K2938

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.

Just by analogy have a look at these UK rules (shown here even in a simplified way) and you can see that things can get extremely complicated with remittance taxation: https://pjdtax.co.uk/updates/can-i-transfer-money-to-the-uk/ Of course, nobody knows what the eventual Thai rules will be, but you should expect a bureaucratic nightmare

Revenue = annual turnover

Initially some people got away with arguing that the ultimate parent company turnover counts. But the BOI then changed this and did not allow it any longer. So unless the BOI has changed its practices again, that would unfortunately mean a no for you.

Why only 2% if the marginal income tax rates in Thailand for many wealthy people are much higher. 2% would be a gift which will not happen

That is the whole intention of it???? Technically called contaminated/commingeled/mixed funds. And if you cannot prove what is what which you most likely will not, then all gets taxed. At least that is how it works in some other jurisdictions I am familiar with.

Thank you for this. Without wanting to be disrespectful of the article, I would suggest that this is more in the clickbait category. Moreover, the article does not claim that the prime minister said this measure would particularly target foreigners and any potential interpretation of the situation given in this article by the journalist is not what the prime minister said. So rest assured that foreigners are not the target, but the unintended collateral damage. But thank you for posting this.

I do not recall this and it would be silly since taxing the few foreigners will not lead to huge tax revenue. Can you please check the quote you refer to and post it here, if it exists? The only thing which the prime minister said I think is (quoted from Bloomberg): “Some people may not be happy that I am digging in to this area, but inequality is a big issue,” Srettha said, referring to the growing wealth gap because of tax loopholes. “The principle of tax is that you must pay tax on income your earn no matter how you earn it.” So nothing about foreigners. They are not the prime target, but the unintended collateral damage.

We just have to see how things will develop. Foreigners are clearly the unintended collateral damage in all this. Probably nobody even thought about foreigners when drafting this and if they did, then they did not really realize that the typical foreigner starts with all his or her money outside Thailand while for the typical Thai it is exactly the other way round. So these requirements are much more onerous for foreigners and moreover foreigners have it much easier to escape from all this by just leaving Thailand which is not really an option to the average Thai. So while it is entirely possible that the doomsday scenario will happen, it is also entirely possible that foreigners will be either entirely carved out from this once the authorities had a chance to think through this or there will be so wide loopholes for foreigners that it will not really be very onerous for them. We just have to wait and see how things will develop.

This email from Thai Elite posted by somebody else on the internet by the way also talks about taxation of SAVINGS, but the future will tell... P.S.: As I am just reposting this, I cannot personally confirm the accuracy of this email, but I do not really suspect that anybody would fake this

@MistyBlue, I happily admit that I cannot guarantee you the validity of my answer at this point of time where many things are still in flux. I can only say how I would interpret what the BOI has said. And this is now moreover not only my evil suspicion, but has also been confirmed by @hwas post above about his conversation with the BOI: So based on what we know today I would answer your question with a clear no. As it would appear that the authorities have not really thought through all this and as this would greatly decimate the number of wealthy foreigners living in Thailand and bringing in money which is something the authorities should be interested in (read: LTR and Elite visa holders), things might change again in the future. But right now my best guess to the answer to your question unfortunately would be a very clear no.