Arkady

11 hours ago, newatthis said:

How does a retired person come under S 34?

 

Section 34

Aliens entering into the kingdom for a temporary stay may enter for the below listed activities:

1. Diplomatic or Consular Missions
2. Performance of official duties
3. Touring
4. Sporting
5. Business
6. Investing under the concurrence of the Ministries and Departments concerned.
7. Investing or other activities relating to investing subject to the provisions of the law on investment promotion.
8. Transit journey.
9. Being the person in charge of the crew of a conveyance coming to port, station, or area in the Kingdom.
10. Study or observation.
11. Mass media.
12. Missionary work under the concurrence of the Ministries and departments concerned.
13. Scientific research or training or teach in a Research Institute in the Kingdom.
14. The practice of skilled handicraft or as a specialist
15. Other activities as prescribed in the Ministerial Regulations.

 

There were no O or O-A visas then and retirement was not yet envisaged as a reason to enter the Kingdom for a temporary stay.  That all came later under ministerial regulations.  Therefore a retired person who enters the Kingdom for a temporary stay other than for tourism, i.e. to reside temporarily as a retiree, does so under Section 34.15.

I think the mentality harks back to the military dictatorship of Phibul in the 1940s when he tried to modernise Siam by introducing a Western oriented dress code for Thais that was compulsory for entry to government offices, including the wearing of hats by ladies. The illustration below shows the types of dress that were no longer allowed on the left, including shirtless men and women and Muslim style sarongs for men. The people on the right are wearing Western dress or acceptable forms of polite sarong outfits for women. Sandals were also banned and the ban remains to this day for racing days at the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, which is why you see stalls renting proper shoes outside the gates. Phibun also introduced the military style uniforms that civil servants still wear today, including teachers and postmen, and the regulation haircuts for school children, not to mention the ceremonies to salute the national flag at 8.00am and 6.00pm.

22 hours ago, jackdd said:

This notice is not a police interpretation, but a translation of a ministerial order (from the ministry of interior), which i also included in my first post: http://www.ratchakitcha.soc.go.th/DATA/PDF/2523/D/103/7.PDF

The translation on this sign looks about right to me.

My apologies.  You are right.  It is a ministerial regulation from 1984.  You would have thought they could have reviewed things in the last 35 years, rather than just dusting off this anachronism from the days that Thailand had only about half a million tourists a year and its rice exports were a more important source of foreign exchange than tourists.

Barring entry to foreign tourists arriving in Phuket for a beach holiday wearing sandals, while they are being passed by hordes of Thai passengers also wearing sandals, would make the Thai government a complete laughing stock around the world. 

17 hours ago, scorecard said:

Now owned by a Thai registered company, therefore there are Thai shareholders. So maybe the LTO might want to see some documents to prove the Thai shareholders agree to the transfer.

 

But that might depend on the original articles of association when the company was first registered; does it indicate that the MD/CEO can make that decision alone? And does it say that you are automatically appointed at registration as the MD/CEO.

 

What about proof that the funds to but have been transferred into Thailand with a distinct label of 'to buy condo?'

 

And will the juristic office issue a note to say that all maintenance etc., fees are up to date? 

 

As mentioned above, when I did this, they wanted documents signed by an authorised director who was not myself, my wife or a relative of either of us, since my wife was the purchaser.  Under English common law a board resolution would be required but Thai company law has the system of authorised directors borrowed from European law instead.  There are very few things that require a shareholders' resolution in the Civil and Commercial Code and, in any case, the majority shareholders can steamroller the minorities at AGMs and EGMs.  So the unrelated party authorised director is probably the closest they can get to protecting minority shareholders.

Section 16 of the Immigration Act is a "catch all" that gives the minister the right to bar anyone from entering the Kingdom for the good of public morals and the happiness of the people.  It doesn't specify anything about hippies or dress codes.  This notice is just a police interpretation which could be either local or national but they do have a lot of power to interpret the law because there is usually no judicial appeal.  You are just put on a plane out and that's that.

As others have said, the transfer can be quite easily accomplished, provided that less than 49% of the usable space is owned by foreigners, which can be checked with the developer and the Land Dept will, of course, double check for you when to go to make the transfer.  I have transferred land from a company to my wife and the only complication was I needed a company resolution to sell signed by an authorised director who was not a party that had an interest in the purchase, i.e. not myself and not my wife. This director also had to sign the sale and purchase documents at the Land Office, which was done through power of attorney, so that she didn't have to show up.  This is to try to ensure that other shareholders of a company are not being disadvantaged by sale of an asset at below market price.  If your land office also requires this, you might need to appoint a new outside director and make them authorized to sign alone for a short period of time.  Better check with the Land Office on this point. If you can speak Thai, or have a Thai speaker to help you, transfers at the Land Office can easily be done without a lawyer.  The vast majority of transfers are done without a lawyer and Land Dept staff are used to explaining things in simple terms to members of the public.  Sometimes they ask openly for a bribe to reduce tax liability (unlikely in the case of a company sale) or for you to jump the queue to avoid having to come back again the next day (more likely in city land offices).  Nowadays they have a mobile app you can get IDed into there to fuse to see you are in the queue, so you can wait outside in a restaurant or coffee shop.  

A company selling pays 1% withholding tax plus some other lesser taxes and fees, at the Land Office and then has to include the sale in its accounts for that year.  If the withholding tax already paid is too much or too little, based on the company's other earnings that year, the total tax will be adjusted when it files its accounts with the Revenue Department.  The 1% is based on the appraised value or the declared value of the sale, whichever is the greater.  It makes sense to declare it at the appraised value which what probably the price the vast majority of deals are officially done at.  You can find out how much this is by going to the Land Office with your title deed and ID/ passport and they will print it out for you.

This is definitely in the 1979 Immigration  Act but I but my memories go back to the early 80s and I can't remember it ever being strictly enforced.  Since much of the 1979 Act, which focuses a lot on permanent residence that was easy to obtain then, is out of date or redundant (this part in particular), it is probably about time it was thrown out and re-drafted in line with Thailand's needs today.  Many of the visas people use today didn't exist in 1979, i.e. retirement and marriage extensions, and have been created piecemeal through national police orders which have not been submitted to parliamentary scrutiny. 

I think most will just consider this a great war story to tell when they get home.  I recall similar things happening in Greece and the South of France in the 1970s.  The French police loved the job and came to the nude beach every 3 days to arrest to arrest new arrivals who didn't know they shouldn't sun bathe nude close to the car park where the police came in, which, of course, was the easiest part to find an empty spot. The police helicopters always buzzed the beach beforehand warning all the old hands to put their swimmers on. Then the all male gendarmes would arrive and arrest the prettiest nude girls they could easily get to from the car park and really enjoy wrapping them in coarse blankets.  Nude males were usually left alone.  After the police had had their fun taking the pretty girls wrapped in blankets to cop shop, they were released with small fines and allowed to go back to nude sunbathing on the beach again.  In Greece it was much nastier.  The arrests were not methodical as in France but random and haphazard, targeting whoever got caught, whether male or female.  They were allowed to get dressed and told to pack their stuff because the police locked up until they could send them to caught.  In the Cyclades Islands that usually meant waiting for up to 10 days for the next court session and then being put on a ferry to Syros the main island in the group that had a court.  Punishments were also small fines but it meant a ruined holiday and possibly a missed flight home.  As in France, tourists tended not to understand that being nude on a nude beach was actually illegal.   In Thailand it is more obvious that that it is illegal but who anyone who hasn't been skinny dipping after a few drinks at least once in their lives is a total bore. I was once with a group of young male and female back packers over a boozy evening in Rome and they suddenly announced that we were all going skinny dipping in the Tivoli fountains, something they had apparently been talking about doing for the last few days.  I thought they were kidding at first but at a given signal, all stripped naked and jumped into the fountains.  I chickened out, opting to guard the clothes instead, since I was going to stay with an uncle who lived in Italy and didn't want to make the papers instead.  Good memories.

Another problem is the unavailability of sugar free yoghurt and drinking yoghurt.  A friend who works in the sugar industry told me that Thai yoghurt producers were amongst their biggest customers.  Basically all yoghurt products with the exception of a few local specialty products and some imported brands have at least a couple of spoonfuls of sugar in them. 

It seems that there is no new law and maybe nothing new apart from the news of the scanners to be installed to search for commercial goods in luggage. It is not clear that there has been an upsurge in customs searches at international airports or whether the report is on the situation that has prevailed in recent years.  My observation is that customs tend to focus on luggage of Thais, who one assumes they expect to be likely to smuggling high value hand bags and stuff, and Indians, as well as other foreigners of colour, who may be suspected of bringing in narcotics & etc. Many Indians go, or used to go, on package tours to Singapore and Thailand and buy electronic consumer goods in Singapore to sell back home and cover the cost of their trips. They can be easy pickings for the customs officers, if they haven't gone to the red zone and declared their goods on the way in.  Farangs who look like tourists or businessmen are less likely to have anything of interest to customs but things could change, or maybe have already. 

30 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

I don't have any experience with Customs at the airport, but I do in terms of their handling of imported packages by mail.

 

And in that realm, they basically make up their own declared value that they use as the basis for tax and duty, and it doesn't matter that you have purchase documentation showing the actual price you paid. They seem basically uninterested in that.

 

I have had this experience that an item declared at its correct purchase price with the genuine invoice in the package was arbitrarily assessed by postal customs at much higher and charged import duty at 30%  + VAT when it should have been 10% + VAT. It was one of those that you have to go to the post office to collect and there seemed no point in arguing with the post office staff who have no say in the matter. On the other hand I have been summoned to the postal customs HQ in Chaenwattana on two occasions and treated fairly both times.  This is the situation when you are given your package which has already been opened and resealed and a box cutter to open it in front of the officer.  On both occasions I was asked for the value and showed her a receipt I brought with me (she didn't look for at the declared value or for an invoice in the package) and charged 10% + VAT based on the value I showed her. 

10 hours ago, jackdd said:

He has to be registered in a house book, and then there is a specific government hospital responsible for this area where he can get free treatment.

Treatment in any other government hospital is only free for Thais if it's an emergency.

I think it can cause complications if he registers in a house book other than where he is actually living but there may be a way to register at a hospital in another location. If he manages to get a job, he will be in a different system, the Social Security system, which allows you to register with a private hospital in your area to be paid for by Social Security.  My maid, who is also diabetic, is in the Social Security system and seems satisfied with the treatment she receives.  My father-in-law was also diabetic and received what seemed to be adequate treatment from a government hospital.  So either way, he will be able to get free treatment for his diabetes, once he is registered.

3 hours ago, Thomas J said:

I had lasik done in Canada over 20 years ago.  I can tell you I would never do it had I known all of the ramifications.  First, yes my distance vision and astigmatism was immediately cured.  However, though I had to use single vision glasses occasionally for activities like driving, my close up vision was compromised so I needed reading glasses and that means I had them hanging from my shirt all of the time.  Now I am 70 and guess what, your vision changes.  Mine has actually "improved".  It has now been found out that your vision often changes back regressing to what it once was.  It is often referred to as "second sight"  That means I am now over corrected and I am back to blurry.  Since I have had Lasik the new multi-focal contacts won't work since my cornea has been altered.  The Lasik also makes fitting for cataract replacement lenses more challenging.  If I had it to do over again, I would have stuck with mono-vision wearing one contact for distance and the other for close up. 

It is apparently quite common for short sighted eyes to improve with age due to presbyopia. I had an eye that became slightly short sighted (-25 to -50). As time went on it went back to 20/20 for distance vision but reading vision deteriorated. 

I recall the sad case of a young couple a few years ago who came out to Thailand from the UK on their honeymoon. On their first day they went sightseeing the area of the Grand Palace and both were knocked down and killed on a zebra crossing.

If she won't cooperate in an amicable divorce at the district office, you can file for divorce in the Thai Family Court once you have been separated for 3 years.  If she refuses to cooperate and misses court appearances, it could be a time consuming and costly process which is what you want to avoid.  If she doesn't want to remarry, is is going to cost you some money.  You will wither have to go through the full court process which will cost money or offer her some cash to agree to an amicable divorce.  A Thai friend of mine who was sued for divorce by a farang guy had to pay a decent Thai lawyer B200,000 to represent her over two court hearings which ended up in a settlement in which she did quite well.  There were also some court fees to pay.  Her farang husband probably a lot more to an unlicensed farang lawyer, who had to hire a proper Thai lawyer plus a translator. I went to the court hearings and my friend's lawyer, a professor at Chula law school, was able to run rings around the farang's team who really didn't seem to understand Thai divorce law properly and thought they would be able to get away without dividing the property he had bought in Thailand after they got married.  The farang would have saved himself a lot of time, trouble and money, if he had made a reasonable offer in the first place without the need to go to court.

That's just an example to show that it could be very expensive, time consuming and tedious to divorce her in court. If there are multiple hearings where she fails to show up, it could cost even more. Your best option is to keep quiet for two or three years, if you are in no hurry to remarry, and wait to see, if she comes up with her own reason to get a divorce.  If not, your best option may be to offer her a sum of money to cooperate in an amicable divorce. In your case, since you have no assets in Thailand and a court would probably not order any settlement, she can't reasonably expect to get a huge amount of money.   

15 minutes ago, nikov said:

They could start accepting EU wide licences just like the US does. It would be easier for everyone.

 

There doesn't seem to be a lot of other countries which require an IDP.

IDPs must have been pretty useful when they came out in 1949 when many countries issued domestic licences only in their own language, often without a photograph.  I remember having to get one to rent a car in Europe when UK licences still had no photograph.  Since more and more countries, including Thailand, now issue licences with the details in English and with photographs, IDPs are increasingly redundant and, with falling demand, they are harder to get hold of in many countries. Time was in the UK that you can get one in a high street AA shop on the spot for a 5 pound fee but you have to send off for them now. 

Unfortunately it is unrealistic to expect Thailand to update its law on this any time soon, particularly if you look at the history.  Thailand has to date only ratified the 1949 Geneva convention on IDPs and has not yet got around to ratifying the current 1968 Vienna convention (amended in 2011).  That means that IDPs are only valid in Thailand for the first three months after they are issued, whereas the 1968 convention provides for them to be recognised for 12 months.  That means that you can be arrested for driving with an IDP that is more than three months old.  Insurance companies are also entitled to decline to honour claims where the driver only had an IDP that was more than three months old.  It was this information from my company's insurance company that persuaded me to apply for my first Thai licence after years of driving on IDPs.  I am glad I did because I applied in time to get an all of life licence before they stopped issuing them.  

I believe that anyone of any race or nationality caught driving any motor vehicle without a licence should be dealt with harshly in accordance with the law.  In the case of tourists who often have no experience driving motor bikes at home, it is for their own good. The problem with this police announcement is that it is not up to the police to decide on jail sentences or fines.  That is the job of the courts.  It is unlikely that the courts would impose a jail term on a first time offender for driving without a licence and the police know this well. 

It seems to be bluster and grandstanding as well as racism, more than anything else.  If he had said that all unlicensed drivers will be dealt with to the full extent of the law and that traffic policemen will also be dealt with according to the law, if they take bribes instead of enforcing the law, that would have made more sense, even though there would have been some skepticism about his ability to enforce police compliance.  

When I was applying for citizenship I got even more derisory comments than when I applied for PR. People said things like, "Why would I want a third world passport and have to submit myself to the indignities of applying when I have a super duper US of A, British, Australian etc passport?"

Again some of the real long-term hold outs, who don't have PR but have Thai wives, are now applying after finding the hassles of annual renewals, TM30s and 90 day reporting and worries that one day they will be separated from their families getting too much.

26 minutes ago, scorecard said:

Yes, but that's up to each person, I have PR (over 20 years) I live with my son born here, his wonderful Thai wife and my three granddaughters, they are my very beloved family. Having PR means there is 99.9% peace of mind that visa issues will never separate the family. To me this is very important.

 

 

Definitely PR provides such peace of mind but what got me increasingly frustrated was: 1) hardly any Thais outside Immigration and the police understood what PR was and didn't recognize the alien book; 2) having to provide photocopies of five books - passport, alien book, residence book, tabien baan and work permit; 3) still having to get work permits. 

Now I only need to provide a copy of my ID card and tabien baan and am free to work and own my own business and land and have given up that annual pilgrimage to Immigration at CW where can't do the simple endorsements on the spot. You have to either wait for three hours or come back the next day (or send a messenger).