Mike Teavee

Have you been outside of Thailand since you got that TM30 only some offices (E.g. Jomtien) seem to want a new TM30 if your last one was prior to your most recent entry into Thailand. It used to be that if you were returning to your previous address you did not need to get a new TM30 but has apparently changed this year & they now want the TM30 to be dated after your most recent entry into Thailand when doing your extension. If you've not been outside of Thailand since you got the TM30 then your old one should be fine.

It’s 100B for an agent to do a 90 day report which is cheaper than a Bolt taxi to/from Immigration (please don’t suggest I take 2 Baht buses to get there). I normally do mine online but there have been periods where it wasn’t working so it’s good to have a backup.

I pay an agent 8,000B (includes the 1,900B immigration fee so 6,100B really) to do my extension purely for the convenience of not having to do it myself (though I do turn up on the day for a quick photo). Some might say I’m wasting money to which I’d reply, show me your spending & I’ll point out where (in my eyes) you’re wasting money, classic example being my 2 mates giving me a lecture about exactly this whilst puffing away on their 150B per day habit (6,100B pa wouldn’t even cover a pack a week). End of the day it’s “To each his own”.

I recommend Bell Bus, great service & IIRC only 190B. But the bus between where you want to go & the Bus station is an extra 110B, worth it IMHO as it turns it into a door-2-door service.

What about Princess Anne? Does she not get a look-in?

Thai Time 😂

Everybody gets a 60K personal allowance & the 1st 150K is taxed at 0% so the bare minimum would be 210K Then add on additional allowances for things like > 65 (190K), buy health insurance (25K), Life assurance (100K), have kids (30K each) etc…

I agree (& have done) but that’s not for somebody who just wants something to work out of the box 😊

I bought a Mecool 2 Plus from Lazada for 2,180B I added WizzTV (approx 3,600B for 1 year for the Plus version with built in VPN) & now have more movies/TV Shows/Live events than I can shake a stick at, worth every satang 👍🏻 I do keep a Netflix subscription (though downgraded from 419 Premium to 169B… The 250B per month saving goes a long way to paying for WizzTV) so the GF still has subtitles when we’re watching movies. The only downside of the box I can see for you is the Browser is a bit limited & as it’s Android TV you can’t just install Chrome on it but the inbuilt web browser has been fine for the couple of times I’ve wanted to use it. Edit: WizzTV does come with approx 600 Netflix movies/shows with more being added all the time, but GF was well into a couple of Thai Soap dramas at the time I bought the box so switching that off was more than my life’s worth…

I understand the 190K (> 65), 60K(personal allowance for everybody) & 150k (taxed at 0%) but can I ask what the 100K allowance is for? I get 60K +25K (Health Insurance) +150K = 235K

Hardly surprising given your thread on wanting to find a “Gringo Ghetto” where you can live without having to interact with Thais… Cleary your idea of what makes a place good to live in wouldn’t be shared by the vast majority of people.

That's the easy part... As the bus pulls into Pattaya Nua Bus Station book a Bolt it will be there in 2-3 mins. Approx. 70-80B (for a Car) to Wongamat Beach so I would imagine similar into Central Pattaya, cheaper if you're ok with taking a motorbike. Failing that there's a group of Baht Bus drivers there that will drop you off at your hotel for 50B (100B if you're going to Jomtien), but you sometimes have to wait for these to fill up (usually not a problem when the Bangkok Buses come in).

Me & all of my mates found our way to Pattaya after living in Bangkok for a few years (I came down here 1st as my Partner had close family living in Rayong & we wanted to get out of the city & live by the sea), none of us moved here for the Mongering. It's like judging Bangkok by Soi Nana / Cowboy etc..., or Singapore by Geylang / Orchard Towers (Now gone) etc... Yes it's there if that's what you're looking for but it's not hard to avoid if you're not looking for it. Again, you're talking about one small part of Pattaya City, out by the lakes there are some really nice houses, I live in a really nice beach front condo, there's something for everybody here.

A couple of mates have houses near Lake Mabprachan & it's really nice around there but I prefer to live near the beach so live in Wongamat & it's perfect (for me). There are no bars here where "All Expats" spend their days drinking (& no "Girlie" bars), people just live a normal Expat retired life (whatever that is) with maybe the odd trip into town, for me that means 1-2 times per month to catch up with friends over a few "Mad Beers" but most of the time we're out in couples having something to eat or will have a guys night out playing pool at a bar around the Lake, there's a fair few decent places to choose from. Oh & as most of us live here with our long term partners, we don't "Indulge" in the other thing that people who don't know Pattaya think every guy in Pattaya is doing everyday... Pattaya a great city to live in if you actually live here & are not just here on a monger holiday.

As others have said, 1,700b is reasonable for a door-2-door service booked by a hotel but if you want to do it cheaper you could book it yourself with Cherry Taxi Services, prices start at 1,400b from DMK... [The hotel will be using somebody like this & pocketing the 300b]. https://cherrytaxiservice.com/services-rates/

Watching today's Fabulous 103FM News report & there's a story in there that people have been reporting Immigration (am guessing Chonburi/Jomtien) asking for proof that Income has been taxed at source when doing retirement extensions (presumably using the 65K Income Method)... 2 minutes in... It does go on to say that it's unlikely any income taxed at source will be taxed again BUT makes no mention of what happens if the income hasn't been taxed (Obviously if it is Income & hasn't been taxed then the person remitting the money should have filed a Tax Return & paid tax on it in Thailand).

That doesn't say that everybody will have to file a Tax Return, it just highlights what I said about income earned from 1/1/24 being Tax Assessable if remitted in later years.

Do you have a link to where that was said? Fact is the only thing that has changed is that income earned from 1/1/24 will now be tax assessable any time in the future (assuming you're Tax Resident) instead of the current "Rules" which says it would only be tax assessable if remitted in 2024. If you do not remit anything that would be Tax assessable this year then there is no need to file a Tax Return in 2024 & if you do not remit anything that is Tax assessable income in 2024, there will be no need to file a tax return in 2025... and so on... Am sure you could file a Nil Return if you wanted to but there is absolutely no need to unless your investigated by the Revenue & if you've not remitted anything that is Tax assessable then you've nothing to worry about.

I suspect the answer is somewhere in the middle ground, the Schema can be found here https://www.oecd.org/tax/exchange-of-tax-information/common-reporting-standard-xml-schema-user-guide-for-tax-administrations-june-2019.pdf so will see what it says :) Edit: I've looked at the Schema and as far as I can tell it's all about reporting the "Closing" Account Balances (not transactions) & given that the mandatory CRS reporting requirement is annually it's likely that once per year all finance organizations will report the closing balance for all accounts that they hold.... Even if it was reporting daily it would be considered "Amalgamated" (Not transactional) data. Whilst on the OECD site I also noticed this... In light of the rapid development and growth of the Crypto-Asset market and to ensure that recent gains in global tax transparency will not be gradually eroded, in April 2021 the G20 mandated the OECD to develop a framework providing for the automatic exchange of tax-relevant information on Crypto-Assets. In August 2022, the OECD approved the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) which provides for the reporting of tax information on transactions in Crypto-Assets in a standardised manner, with a view to automatically exchanging such information. https://www.oecd.org/tax/automatic-exchange/common-reporting-standard/ Which I guess would rule out any plans to use Crypto to somehow get around being seen to remit money into Thailand.

Probably recommended when it came out 3.5 years ago but I must have missed Series 2 dropping so have been back to watch series 1 & am really enjoying it. We Hunt Together https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10661302/ A gripping twist on a classic cat-and-mouse story, this British drama series explores the intoxication of sexual attraction and the dangerous power of emotional manipulation as two conflicted detectives track down a pair of deadly killers.

Can you imagine the amount of data that would need to be exchanged if every country signed up to CRS shared detailed information about every transaction made! Added to that, how are you going to Identify Individuals? - Can't be on Passport number as my UK bank doesn't have my passport details (I don't even think I had a passport when I opened the account & if I did, I've had at least 5-6 new ones since & there's no onus on me to tell them), can't be on a Tax Identification Number as my UK Bank doesn't know my UK or Thailand TIN, so you get into the realms of trying to match by names (I sometimes do/don't use my middle name), dates of birth, addresses etc... Which again, is not practical given the amount of data involved. It must be consolidated data exchanged with maybe a mechanism to request the underlying transactions but you still have the problem of being able to accurately identify all transaction for a single individual.

Hi Paddy, As this thread is about Tax & is not in the Extension Forum (https://aseannow.com/forum/1-thai-visas-residency-and-work-permits/) it could be a lot of the guys who are using the 65K Income method might not be reading it. I'm sure if you started a topic in that forum (Or maybe a Mod could use your above post to start a topic on your behalf) you'd get a much better response to your questions. FWIW everybody I know that's on a Retirement Extension either uses the 800K in the Bank or uses an agent to "Assist With The Finances" but I did look into switching to the 65K pm Income method when it was first announced & decided it wasn't for me as I don't have a regular/monthly income so I would need to amortize it from other Income. At that time I don't recall Jomtien IO wanting to see anything more than the monthly Xfers but I could be wrong and/or it could have changed since then. HTH MTV

Do you have a link to the IO Website you quoted? I thought for the income method you had to prove you were remitting at least 65K every month from overseas (Income earned in Thailand doesn't count). Different IO offices may have different policies about whether they ask you to support this with proof of overseas income but some are only interested in the 65K being remitted (i.e. You could be sending it from savings).