set up to have the look of something legit.  They were all registered in the Isle of Man, so not covered by UK regulators.  There were real documents online and to give the flavour one of the funds invested in the hospitality industry in the UK but had a fine print clause allowing it to "invest" in unsecured loans to affiliated businesses.  It later turned out that 80% of its assets under management had ended up as an unsecured loan to another IoM fund that went bust.  Other investments ended up worth no more than 20 cents in the dollar. My friend wrote the UK regulators and the UK Ombudsman but all said they could do nothing for him.  He was recommended to make his complaints to the Isle of Man regulator but that was a waste of time, as they also offer nil protection to non-residents.  The UK regulator did confirm that they had never had anyone of that name licensed with them, despite his claims.  Finally I sent my friends to the Thai SEC to try to get the expat financial advisor to try to get the guy for providing financial advice without a licence.  He got a meeting with some helpful young staffers at the SEC. They told him they were aware of these foreign criminals posing as financial advisors and preying on expats but there was nothing they could do under the SEC Act, unless he had sold something that could be deemed as a security under the Act.   I believe the SEC has evolved since then and they have found ways to go after farang fraudsters and at least censure them and some have been prosecuted.  The old line used to be that, if no Thais have been scammed and the police have been paid off, no crime has occurred but fortunately that has changed to a certain extent.

5 minutes ago, dogfish180 said:

Could you imagine the lines in the PO, if this is applied to Lazada items from China! 

That seems to be what is not thought through, even though in Thai language reports they admitted they have been wanting to do this since the time that Abhisit was PM, i.e. 13 years.

But many, if not most, of the items bought from Lazada and Shopee Thailand and drop shipped from China now seem to come via Flash and other couriers.  Aliexpress also seems to deliver some things at least the last mile by Thai courier, although some packages from Aliexpress and Chinese sellers on Ebay come from the Singapore and Hong Kong post offices. Not sure how this all works, whether Flash is contracted by China Post or by Thailand Post.  Aliexpress vendors seem to under invoice higher value packages automatically without the buyer having to ask,  whereas US Ebay sellers often put up warnings saying they will report buyers who request under invoicing to the FBI.

The permanent secretary for finance, Mr Lavaron, was quoted as saying the Customs Department would make an announcement about this to avoid having to legislate it in parliament.  So far there has been no announcement from the Customs Department.  All their various types of announcements are listed here https://th.customs.go.th/list_strc_download_with_docno_date.php?ini_content=announce_160426_01&ini_menu=menu_Interest_and_law_160421_07&left_menu=menu_Interest_and_law_160421_07_160421_01&order_by=date&sort_type=0&lang=th&root_left_menu=menu_Interest_and_law_160421_07&left_menu=menu_Interest_and_law_160421_07_160421_01.

Also there is nothing in the Royal Gazette searching under "value added tax"\, nor any Finance Ministry ministerial regulations on the matter.  Has anyone seen an official announcement of the rescinding of the tax exemption?  It look like it hasn't been announced yet and normally there is some notice period.  I would think at least a month for a tax change of this type.

4 hours ago, onthemoon said:

 

The e-gates have been disabled for PR holders for many years now. My PR book is full every few years, I need a new passport on average every 2-3 years. I wish we could use e-gates again, I'd be the first one to use them.

That really sucks.  They were disabled for Thai citizens for a few years years too during and after COVID.  I haven't travelled much recently but assumed they were back up and running for all.  I remember that they made a big thing pre-COVID of allowing non-residents of Thailand, who were frequent travellers to Thailand to register for the gates and there was some reciprocation. I think foreign WP holders were also allowed to register at that point.  But it seems they have totally ditched the expansion of the system beyond Thai citizens. There was a costly new system installed  that was alleged by Big Joke to be plagued with corruption and years late.  All for nought, it would seem.

Things may have changed but what I recall from being a PR was that the tabian baan was not required to get the endorsements in the residence book and passport at CW, except when the residence book was filled up with exit and entry stamps and I had to get a new one.  This might never happen, if you only use e-gates at the airport. I am pretty sure the tabian baan was needed for renewal of the alien book at the police station, as they want verification that you reside in their precinct.

It is a legal requirement under the Civil Registration Act that you should have a tabian baan, as a Thai resident.  If your landlord removes you from his tabian baan and you don't transfer to another one, would that be notified to Immigration?  Given the lack of coordination between govt depts, that seems extremely unlikely. However, not having a tabian baan as PR is very unwise and could easily cause you problems. In the situation you can't get a landlord to put you on the tabian baan, I would advise trying to get on the tabian baan of a Thai friend.

14 hours ago, david143 said:

i also heard from one friend who has business in Silom claimed he got a call from MOI for interview on 25 April 2024, if anyone else received a call please provide further information, this guy is a friend of my friend and also claimed he applied 1.5 years ago based on Thai family, i am flabbergasted that is he so lucky while previous batch of 2019 still waiting for MOI interviews.
Please inform if anyone has received call.

It's good that interviews are getting under way now under the current government.  I have a couple of friends waiting for interviews who are getting very  pessimistic about the outlook.  One of them is even considering leaving Thailand due to despondency over his application, the remittance tax and some other issues he doesn't like this government for.

On 4/21/2024 at 5:46 PM, DrJoy said:

6 yrs from start to finish..

 

I can recall many here who applied in Dec 2018 and got their ID card within 3 yrs. Dont understand why it took so long for you.

Things speeded up after the 2014 coup and 3 years became the new normal for a brief few years.  Things had already started slowing down a bit at the end of the coup government period and slowed down more under the Prayut government, despite no change in the minister. With Anutin as minister we are probably looking at 5+ years now to be realistic.  Before the 2014 coup 5 years years was considered good with many running at the 7-8 year mark and some 10-11. Before the first Thaksin regime it was 1-3 years.  Now Thaksin is back again.

On 4/21/2024 at 9:24 AM, DrJoy said:

Congratulations.

 

Usually its 10-12 working days, but may vary

Congrats to all in the latest batch.  I had to wait two months for the certificate but your mileage may indeed vary.  Bear in mind that many district offices now ask you to make an appointment to get your first ID card which can be a bummer, if you dash over there expecting to come out with an ID card like I did.

I note that Anutin signed the authorisation to publish in the RG on 5 April and it was published two weeks later which included Songkran.  That is very fast as there can often be a gap of six months or more between the publication date and the signature on the bottom. Somewhat less encouraging though is that this batch must have been approved by Anuphong, whereas Anutin merely approved publication in the RG of applicants already approved by the previous minister and probably by HMK before he actually started as interior minister.  Of course he has no choice but to publish applicants already approved by HMK in the RG.  So unfortunately it doesn't prove that Anutin is actually getting anything to do with citizenship done off his own bat and this batch might have been sitting in his in tray since his first day in the ministry.

Many are Thai names who are probably hill tribes or other minorities or displaced Thais.  I have never seen them mixed in with naturalisations of non-stateless applicants before.  They have always had their own batches.  They apply to district offices for initial processing but still have to go through the same section at the ministry for the final processing. I am not sure, if there is any significance to this new type of mixed batching. Probably not.

On 3/7/2024 at 6:36 PM, david143 said:

https://ratchakitcha.soc.go.th/documents/16436.pdf

Loss of thai Nationality
Signed By Anutin .
his First RG which was signed by him on ๒๒ ธันวาคม พ.ศ. ๒๕๖๖ 22 December 2023 and Published Today

Glad to see these were all voluntary renunciations.

On 1/16/2024 at 6:38 PM, Ebumbu said:

 

Your post seems sensible. Two questions: 

 

1) How do you see this playing out in terms of access to people who use cannabis medically (and recreationally) like myself. 

 

2) I'm concerned about what I read here about banning flowers. I can't take edibles or extracts due to gastritis. Do you think flowers will still be available for medical use? 

 

Thanks. 

They have told the media they will prevent shops selling fried flower but there is nothing about that in the draft bill.  I searched the word flower in Thai and nothing. No questions about that from shop owners and growers in the public hearing at the ministry either.  Perhaps it is something that will come later in ministerial regulations they don't need to get through parliament.

1 hour ago, jayboy said:

I understand that a Thai national's Tax Identity Number is the same at his/her 13 figure national identity number as issued by the Ministry Of Interior.

 

For foreigners with PR I wonder whether the same applies - ie the 13 figure number on the tabien baan/driving license/pink card etc - or is there a different method used?

Yes.  A PR's 13 digit ID number, which remains the same, if he upgrades to citizenship, should be used as his TIN. However, in cases where they or their company continue to use their old foreigner TIN, it doesn't seem to cause a problem. As a PR I filed for tax under my 13 digit number for years.  Then I moved to a company that ignored me when I told them to use my TIN.  They applied for a new foreigner TIN for me and insisted on using that the 3 years I worked there.  I filed my tax return under my 13 digit number as usual submitting the documentation from the company with the foreigner number.  The RD had no problem with this.