K2938

I agree with this. But most LTR visa holders are pensioners who have already lived here on other visas for ages and just switched, so their situation is frequently probably rather different. And then you still have the currently not yet clear issue of how mixed funds are treated.

Could work or not depending on how far back they look and how mixed funds are treated. So while holding a LTR visa if offshore you put 98 in a short-term bond fund which you then sell at 100 and then remit this to Thailand, then the 2 (100-98) is certainly tax free because it is foreign income while holding a LTR visa. But what about the 98 which is income from prior years where you did not hold an LTR visa? Is this now also "cleaned" or not. That is currently not clear at all.

Feel free to read what is written here and in the general foreign remittance tax thread and you will get a better understanding.

There is indeed a remittance tax benefit of the LTR visa, but since it appears to only apply to earnings which have arisen while holding the LTR visa, the benefit is probably not so great. Moreover, it is still entirely unclear how mixed funds will be treated and mixed funds will be the category in which most prior earnings/savings probably will be for most people which could make bringing any prior money into Thailand a nightmare. Probably things are taxable unless you can prove otherwise and the proving otherwise could be extremely difficult/impossible in many or even most instances. If it is concerning current salary, then the benefit is clearly there, but most LTR visa holders do not work.

Thailand planning to monitor foreign credit card transactions for circumvention of foreign remittance tax according to AmCham presentation

This wonderful new remittance tax rule will also have a very negative effect on the private hospital sector in Thailand. Because for anything where there is no top urgency for Thai tax residents hit with remittance tax like major planned surgery it now makes a lot more sense to get this done in Malaysia or Singapore with direct payment from offshore funds instead of going to a Thai hospital where there would be an additional 35% remittance tax on top of the amount invoiced.

@Lorry Thank you so much for your tremendously useful translation of the Q&A on the proposed remittance tax changes from the Thai Revenue Department. Highly appreciated!

Thank you for posting this. This appears to be potentially very useful. Thank you for drawing everybody's attention to this. Unfortunately, Google Translate seems to have a big problem in translating many parts of this document intelligibly, but hopefully somebody who speaks Thai well on this forum can look at the document and translate.

If you are interested in this issue, then feel free to read what I was referring to (which was also published by the BOI only a few days ago) and you will see the subtle, but tax wise very important distinctions. Would be inefficient to discuss this all over again if it is already all in these threads

Not true according to the extremely narrow interpretation of the law put forward by the BOI themselves which you can read about higher up either in this thread or the LTR thread

Only if (1) either you are not a Thai tax resident or (2) if the remittance does not contain any income from the current year. Otherwise you will also have to pay taxes on remittances in 2023

Yes, nothing you can really do at the moment, though if you want to avoid tax you really need to make preparations to leave by June 2024. The worrying thing concerning foreigners however is that they do not really have a lobbying organisation making their voices heard and I doubt that the Thai government reads aseannow.com to find out what they think. So while foreigners are the unintended collateral damage in all this, they might well stay there for lack of voice.

No, Thailand would be much worse. Truly rich people primarily live on income from investments with capital gains being the key driver of their wealth. Capital gains according to most double taxation agreements are taxed in the country of residence, so no double taxation agreements will help to avoid Thai taxes. And the Thai tax rate of 35% will be much higher than capital gains are taxed in many other countries where there are preferential rates for capital gains or, in some countries, capital gains are even tax free. So unless one has a very strong family reason to be in Thailand, no truly rich foreigner would in the future choose to move to Thailand.

So the smart thing would be to exempt foreigners from the taxation of foreign earnings just as the Philippines does ("Resident citizens are taxed on their income from all sources. A person who is not a citizen of the Philippines (that is, someone who is defined as an alien), regardless of whether the person is a resident or a non-resident, is taxed only on the individual's income from Philippines sources."). But who knows what will happen.

You are misled by an agent website. As you might know agents make a lot of money in commissions from selling Thai Elite visas and therefore have a great incentive to tell you anything to close a deal. You will NOT find these statements on the OFFICIAL website of Thai Elite. They are WRONG.

Why is Indonesia attractive from a tax point of view, please?

Well, they need the money to fund their electoral gifts and would not have the parliamentary majority to do things properly as was pointed out in various commentaries

Thank you for sharing the excellent advice you got from your tax advisors. Now separately from this, just in case the current system remains, why for your remittances do you take the intermediate step via the "offshore holding account" and not just transfer directly whatever you want to transfer from abroad on Dec 31, meaning that the money will arrive in the following year then anyway without the "offshore holding account"?

But NOT if they only tax REMITTED foreign income as is the case in Thailand

Do not do anything like this before there is full clarity on what is going to happen and what the detailed implementation rules will be. Otherwise you might seriously hurt yourself. Also doubt that this information will be available before the new year.

Very strange about declaring ALL income if it is not remitted and not sure what the purpose of that should be. If you do not mind the question, may I ask if this was from a highly reputable tax firm, like one of the Big 4?

True, but I interpreted your question such that you wanted to ask if by not having a TIN you could avoid violating the new tax rules. And that would not be the case.

It does not really matter since not having a TIN does not spare you from taxation. Some people have mentioned this, but this is just an illusion. If you entered Thailand legally which I assume, the Thai authorities know about you and can find you. Having a TIN facilitates things for the Thai authorities, but not having one does not really save you.

1) There is an email from Thai Elite posted about this a little higher up in this thread which you might want to check. 2) Some Thai Elite agents historically claimed that - allegedly - there would not be any tax whatsoever for Thai Elite visa holders, but this was never correct. Thai Elite visa holders only had the exemption for foreign earnings not remitted in the same year of earning like everybody else. 3) With the proposed tax changes this would be over for Thai Elite visa holders just like for everybody else (with a potential minor exception for LTR visa holders of certain foreign income). 4) So if this change is actually implemented, this will have a devastating effect on Thai Elite visa sales since many justified the huge fees by the tax advantages. 5) Since the Thai government makes a lot of money from the sale of Thai Elite visas it is possible that they will exempt Thai Elite visa holders to avoid this money stream stopping. One would imagine that Thai Elite is aggressively lobbying for this behind the scenes, but what the outcome will be nobody knows. 6) You might want to ask for a deferment of your membership until there is clarity about the new rules. And if you are not granted this deferment and tax is important to you, then you might want to pass on the visa. 7) Using foreign credit cards would most probably be tax evasion. With enough effort from the Thai authorities, it would also be possible to trace this. If they will do this or not, again nobody knows yet.