Arkady

One day the red book and the blue/white books will be replaced by smart card. This will upset people whose job it is to issue these pointless documents. When will this happen? Could be next year or 20 years hence. Is Anutin the man to shake things up? Probably not, or if he does it might not be to the advantage of PR holders, given his remarks about foreigners during COVID.

Looking at Anutin's monologues in media about drawing up a hit list of mafiosi appointed for reasons unknown as kamnans and pooyai baan at the Interior Ministry, gun control and other hot button issues, I found my mind a wandering to what he might do to the citizenship application process, if anything. The stage is set for him to make major changes, if he has a mind to do so, as a result of the failure of the Prayut government to issue the new ministerial regulations they ordered the ministry to draw up. We will have to see but something tells me that applicants will be better off, if he never turns his attention to this issue during his tenure.

That is BTS's racist policy I am afraid. Even as a Thai citizen they tried to refuse me, on the grounds of being not Thai in the eyes of the idiotic girl on the desk. I had to cause a fuss and let an angry queue build up behind me. I refused to budge from the queue and she refused to back down, so I suggested that, in the interests of the other passengers waiting, she might like to call her supervisor. He arrived in seconds and ticked her office roundly, saying, "He is Thai. Give him the senior ticket NOW". She went bright red at the loss of face. I still can't imagine what she thought she was trying to prove.

I think what happened with your HR lady was similar to what happens with lawyers and agents. They quote huge fees, claiming that a large element is bribes for Immigration and maybe the MoI too but it is unlikely that they pay more than about 30k of it to CW Immigration, if anything. They have very little decision making power and can't speed things up. It is unlikely that they pass anything higher up the chain than the front office CW staff, as it is much harder for them to get access and the applications go through a committee which makes it obvious to the others, if someone is getting favorable treatment.

Interesting but no mention of the potential impact on the condo market, particularly in resort areas where there are hardly any Thai buyers and the developers have to cook up dubious schemes to sell foreigners the 51% that is supposed to be owned by Thais. Surely there are a number of foreign condo buyers who actually live in Thailand most of the year? They are obligated to remit the money for the purchases which could be taxable at 35% now. I am surprised the condo developers remain silent, as their train speeds on towards a brick wall.

I think it is fair to assume that they will do this in the not too distant future. They already demand evidence of tax payment of employee and company for renewal of NON-B visas from what I recall. Also they may well raise the monthly amounts and lump sum. Under the first Thaksin regime they were raised substantially when he first came to power in 2001 (I think the lump sum was raised from 200k, so 4x). If you have already been in the country long enough for file a tax return and pay tax, there would be a logic to this for sure. Some double tax treaties allow the country of residence to collect tax and make the taxpayer try to claim a refund of tax already deducted in the other jurisdiction. Others will allow the taxpayer to claim a tax credit for tax already deducted in the country of origin. If you are earning the minimum required for renewal, currently 65k a month, you are way above the threshold that requires you to do a Thai tax return. So Immigration could easily ask for a certified copy of your prior year tax return. The current forms have a space to declare foreign income but I don't think there is anywhere you can claim a tax credit under a foreign DTA.

Before COVID Chinese buying of condos had become a huge chunk of the developers' market and has apparently been creeping back since the Chinese have been allowed to travel again. China has a double tax treaty with Thailand but it seems only to address corporate tax payers, not individuals. Perhaps China was only concerned about its state owned enterprises at the time. Anyway most of the money is assumed to be earned in the black economy in China and wouldn't benefit from a DTA. So for any Chinese who spends over 180 days a year in Thailand the idea of having to pay tax on money brought in to buy a condo would be a bit of of turn off. Even for those who spend less than 180 days in country, the idea of foreign remittances maybe getting screened for income tax liability could spoke the market completely. Also when you think of a typical expat farang arried to a Thai who wants to bring in a chunk of cash to buy a bit of landed property for his family to live in, they could also be put off. Their money is not even going directly into a real estate investment which might eventually be granted exemption from scrutiny. It is technically being gifted to his wife.

This new interpretation of the Revenue Code to mean ANY previous tax year, rather the apparent intent which was the THE previous tax year, gives rise to exactly that concern, since it appears to set no limit on how long ago that money was earned. Not only that the interest earned on the savings account going back indefinitely could also be deemed as taxable when remitted to Thailand. The Revenue Code doesn't specify income from property or real estate, as many of the translations suggest, but actually says income earned from assets overseas which could be any form of income generating asset. Furthermore there is no separate treatment of capital gains in the Revenue Code. So any capital gains, say from selling a house at any time in the past, could be taxed at progressive rates as income, if remitted to Thailand.

A well thought out and explained commentary but there are some potential issues. A2 There is a ruling for the RD's tax lawyers from the early 2000s that I can't lay my hands on for the moment to the effect that foreign pension income remitted to Thailand by Thai tax residents in the year it was earned was indeed deemed taxable income. The RD has done nothing to try to enforce this probably because it would be too much trouble and very little would be collected, since a great deal of the pensions would be covered by DTAs. That is still true but this idea doesn't seem very well thought through, so nothing can be said to be impossible. B Section 41 of the Revenue Code indeed appears to say that income earned abroad in the previous tax year is taxable when remitted to Thailand and that has always been the RD's interpretation until now. However, when you look at the Thai original and take into account that Thai has no definite or indefinite articles, you can see that see that it could be interpreted as income earned abroad in a previous tax year is taxable when remitted to Thailand. And that unfortunately appears to be the interpretation that Srettha as finance minister has instructed the RD to make. If you consider the intent, it seems that the previous interpretation was intended. That is a wordy language and makes up for vagaries like having no definite or indefinite articles by adding more phrasing for the avoidance of doubt, e.g. "in any previous tax year whatsoever". But the drafters didn't say that which implies they meant only the previous tax year for which you have to file a tax return. Some may say this interpretation is non-intuitive and is merely a sleight of hand tactic by the government to try to raise more revenue without the need to subject amendments to the Revenue Code to parliamentary scrutiny and test the unity of the marriage of convenience coalition. It could be that the new interpretation will be challenged in the tax court. D The exchange of information agreement is a concern in this context. I received a letter from the UK taxman accusing me of concealing income that had obviously come from a bank somewhere reporting a remittance. I had to pay my tax accountant to send them a letter explaining that I was a non-UK tax resident but regularly filed tax returns on UK sourced income. The same could easily happen in reverse in Thailand.

I was just browsing the British Embassy's website to advise a friend who needs a notarized passport copy (one of the few notary services they still offer) and came across this. Letter of no objection for a Thai citizenship application This service is available by post. It costs £75 plus a postage fee of £2. This letter is for British nationals making an application for Thai citizenship. To apply, follow the instructions in the Application Pack – Thai citizenship letter of no objection (ODT, 22.6 KB). A letter of no objection seems a far cry from what the MOI seems to want from embassies but, if the Brits have really persuaded them to accept that or left them with little choice, good for them. I wonder what the current version says, as there isn't a copy of the text in the information pack. The original letter, after they stopped doing the affidavits, was a sort of acknowledgement that the person in question was applying for Thai citizenship but pointed out that British citizens can have as many citizenships as they like and the government cannot force them to renounce citizenship. I guess this is the same in essence as a no objection letter. So the current text may be the same.

I sharpened it up as much as possible in Lightroom and translated it with the Google translate camera which did a better job of deciphering the characters than my own eyes but a not so good job of translating it. The second part must people who applied for naturalization, if the first part is foreign women who applied to adopt Thai husband's nationality. Foreign wives rejected looks like 300 and something but the number approved is obscured on the slide, although it looks to be a 4 digit number. Likewise applicants for naturalization is a undeterminable 4 digit number, while rejections looks like 459, not 555. No time period for these stats but it must be 10 years or more. What is surprising is the number of rejections, as we never hear of outright rejections and tend to assume that one the one hand, everyone who meets the qualifications passes, and that on the other hand SB is smart enough not to put up applicants who are unqualified. I still believe that the former is true but I would guess the tendency for the rejections are cases where SB let some slip through the net and/or applicants who become unqualified in between applying at SB and being interviewed, e.g. got divorced, became unemployed and WP was requested. This thread also probably has some survivorship bias, i.e. most of the posters are fully qualified and persistent enough to deal with the inevitable banana skins lobbed in their path.

I know a couple of Germans who are naturalised Thais. The procedure was to obtain permission to retain German nationality from foreign ministry in Berlin before you apply for Thai citizenship. You need to present what is considered a good reason. Historically they have accepted that an applicant needs Thai nationality to own his own business and/or land without the disadvantage of having to use a Thai nominee and, of course wishes to retain strong links with Germany and ultimately move back there, which is of course contradictory to the intent to remain permanently in Thailand when you apply for Thai nationality but that doesn't seem to matter. In the past AFAIK the German embassy has been willing to provide the affidavit about renouncing German nationality, even though the applicant has been given permission to actually retain German citizenship. You ought to check with the embassy that this is the case. Re your questions about the MOI doesn't ask for a renunciation certificate, as indeed Germany does from new German citizens who have not been given permission to hold dual nationality. I am sure they would love to ask for this but they cannot because it is not authorized in the Nationality Act which makes provision for revocation of Thai nationality of dual citizens in certain circumstances but makes no provision for forced renunciation of their other nationalities. So the MOI goes as far as it thinks it can without overstepping its authority under the Act which it fears could lead to law suits in the Administrative Court. A recent case where the MOI was sued for revoking Thai citizenship dragged on for 16 years and ended up with the ministry losing the case and having to reinstate a couple's Thai nationality. There are some powerful people who either have dual nationality or their children have which has historically prevented the MOI from having more specific and general prohibitions against dual amended into the Nationality Act. in 1992 the Act was in fact amended to allow the MOI to strip Thai nationality from luk krung, unless they renounced their other nationality between the ages of 20 and 21 and this happened under a military installed government without any public outcry in the media. But it was obviously very upsetting to a person or persons of consequence because the law was amended again only three weeks later to dilute the offending clause, so as to mean that luk krung had the right but the not the obligation to renounce Thai nationality at that age, if they wised to retain their other nationality, which some might choose to do, if they lived outside Thailand and were forced to do so to retain their other nationality. Very few countries actually check up on this and I can't recall seeing a single case in the RG. Asking for the affidavit was only introduced in 2009 and is not in the Act or ministerial regulations and therefore is potentially open to legal challenge. It is effective with nationalities that prohibit dual nationality because they inform the embassies once Thai citizenship is granted. Since a lot of the applicants are from China and India, this may have the effect of forcing those nationalities to renounce their birth citizenships, although I am not sure how strict China is over this.

I think the idea was send the file to the next stage at the MOI within 90 days after the applicant has signed the application. That covers the period the file is going around the narcotics agency and the NIA interview. That was what was in the flow chart on SB's website some years ago. So I assume they just rehashed it, except that SB would no longer be involved. Chula was not mentioned in the cabinet resolution but I saw the suggestion that Chula would be asked to help design the tests in an article somewhere but can no longer find it. It seems logical that an educational institute like Chula that has a course of Thai for foreigners would be involved but who knows what they will do when they get around to it. I think the dea of Por 6 was exempt applicants from language testing if they had graduated from Thai medium school at Por 6 or higher. It would be tempting to think that would include a pass in the Por 6 for foreigners exam, assuming it still exists, but I somehow doubt that would count because they have probably never heard of it. I presented my own Por 6 for foreigners certificate to SB, thinking they would very impressed and might even let me off the language testing. But they simply had no idea what it was, were unimpressed when I explained and I even had to push them to include a copy of it in my file.

It is interesting to note that there is hardly anything of consequence in the 1967 ministerial regulations that it took them the better part of two years to publish after the 1965 Nationality Act which probably meant no one could apply in that time. I think it also quite likely that most of the regulations were cut and paste from the previous ones pursuant to the previous nationality act, as indeed was the nationality act itself, but the new act specified that they had to be redrafted. What is significant in the 1967 regulations is the impractical system of requiring applications in the province of residence which the new draft regulations failed to address after 55 years of the chaos caused by that. They only took away the initial application processing away from SB and gave it to DOPA, which they perhaps believed might solve the problem in the provinces. The 1967 regulations also specified that the definition of knowledge of the Thai language is the ability to speak and understand it. The new draft regulations seemed to expand on that by requiring more rigorous testing but I think but am not certain that they stopped short of testing for reading and writing ability. It is odd that the regulations have not been regularly updated but we know that ministerial guidelines in 2009 added the requirement for the affidavit which has also been made somewhat impractical by the refusal of certain embassies to cooperate (understandable on their part). Ministerial guidelines, unlike ministerial regulations, are not published in the Royal Gazette and do not technically have the force of law. There was apparently no reference to the affidavit in the cabinet resolution or the draft ministerial regulations. Since the last government failed to get the draft ministerial regulations into the RG, we will have to wait and see what happens to them under the next government. Since the new interior minister was in the cabinet that resolved what should be in the regulations in January 2022, it could be that he will publish the draft that has already been written.

I attach a report of the cabinet resolution to draft new ministerial regulations in January 2021. Also the current 1967 ministerial regulations, the only ones ever published pursuant to the current 1965 Nationality Act. Here is something about DOPA gathering feedback on the draft regulations (nice to think that they bother with feedback) but the link is dead http://dopasakonnakhon.go.th/home/download/7868.html . Also an unrevealing memo on the same subject from the D-G of DOPA https://www.bora.dopa.go.th/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/mt030910_v26906.pdf. So the feedback gathering process may have taken a long time and not been completed before the election - or something. There were some more reports at the end of last year saying that there would be language testing arranged by DOPA in every province with advisory services from Chula but this sounds highly impractical, as some provinces rarely produce applicants. The obvious thing to do was to make it Bangkok only application, as in the case of PR but they didn't seem to want to do that. So it is now left to the MOI under the capable hands of Anutin, despite the fact that his BJP expressed little or policy ideas for local administration or any of the MOI's work in its election manifesto. So it will be a process of discovery what they plan to do. Ministerial regulations 11 Jan 2022.docx Ministerial regulations Nationality Act 1967.pdf

Let's hope for the best, as Jay says. Anutin's father, Chaovarat, was interior minister from 2008 to 2011, as a proxy for Anutin who was banned at the time. However, the BJP was still absolutely controlled by Newin (also banned at the time), who had done the deal with the military to have Abhisit take over as PM from Thaksin's brother-in-law. Chaovorat was a very nice man, well disposed towards farangs whom I had the privilege to play golf with once. However, there were not many approvals on his watch and there were allegations that he was not allowed to sign anything, including citizen approvals without Newin's permission. Even thought Newin is still regarded as the ultimate owner of BJP, Anutin is not beholden to him in the way his father was in those days, so things could go in any direction. We should also bear in mind that the new ministerial regulations (the first update since 1967) that were ordered in a cabinet resolution in around January 2022 never got published in the RG under the Prayut administration for reasons unknown, as it was announced they were ready in December 2022. The new minister could order them to be revamped, published as is or continue to leave them on ice.

The bureaucratic requirements for documentation are a bit irksome in Thailand and it takes a long time but his is true of many countries. My brother complained about the long wait for US citizenship and he had to have a green card first. They held on to his passport for some time while he was applying for citizenship, so he couldn't go on business trips without going through some rigmarole to get it back. They also held up his citizenship because a judge with a heavy foreign accent complained that he had shown no documentary evidence that he was fluent in English, despite being UK citizen and having graduated from British school and university. Germany has got easier but still harder than most other European countries and has the requirement to surrender non-EU citizenship which is no longer common in Europe. I was born in Germany at a time when most countries, including the UK and Thailand, gave citizenship automatically to anyone born there but Germany never did that. It might have been nice to have an EU passport post-Brexit.

I noticed someone replied to a post from 2007 on this issue of why would someone from a developed country apply for Thai citizenship. This is a fairly pointless discussion as it is pretty obvious that being a citizen of a country to which you have immigrated and intend to remain has many advantages, such as remaining indefinitely without immigration or WP hassles, owning your own business, owning your own land etc. I wouldn't say it's much easier for a Thai to get German citizenship than vice versa. I have the impression that German citizenship has traditionally been one of the most difficult in Europe to obtain and they will rarely allow naturalised citizens to retain their original nationality. Even the UK that was traditionally relatively easy has introduced a notoriously hard Life in Britain exam for Indefinite Leave to Remain which you have to obtain to be eligible for citizenship. In reality getting Thai citizenship is not that difficult for males working in Thailand but there is a lot of false mythology about how difficult it is and that you must have connections, Thai children, pay or bribe and such like. Mainly it just takes time and a lot of patience but everyone who is qualified normally gets it in the end.

You are right. There is no point in getting hot under the collar about this issue, unless something is denying your right to do something like buy land. My brother is a naturalized American, who has lived in the US for over 30 years and worked for the government. He says that Americans sometimes tell him he has no right to express an opinion on things like politics because he is not a real American. I guess you get these attitudes towards naturalized citizens all over, even in the land of the free that is founded on immigration and relieving the indigenous population of their land and way of life.

I have been taking quite a few domestic flights recently and one thing that irritates me slightly is that the security people always take an inordinately long time scrutinising my ID card and comparing the name on the boarding card, even though I always book using my middle names to match my ID card. It can't be because they have to read the English because the boarding cards are all in English and they are capable of reading English versions of long Thai names and comparing with the boarding pass in a fraction of the time they spend staring at mine. I can only assume they are thinking, "Cripes. Never seen one of these before. It might be a fake ID card which could get me into trouble, if I let it through." Meanwhile, Chinese businessmen with fake Thai ID cards probably just glide past them.

Continuing the UPS saga I re-registered myself with the "paperless customs" at the 120 Years Old Building (its real name) in Klong Toey yesterday. Of course UPS's story that Customs would demand a foreign passport for Thais who were not born Thai was utter nonsense. I registered using only my ID card as usual. The UPS girl also had some other weird incorrect notions about clearing stuff from customs. She speaks excellent English and seems very friendly but I think it is a case being so hard to find fluent English speaking staff that they take people whose only qualification is speaking English but they have nothing sensible to say in any language. Says a lot about Thailand's hopeless education system.

I was told by one of the registration heads that the interview is a Land Dept requirement and it makes sense to me. I have only done one transaction in Bkk and had the interview and was asked for a copy of naturalization certificate. But I can imagine that many land offices in Bkk and surrounding provinces dispense with these formalities. The interview is not a big deal anyway and can be funny. Once in Isaan I was asked what I planned to do with 45 rai and I answered "liang ngua" (raise cows in Lao) to get some laughs. Another thing they can ask about is selling prices that look below market price but just above appraisal value to avoid tax. The seller, who was a well known and astute local contractor, was asked if he really wanted to sell at way below the market price to a farang. Try to keep a straight face. 555.4 Re blue book. All my dealings with blue books have taken place at the district office. I didn't know the Land Dept had anything to do with them.

The one who asked for the original naturalization certificate claimed there are a lot of fake ID cards and she wanted to cover herself with more documentation in case it turned out to be fake or that my Thai nationality had already been revoked, which she obviously saw as an everyday thing. She really annoyed me, particularly when telling me to put it in Mrs A's name instead and I lost my cool a bit, which I don't usually do with Thais, specially officials. I told her to take my ID card next door to the district office and check it their database, if the Land Office doesn't have card readers and she really thought it was fake. Since she had Chinese features I told her that nearly all the cases of fake IDs reported in the news are Chinese and I never seen a case of a farang and it would be extremely high risk and foolish for farangs to try to get away with fake ID cards, wouldn't it? I suggested she should check the Thai nationality of anyone who comes in to buy land with Chinese features and she would have a much better chance of finding a fake ID card. This made one of her staff with very Isaan features lose control and start peeing with laughter. The boss lost face, went red and turned silent. She was probably not used to having anyone arguing back at her in the office. When it was all done, she turned all nice, probably feeling she had overstepped the mark, and came over to try to sell Mrs A some low quality cosmetics she was selling in a moonlighting job and they did the add LINE thing. But now I look at it like Thais who change their name, e.g. Mrs A's brother, and have to lug around copies of their name change certificate to government offices for the rest of their lives. I come armed with a copy of the certificate along with my ID card and TB.

It depends on what you do after getting Thai nationality but I have had to produce my naturalization certificate on multiple occasions and have been asked for the original several times.

I think she just the questions about how long I had had Thai nationality and former nationality to lead up to her key question about dual nationality. I can't say what she would have done, if I had given the wrong answer, but it is possible she would have told me to put the land in Mrs Arkady's name instead, rather than make the seller leave with nothing. She knew Mrs A was there because she had signed the spousal consent. Another head of registrations in another province, who objected to me not having my original naturalisation certificate tried to force me to put the land in Mrs A's name which really peed me off and caused a bit of tension between me and the missus. It's not the job of land offices to start rows between couples about whose name conjugal assets are registered under. I emphasise that these are all land offices serving rural communities upcountry and most have probably never seen a farang with Thai nationality before. Land Department regulations require that the head of registrations interviews the buyer and seller together before finalising the transfer. The purpose of this to try to make sure that the seller has been properly paid and that there is no scam to avoid payment. In our last case there was a slight issue because the seller hadn't brought enough cash to pay her share of the tax which was more than she expected. So I had to lend her the money which was nearly 100k. Because of this I hadn't handed over the cashier cheque yet as we all agreed to go to the bank together afterwards and let her cash the cheque and repay me the temporary loan which we did. The head raised her eyebrows at this and wrote a two line note about it on the sales and purchase contract that is lodged at the Land Department, obviously so there would be a record, if I reneged and ran off without paying. The interview is quite important for transactions that are sales with the right of redemption (khai faak) as the sellers very often don't understand how that works and frequently get conned by the buyers. Unfortunately, despite the Land Department's best efforts to mitigate things there are a huge number of scams that result in poor rural folk selling their inherited land without being paid in full. A very common one doing the rounds is for buyers, usually from somewhere else to offer to pay a big deposit but they need the deed transferred to their name on payment of the deposit, so that they can raise financing to pay the balance because they need to pledge the deed to borrow the money. A sale and purchase agreement is entered into showing that there is an outstanding payment for the balance but the balance is never paid leaving the poor farmer to file a case in court but the scamster will claim the seller reneged on conditions, if they try to follow up. The missus and I came across one of these scamsters who wasted 3 days of our time trying to set us up for a sting like this. When we realised it was a scam, instead or remonstrating with him, we continued playing along and then just stood him up and switched off the phones. But many poor farmers are taken in. Apologies for the digression but buying land and dealing with land offices is something that quite a few of us do when we get Thai nationality and there is very little knowledge amongst farangs about how it works.