K2938

1 hour ago, Dogmatix said:

Anyway the point is that RD most likely feels under no obligation to provide any guidance on foreign tax credits for individuals or amend tax return forms to accommodate them, even though their capricious and unlawful reinterpretation is going to mean that tens of thousands of foreign tax residents, most of whom are illiterate in Thai and have never had to file a Thai tax return before, are now going to have claim foreign tax credits vs probably 5 or 10 a year who had their company accountants do it for them.

While the lack of details on the precise working of the remittance tax is deplorable, I do not think we can also blame the Thai Revenue Department for not accepting or providing tax returns in English.  I do not think there is any Western non-English speaking country either which would allow tax returns in any language apart from its official one.

1 hour ago, retiree said:

It can only be taxable to you if you:

 -- are a Thai tax resident when you earn it,

 -- are a Thai tax resident when you remit it.

If the answer to either is no, it can be a non-taxable gift to her.

I do not think that based on the current state of knowledge this is necessarily true.  That you have to be a Thai tax resident when you earn it, is clear.  That you also have to be a Thai tax resident when you remit it to Thailand, is not clear at all (which by the way was also discussed in this thread further up).

4 hours ago, Ben Zioner said:

Agree that we can only hope. Royal Decree 743 is the only document that may shelter us from taxation, while the RD admin circular instructs that any previous document contrary to the change of rule shall be ignored, so ?...

 

Wonder if BOI isn't accomplice in setting up a smokescreen, to prevent an exodus or movement of funds that could hamper the efforts of this greedy incompetent government. Before raising taxes they should eliminate the corruption that will inevitably evaporate any financial sacrifice we would have to make to sad country.

If you scroll up in this thread or the main tax thread you will already see that the BOI interpretation of the Royal Decree is in the most minimalist way possible

30 minutes ago, Alldar said:

It seems the approval might be taking long time, I am waiting so far 1.5 months for mine and I am not sure how much longer it will take. I was planning to travel to Thailand next month, but I am not sure if I can travel with tourist visa or visa exempt now when I am waiting for the Elite visa. In the Elite visa application I specified that I am outside Thailand and I am not in possession of any visa. Does anyone know if it is OK to travel to Thailand now or do I need to wait for the Elite visa?

No problem, as long as you legally enter Thailand.  But only members holding a Tourist Visa, Visa on Arrival, or a 30-Day Exempted Tourist Visa are eligible to validate their Elite Visa within Thailand.  So depending on how you enter, you might have to exit again before actually getting the Elite Visa into your passport.

16 minutes ago, Klonko said:

C (paying 5% tax)

What is your plan C with 5% tax or is this just what it comes out for you if you were taxed?

1 hour ago, SHA 2 BKK said:

Apparently one of the new Deputy PM’s is the BOI line Minister.  

What is meant with "line Minister", please?

1 hour ago, Negita43 said:

Just a question:

Surely whatever means they use for "collecting" what they see as their rightful dues ???? cannot start until 180 days into 2024  as only then can they ascertain the length of a persons stay and hence if they are a tax resident and even then people may take trips out of the country during the course of the year.

So I don't see how they are going to collect the tax until at least 2025

Of course they could collect via banks receiving money and them tell you to request a repayment depending on your tax statusat the end of the year - ho ho

Not necessarily true.  If you are remitting something which could be construed as being income or being partially contaminated with income from a prior year in which you were a tax resident in Thailand, then there are indications that you might be taxable when submitting these funds to Thailand even if at the time of remittance you are not or not yet a tax resident of Thailand.

5 hours ago, El Matador said:

50k baths to get a no is a fantastic rip off. And if you get a yes you may have to pay taxes on top of the fee. They win in every case.

Maybe they don't want to have any application which doesn't get paid at the end of the process. I suspect many applications were confirmed just in time for the deadline but will never get paid (because people are undecided due to the deadline and the new tax system has changed many things for some people). 50k is still a ridiculous fee.

 

I don't see anyone sane buying that new Thai Elite visa before at least next year as those tax problems haven't been explained in detail. 

They are really doing their best to make the product as unattractive as possible.

Indeed.  They are deluded about the future demand for their visa and act with more and more arrogance and disregard to their customers.  This never ends well.

6 hours ago, TravelerEastWest said:

Another thought my main Thai expense is international school for two kids. I live on a simple farm and have an old car and rarely go out...

 

What if I send money for school directly from America to the school? Just a thought...

While making detection a little more difficult, this is highly unlikely to be a legal way around the remittance taxation.  However, as there currently is no detailed guidance from the Thai Revenue Department nobody really knows

15 minutes ago, Pib said:

Did the FB poster provide a reference as I wonder if the poster might just be talking a  B50K visa agent fee if he's not applying directly with govt Thai Elite company. Thai Elite pays a 10 to 15% commission to its approved GSSA agents for each approved Elite visa, but that don't prevent any agent from also charging a fee to handwalk the applicant thru the application process.   

 

Maybe some agents don't want to take the chance now of hand walking the applicant only to end up with no money made if the applicant is not approved/doesn't follow thru in paying the govt the when approved which prevents the agent from recieving the 10 to 15% commission.

 

Or maybe the "govt" has indeed decided to now charge a refundable-if-approved application fee....kinda like a deposit that is only credited back to the applicant/towards the main Elite visa if approved "and" when the applicant follows thru in payment for actual issue of the visa

It is actually in the text of the new Thai Elite application agreement which was posted there as well as follows:

According to a fb post, the Thai Elite visas now also have an application fee of 50 000 THB.  If your application is not approved, you will lose this money.  Only in case of approval will it be credited towards the total visa fee.

8 hours ago, atpeace said:

Thanks and I was wondering about this and enjoyed your easy to understand explanation.  In either case it wouldn't be assessable unless you kept all your receipts and volunteered the information.  As far as I know, there is no means for the Thailand to track the transaction.  Merchants get a name, last 4 digits on card and really nothing they can do with that information.  Am I wrong?

There was a recent seminar at AMCHAM in Bangkok where it was stated that Thailand does plan to track credit/debit card use.  Posted somewhere higher up in the maybe ten last pages of this thread

6 hours ago, Guavaman said:

Think about this: When you purchase with a debit card, you are authorizing instant payment to a vendor in Thailand with funds REMITTED to the vendor in Thailand.

 

On the other hand: When you purchase with a CREDIT card or withdraw a cash advance from a bank or ATM, you are authorizing a LOAN = debt with the bank issuing the CREDIT card, subject to payment of interest.  

 

The Baht that you are spending is a LOAN from a bank offshore, where you must repay the loan subject to interest. You have not remitted income into Thailand; rather, you have incurred a debt by the transaction in Thailand. Thus, not assessable nor taxable income. 

While this is a very creative argument, I can virtually guarantee you that the Thai Revenue Department will NOT agree with this.

10 minutes ago, Dogmatix said:

A Swiss banker told me that since Thailand only signed up for CRS this year, the first information that will go to the Thai government will for calendar year 2024.  They have to provide Balance as of 31 Dec 2023 and 31 Dec 2024 and income during the year, which I believe includes interest, dividends and external inflows.  That means the RD won't have any information from overseas financial institution on income and inflows during 2023 to help it investigate remittances in 2023 to determine whether they were income earned in 2023 or earlier.  That won't stop them demanding supporting documents of course.  However, I think there is an argument in favour of only starting to get tough in respect of 2024 when the prior year loophole is gone.  No guarantees but I would guess they will not trouble too much to investigate large remittances between now and the year end which don't need to be entered on tax returns unless the income was earned this year. 

While the Thai tax authorities will not get the older data automatically, they can ask for it from most tax jurisdictions in case of need based on various mutual assistance agreements.  So if they find something which makes them want to investigate, they will in most cases be able to do so.  The data will just not be received automatically.

1 hour ago, TroubleandGrumpy said:

If you are right then it means they we will all have to lodge a tax return and claim that under the DTA our pensions are not taxable in Thailand.

And what do you recommend we do if the Thai RD decides that I/we are wrong, and/or that the 'evidence' we provided is insufficient, and they decide that I/we must pay income tax?

Have you examined the appeals process against a Thai RD decision? I have (planning for worst case) - and it is horrendously difficult - besides being only acceptable in Thai (with multiple and certified translations), it would cost a lot of money hiring an accepotable Thai lawtyer/.accountant to compile and lodge that appeal, and from what I could find, they are extremely reluctant to agree that they were wrong. 

It gets even worse than this.  While the Thai tax authorities have not really much focused on remittances from foreigners in the past, they of course will do now.  And in the course of complaining about your transfers in 2024, they will then probably also ask you a lot of questions about transfers you made in the past and also start complaining about those because maybe they were not really tax-free according to their logic even under the old tax regime.  And they can demand back taxes from you for up to 10 years.  So this will be real fun.

1 hour ago, beammeup said:

So capital transfers for cars, condo's etc will not likely be taxed as income?

Why would that be?  As of now based on all what has been announced there would be absolutely no exemption for this.  So if it is a taxable remittance, than it is taxed regardless of what you do with the money.  And if not, then not.  But just buying a car or condo does not change this.

14 hours ago, aublumberg said:

What makes you think it would be retroactive? Any indication in any announcement or regulatory changes? Their announcement says effective 01 Jan 2024.

There appear to be two things to differentiate:

(1) The time at which the money is remitted to Thailand:  The new tax law interpretation indeed only covers remittances made on or after Jan 1, 2024.

(2) The other thing however is the time the foreign income arose, i.e. not when it was remitted, but when it arose.  According to the Thai language Q&A from the Thai Revenue Department on the new tax law interpretation from a few days ago the link to which is posted higher up in this or the general tax thread it would appear that this is NOT limited to income which only arose on or after Jan 1, 2024. 

3 hours ago, JimGant said:

What countries might those be? Remittance taxation vs income taxation seems so weird. Are these OECD countries? Thanx.

The UK and various former colonies of the UK or countries with a legal system in the UK tradition for example have remittance taxation for certain non-domiciled, but tax resident individuals.  You can google on the internet.  Somewhere higher up in this or the LTR thread I also as an example posted a link to some of the rules from the UK which can give you an indication of how complex things might become.

28 minutes ago, Yumthai said:

TRD will never ask you the full history of when/how did you buy the asset in the first place because it's a never-ending story. You could have made multiple trades of multiple assets with multiple accounts within the same calendar year.

Well, some other countries having remittance taxation do.  So I am not saying that it necessarily will be like this, but this is a real possibility.  We will see.

23 minutes ago, Alldar said:

I have checked and the maximum daily limit for Wise card is 10,000GBP which is not enough for the Elite visa payment.

 

But if it is possible to split the payment into multiple bank transfers, then I just might transfer the amount to my Bangkok bank account first and then do multiple transfers from there which are under 50k and which shouldn't require facial recognition. Sounds like an option but I will have to check this with the elite team.

If you are a UK resident, I think the limit is 30k GBP (https://wise.com/help/articles/2899986/what-are-my-spending-limits), but I might be wrong.  And regarding the Wise transfers broken down into less than 50k THB, I would directly transfer this to Thai Elite, omitting the step via your Thai bank account, but maybe you have other reasons for this.  Good luck!

10 hours ago, jerrymahoney said:

This is currently on the AMCHAM website:

Thank you.  Does anybody actually have the entire presentation of the AMCHAM event on this which could be most useful?

AMCHAM Tax Committee: Thai Tax on Foreign-Sourced Income - Oct 4; https://www.amchamthailand.com/2023/10/05/tax-committee-thai-tax-on-foreign-sourced-income/ )

The screenshot on their website is only of one slide. 

Thank you.

6 hours ago, Alldar said:

I have a question about payment for the Elite visa. How did you pay for the visa? I have both Wise account and Bangkok bank account but I am currently outside Thailand.

 

Option 1

Paying with Wise - how? I was checking that it is not possible to pay by debit card, because the maximum payment limit is not high enough. If I would transfer from Wise directly to their Thai bank account, there is no option to add any payment identifier (the reference is only visible in an e-mail, it is not visible in their bank).

Regarding Wise:  The maximum card payment limit depends on your country of residence.  So while many people have reported paying by the Wise card without any problem, this might well not apply to you. 

However, you can always pay by Wise directly, i.e. without using the Wise card.  To apparently make life as difficult as possible for most applicants, the bank chosen by Thai Elite does only allow a maximum transfer of 49999 THB per transaction.  What many people have therefore reported successfully doing is splitting up the total payment into the necessary amount of smaller payments below 50k and then sending a pdf of all the payment receipts to Thai Elite. 

They all say that Wise is cheaper than SWIFT, but it really depends on the conditions of your commercial bank.

The cheapest way - even cheaper than Wise - is probably paying via a Visa or Mastercard from a commercial bank which does not add any foreign exchange fees on top of the Visa/Mastercard rates and where you have a sufficient credit limit to make this transaction.  Not many people however have this and if this is really cheaper than Wise will also depend on your home country currency.