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.

1 hour ago, onthemoon said:

I recently turned 60 and asked the staff at the BTS to issue a Senior pass for me. They checked and said this is only for Thai citizens. I understand that they don't want to discount the fares for tourists, but I have PR and I pay taxes, like every Thai citizen. Does anybody know anything more about this?

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.

2 hours ago, Kayahammer said:

For what it's worth, I applied for PR early 2017, using the visa/HR lady at my work. She gathered all related documents from work and told me what I had to do (including photos outside my house, outside my village, inside all rooms in my house, outside my place of work, inside my pace of work). We submitted all the paperwork, and each subsequent time we went back they asked for something else. Each visit the immigration officers at CW tried to sell us things like a Thai course (wife informed them I didn't need it as I spoke Thai well enough), a fast track (no thanks, we can wait) etc. until we were called in to an unofficial interview where they asked about savings, assets etc. I'm not stupid, so I said we had none. They explained I would not pass unless we made a contribution (not their policy, but their superiors we were told). It wasn't a great amount, and we were cornered, so we paid. After that it was plain sailing. Short, easy interview. The visit from local immigration beforehand was tension filled as the main guy was not happy about having to perform this task, and didn't hide it.

 

The whole process was about a year.

 

As an aside, the visa lady from work tried to trick me out of 100K as a payment to immigration officials, which we refused to pay (immigration asked for a lot less than that).

 

I will add that having PR is nice, however I have since bought a couple of condos, and both land and house offices refused to accept I now have the right to buy a condo without sending money from overseas, even when I showed them the official rules and regs regarding foreigners purchasing property).

 

Lastly, I am about to get my PR renewed for the first time - does anyone know what documents I have to produce for this?

 

Thanks in advance

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.

20 hours ago, Thaindrew said:

I can see them potential saying that you haven't declared enough money to live so how are you living as a way of taxing you above what you have declared as bringing in. That's fraught with danger given the way other government office like immigration deal with things.

 

I suppose as a minimum you'd have to bring in and declare at least 65000 baht x 12 a year as living expenses to match what they insist people on retirement visas bring in (ignoring agents in the whole process for now). But what would the tax be on 780,000 Baht, not small for sure !

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.

1 hour ago, StayinThailand2much said:

Knowing Thai bureaucracy, one may have to prove it. Say, you made x£/€/$ 20 years ago, then had it in a savings account till now, maybe they will ask you to prove that it was taxed 20 years ago in your home country. - I'm not suggesting that it will be like that, but who knows...

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.

5 hours ago, h3ith said:

The Google translation refers to (A) "income due to work duties or business conducted abroad" or (B) "because of property". 

 

A) Section 40 of the revenue code:

A1) Any of us is a tax resident of TH if we stay more than 180 days. Tax residency has nothing to do with the immigration status or the type of extension. 

 

A2) "Income derived from employment, whether in the form of salary, wage, per diem, bonus, bounty, gratuity, pension, house rent allowance, monetary value of rent-free residence provided by an employer, ..." 

"Pension" among all these types of income seems to refer to private pensions paid by an employer, (perhaps) not government pensions.

The double-tax treaty between your country and TH regulates where government pensions and private pensions are taxable. In previous years, many retirees could not even get a Thai Tax ID even when they asked for one. 

 

B) Section 41 paragraph 2: capital gains, interest, dividends. "A resident of Thailand who in the previous tax year derived assessable income under Section 40 from an employment or from business carried on abroad or from a property situated abroad shall, upon bringing such assessable income into Thailand, pay tax." 

This decree does not change the current tax law, which only imposes tax on financial income if you transfer it into TH in the same calendar year when it was earned.

Employment income is different - it's always taxable in TH if you earn it while you are in TH, even if you receive it from a foreign employer and park it in a foreign bank account. 

 

(C) Income tax on capital, i.e. on the savings you transfer from your foreign savings account to TH: No, cannot happen. If you transfer 5mil THB of savings to buy a condo and TH were to impose 25% income tax on the incoming 5mil, then the real estate market would implode. This decree does not change the tax law, which only taxes income but not the substance or capital.

In the worst case, the revenue office may demand proof of how much financial income was included in the 5mil, e.g. 200,000 interest income in the months before it was transferred. Then they could impose a 5% tax on the 50,000 of interest that exceeds 150,000. That's not a new tax law. It was just not enforced. 

 

(D) TH has signed up for the Automatic Exchange of Information with most other countries. So if an account owner is registered with a TH residence address with his bank in the EU, ANZ or UK, then the TH revenue department will receive data about incoming payments the next year. In 2025, a foreigner who received a 2024 stream of payments from some Western business in his Western bank account may be asked to explain the source: "We've got these data from your foreign bank. Did you earn foreign business or employment income while you lived (and apparently worked) in TH?"  

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.

2 hours ago, samran said:

Interesting slide on the screen. Its a little blurry but it looks like some stats on citizenship applications. Can't quite read it, but maybe if someone has some sort of picture enhancer it would clear up and we can read it. 

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.

1 hour ago, Somjot said:

 

Phantastic thread by the way.

 

I've been thinking about Thai citizenship for quite some time now.

 

I have permanent residency since 2006, as it was mandatory to get a blue tabien baan, which again was one of many requirements to be allowed to certain exams. To pass them, which I finally managed 2010, would allow me to work in my profession in Thailand.

 

I do see the advantages of Thai citizenship, but I am not much interested in buying land or a house as I live in a beautiful one already, perfectly located for my needs, with a 30-year lease.

 

The residency is very comfortable and as all I must do, is getting my multiple re-entry permit, in case I want to travel abroad, which is not a big deal.

 

The advantage is, that I am 100% legal.

 

Thai citizenship requires to surrender the original one, mine being German, which I definitely don't want to.

 

I have read in here, that it only requires “the intention to surrender the original citizenship”, but despite not having any experience with that, I doubt, the officials would accept any excuse like: “of course I intended to give back my citizenship but later I changed my intentions which is only human.”

 

I'm pretty much sure the reason why they did not write “MUST give back the original citizenship” is, that many countries simply do not allow it and you just can`t give it back.

 

But the German one can be given back, even worse, if you successfully apply for a new citizenship without asking for permission in advance, your German one is automatically revoked, once they find out.

 

Any suggestions?

 

And apologies, I did not read the entire thread, but I will do as soon as I have the time.

 

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.

12 hours ago, onthemoon said:

Thanks. Let me c&p this sentence: "The competent official must complete the process within 90 days or 120 days in the case of filing abroad. which can be extended for no more than 30 days at a time". I don't know whether this means the DOPA needs to send the file to the committee within that time frame, or who the "competent official" is. I haven't read the original Thai text yet, though. FWIW I am attaching a file I saved on my computer in 2020. Hm.

 

BTW I did not see anything about a language test by Chula in the files you attached, I did read this: "Tuition from an educational institution in Thailand at least at the primary level". It's a course offered by some established language schools, and you study at your own pace. Three months, two years, up to you. The primary school final exam for foreigners is at the Ministry of Education (I think once or twice a year). I got my Thai Primary School degree (ป. 6) this way in the early 2000s.

 

 

 

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.

On 9/2/2023 at 7:52 AM, onthemoon said:

I am always amazed by your in-depth knowledge and find it very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

 

Would you know any details about the new ministerial regulations? I am aware that they have not become valid, as they were never published in the RG, but it will show us what direction the line of thought was last year.

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

On 8/28/2023 at 7:07 PM, GarryP said:

It is in the news that Anutin Charnvirakun will be the new Interior Minister. Hope this doesn't negatively impact current applications, but he is viewed as a racist person, particularly against Westerners. 

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.

26 minutes ago, onthemoon said:

1. You need to stay in Germany for 7 years consecutively on any visa and pass a basic language test and have some basic knowledge about the country (like we have this test at SB). They want to reduce this to 5 years now, at least if you are married. I know a number of Thai people who have German citizenship.

 

2.) It is a myriad of papers that have to be handed in if you want to become a Thai citizen. The list will have been posted here several times and is probably available on the SB website as well. You have to have paid at least so much in taxes, hand in your company's documents (too bad if you don't work), have made donations to "prove" that you are a good citizen, and it takes many many years. I'm sorry, it simply does not compare. You must be really committed if you want to become a Thai citizen. Which I am. I'm just saying it is not easy.

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.

47 minutes ago, onthemoon said:

It is also much easier for a Thai to get German citizenship than for a German to get Thai citizenship.

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.

3 hours ago, qualtrough said:

I see this point raised all the time and to me it is a non-issue. Thai is an ethnicity, so while non-Thais can become citizens it is silly to expect Thais to consider someone Thai if they are European/African, etc. This is akin to a white person in Kenya getting upset because Kenyans didn't regard him/her as belonging to one of the tribes that compose that country. Most of those same Kenyans would probably have no issue with that person being a citizen of Kenya, other than those who might object on colonial history grounds.

 

I am quite content to be a farang with Thai citizenship, and I have yet to meet any Thai official or private citizen who has expressed any negative opinion, or acted in such a way. Most people who encounter me using my Thai ID card act like it is the most normal thing in the world, and those who comment express a combination of surprise/novelty/admiration. In fact,  my biggest surprise is how much of a non-deal it is to most of the people I encounter who are aware of my new citizenship. Now, are there Thais who might have a problem with it? Undoubtedly. But you will find people like that in every country, including the USA.  Who cares what they think?

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.

7 hours ago, Neeranam said:

I have 2 middle names and not experienced any problems, apart from people calling my the first 3 names without the surname, even when reading my ID card.

 

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.

1 hour ago, david143 said:

June 14 2023
I have bought property which is 226 talang wah in nakhon Pathom next to Saint Joseph brother's Bishops School.
I went to Land department with previous owner , to transfer Blue book +  update the chanot on my name.
we took the que , and wait, we both went to counter and i have only Thai ID + my Blue book i never hold or keep copies of RG or Certificate there was no interview, from both of us, only owner was asked to sign few documents, + 2 documents for me all digital documents from DOPA database, i am using Dopa Thai ID APP , once blue book updated on my name data is already showed up new Owner. 
This is the first Property i have ever bought on my name , since i got Thai ID, in 2021.
Once blue book in my hand + updated chanot from back , i straight went to PEA + Water Department + Tesaban for garbage collection fees and to change owner of new bills , with only a digital document from previous owner.  I have finished all tasks in just 1 day.

interviewing from land department it can be case by case or office to office, Nakhon pathom land department is not that big or crowed.
All new pinned Thais, buy property as much as you can, now is the time.

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.

2 hours ago, DrJoy said:

Thanks for the detailed explanation @Arkady

 

I hope this answers your concerns regarding Thai citizenship/naturalization certificate - @samran

@rsskga and @kiwiaussie    

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.

2 hours ago, onthemoon said:

Was that a mandatory interview, or were they just curious? I mean, "how long have you had Thai nationality" - what difference does it make?

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.