mfd101

Because my Australian bank - creature of the Australian Tax Office - is insisting I have a Thai TIN and has frozen one of my accounts till I do. Once I have a Thai TIN I don't have much choice - it seems to me - but to lodge a tax return each year, starting next Jan-Mar. As my only income comes from Federal Government superannuation & must therefore be taxed - I think - ONLY in Oz (s.19/2 of the DTA), I don't expect I'll end up paying anything extra here in Thailand. Fingers crossed. I'll have a better idea after next Tuesday when I plan to call on the worthies of the TRD here in Prasat Surin. It may be an interesting life experience. Or not.

And the 20 or 30 million impoverished peasants who don't have an income of more than 5000฿ a year, and can't read or write, and don't have a bank account, and wouldn't know one end of a mobile phone or desktop computer from the other ... What's The Wallet going to do for them?

Just another manifestation of the Thai obsession with status.

Thais love complexity. Most 'changes' or 'reforms' are add-ons, not replacements.

An issue for me in all of this is: Will my 'spouse' (Thai male) in a gay marriage (actually Australian Capital Territory civil partnership dating from 2013, before 'gay marriage' was available in Oz) count as a 'spouse' next year when I prepare my first-ever Thai tax return? It appears to be advantageous to do a joint return, particularly when your spouse has - as in my case - no independent income.

So more beefing than beef for a while.

And here in Surin - at the end of the world - I was blissfully unaware of all this, working away on my iMac. Couldn't understand why, when I tried to ring my bank in Oz, the Thai service person said 'That number does not exist try again' ...

Same everywhere in rural Thailand. The peasants inch forward, and occasionally the government beats them back or does a deal ...

Unpredictability has both advantages & disadvantages. Enemies & neutrals like it because they think they can live with it and manipulate it. Friends hate it because they know they can't depend on him.

Here in south Surin, my b/f has had similar symptoms (mainly a cough) for about 3 or 4 weeks, though seems to be much less now. He takes the usual Thai bags of pills to suppress symptoms ... I have no symptoms at all.

Yes, the absence of Thai TIN seems to be my issue with NAB too. Of course NAB - as, I assume, all Oz banks - are responding to ATO pressure on the matter. What in practice they expect us to do in the current in-between Thai context is unclear.

And so our modernity advances ever closer to total victory over difference, killing everything in its path. Come back in 50 years and there'll be no point in leaving home, ever.

If every politician had to resign on the basis of what he said 5 or 10 years, ago, there wouldn't be any politicians left.

What? where? There's nothing on NY Times or Washington Post or Le Monde or The Australian or The Times ...

They're doing charitable work, helping you lose weight.

Yes, exactly the same experience here in Surin in the last 2 weeks. NAB and CSC (super) threatening me with dire consequences if I didn't reply by 2 or 3 weeks before I actually received their letters. NAB had already frozen one of my accounts. In both cases I sent them a firmly-worded email that said that sending letters by snailmail to rural parts of a Third World country was not a sign of an effective and productive organisation. NAB sent me a holding reply by email saying they were overwhelmed with messages and would reply in due course ... 😀

If the photo's anything to go by, she's made of plastic. Or she's an AI construct.

So expel them and no reentry ever.

Pull the other one.

After a nice brunch with my b/f at Asoke Terminal 21 followed by a double espresso at Starbucks, then a bit of a walk - perhaps round Benjakitti Park if we haven't already done it earlier, any shopping, then back to the hotel for a swim & a snooze, then check the emails etc, then prepare for a nice dinner (Thai? Italian? Monsoon for good Western? mmm we'll do all 3 during our stay).

Precisely. Talk about mountains out of molehills! Simply carry both the old & the new p/p with you next time you have to go anywhere official - bank, Immigration, local government ... Once done you can just store the old p/p away with all the other old papers you have in or near your desk.

For your information, the Khmer peasants who have lived in the southern 1/4 of Isaan for the last several hundred years ARE Thai nationals. They are referred to as 'Khmer' (not 'Cambodian') because their first language (at least of the over 50s) is northern Khmer, and they have Khmer temples different from the Lao temples of the Lao people who occupy the northern 3/4 of Isaan. All of them - Khmer & Lao & Suai & multiple other small groups (the leftovers of history) - are Thai nationals despite different cultural traits.

The difference between the Oz past and the Thai present is in the wages paid to the factory workers. China's GDP per capita is twice Thailand's and its GDP per capita in PPP is about the same as Thailand's. Yet Thailand still can't compete ...

I wonder how the uneducated and illiterate older (& some younger) members of my Khmer peasant family will manage/access their 'digital wallet' ...