Eff1n2ret

2 hours ago, Will B Good said:

We seriously consider my wife getting citizenship......but then realized we would have to live there.....that put us right off.

When you apply there is a minimum number of days spent outside the country in the previous 3 or 5 years to qualify, and you make a declaration that it is your intention to live permanently in the UK, but they can't really enforce that.

Apply for citizenship if you have indefinite leave to remain or 'settled status': After you’ve applied - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

On that page it says that you'll usually get a decision within 6 months. When my wife applied many years ago (on the basis of long residence, it was before she married me) the application got shunted into a siding for some reason and it took several enquiries over a year and a complaint to get some movement. We never found out what the problem was. I'm sure that was an exception rather than the rule.

27 minutes ago, brianthainess said:

I'm also it seems always looking for something,

That's a common feeling in many of my dreams - I've gone somewhere, by car or on the bus, don't find what I went to see/do and then can't find the way back. A variation is desperation to check in or board a flight. I get lost in a maze of corridors, go through a door and find myself out in the street or in a field.

I guess you're aware of TeatimeTV:

TeatimeTV - UK TV for expats, worldwide

This shows a lot of the free-to air channels in the UK and allows catch-up of more than a week. However the coverage is mostly highlights such as Match of the Day on BBC, but some European and International games are shown in full, so you can go to the previous day to watch them.

I've almost given up on footy now. The Premier League is an over-hyped utter circus.

HMRC assume that you get the annual increases in the State Retirement Pension even if the DWP know that you are living in Thailand and don't pay the increases. You have to check your tax assessment carefully every year. There was a thread about this not so long ago, a few people discovered that they had been overpaying tax for years. Joined-up government it isn't. 

16 hours ago, Mike Teavee said:

Thanks, will read it in detail when I get home.

 

1st thought is that I wish I earned £50K pa as a landlord (or even my total income in the UK!), but I do use an accountant from when i did earn that kind of money so it could be they’re moving all their customers to that system. 

 
Accountant seems cool with me using my parents address, they know I’ve been Non-UK Tax resident for 15 years, so am sure it’s all good 👍🏻

 

Just curious if any other guys have been approached by HMRC with a similar request? 
 

 

15 hours ago, Mike Teavee said:

Am thinking exactly the same… 

 

I’m not a “Landlord”, I lived in a house that I worked hard to buy & the company I worked for asked me to go work overseas… 3 years it sat (Semi) empty (my Ex lived in it 2-3 days per week) until a mate in desperate needs asked to rent it & that’s when I became an “Accidental” landlord…

 

Return is <3% pa (after management fees & maintenance) would you invest in an asset like this? 
 

 

 

 

 

How do you interpret this? - "Self Assessment goes digital from April 2026. All landlords and self-employed people earning above £50,000 will need to have compatible software in place by this date."

Is it only those earning 50K+ p.a., whether landlords or self-employed, or all landlords together with only those self-employed earning over 50K? I think it could have been worded better.

Either way it won't bother me. Like you I am an "accidental landlord" having rented out the house I used to live in. Over 14 years it's worked out ok, and the accumulated income (which I've never spent) is my health insurance here. But a combination of increasingly restrictive legislation against landlords and a desire to save my beneficiaries the bother of getting rid of it when I pop off in a year or two have caused the decision to sell the place when the tenants leave next year. I have an instant access account paying 4.5% at the moment so I stand to make just as much from the proceeds as I do from rent after the agents and their rapacious maintenance contractors have taken their slice.

13 minutes ago, The Cyclist said:

Might be something to do with this

 

https://www.xero.com/uk/programme/making-tax-digital/self-assessment-changes-mtd/

Thank goodness that by this time next year I will no longer be a landlord.

11 hours ago, Maybole said:

Just confirm your PS. My wife has her Thai Passport in her Thai name, but her UK one in mine.

This is very strange. When my wife renewed her UK passport in 2017, it was most definitely a requirement that all passports held by the applicant must be submitted, and the names in the passports must be the same. At the time her UK passport showed, same as your wife's, our married name. Ignoring the instruction in the guidance notes that the foreign passport name should be changed to the UK one, we changed her UK name by deedpoll to her Thai family name to match the Thai passport, and submitted that with the application. It went through, no bother. I posted on Thaivisa about this at the time.

 However, when I accessed the online instructions for an application from Thailand to support my previous statement, neither the application form nor the guidance notes make any mention of a requirement for matching names, although both passports (or copies thereof in our case) must be submitted. See this link:-

Overseas British passport applications – Apply for a passport – GOV.UK

It looks as though  the matching names requirement has been dropped, so I withdraw my previous statement.

The OP may be reassured by the advice on that same page that renewal passports are now supplied within 4 weeks.

1 hour ago, somchai jones said:

Is it still a case of going to the Trendy Building in Bangkok, filling out the forms and dropping off your passport?

Make an appointment to go there. Download the form and complete it before you go. Copy of every page of your passport to be submitted with the form, your passport is handed back to you, return with it when notified that the replacement is available for collection.

P.S. If your wife is dual national, copies of both passports must be declared and submitted, name in passports must be the same.

36 minutes ago, connda said:

Have a checklist.  Keep multiple copies of reusable items (for example, hand-drawn map, your wife's house-book and id, your passport).  That leaves you with annual pictures.  If you want to get sneaky about it, take multiple pictures wearing different clothes. 

Copies of reusable items, good idea. For Rayong Office the multiple pictures wheeze wouldn't work, because they come round to visit. My pal does marriage extensions, and my missis is the "friendly neighbour", we go round for the visit every year. The process on the day seems very laid back and only takes a few minutes. The pile of paperwork seems a bit of a workup compared with my retirement extension, and a second trip to the office is required to pick up the passport with the new extension, but the less stringent financial requirement is certainly a factor for some.

1 hour ago, Guderian said:

Anyway, the following currently applies in Jomtien Immigration: there is no need for any embassy letter or confirmation to transfer the visa stamps from your old passport to a new one, at least not for a passport issued while you are back in the UK. A passport received by post while you are still in Thailand may be a different matter, I have no way of knowing.

When you arrived at Suvarnabhumi I assume you had to present your new passport for endorsement by an Immigration Officer there, where they have the technology to scan and verify a passport. I don't think provincial offices have the technology or the training to do this, hence the requirement for the embassy letter to assure them that the document presented wasn't bought on the Kao San Road.

16 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

What was the rationale behind that advice?

 

Good question, but I bet that, as with everything else, it depends where you are reporting. I didn't bother cancelling the "pending" report which remained unapproved on day 90 and went to the office (Rayong), got the slip for next reporting, no problem. Later the same day my phone pinged, and there was my online approval, with a different next reporting date. I used the online date next time round, no problem. Make of that what you will.

4 hours ago, billd766 said:

It did for me even when my proxy voter moved to a different town, right up to the time I reached the 15 year limit, and then it stopped.

 

Perhaps in 2024 the voting rights for overseas voters will restore that.

It should do, the legislation has already been passed, but I wonder how efficient local authorities will be in implementing it. I'm coming up to 14 years away, so am still in the system, and don't expect to have much of a problem. Perhaps you won't, as you were previously registered, but how it will work out for people who have been out for a long time remains to be seen. I haven't read the legislation, but I remember seeing something about them wanting to take tougher measures against voting fraud, so I don't know if that will make it harder to get registered, or for postal voting. My son does my vote by post.

Most commentators are still talking about an election next autumn. If anyone wants to be registered I would advise finding out about it and applying before the summer.

On 10/13/2023 at 7:19 AM, doctormann said:

I'm not sure that removal of the 15-year limit will actually help when it comes to voting from overseas.

I can only state what happened when I tried to vote in the BREXIT referendum so YMMV, as they say.

The postal voting papers were sent out by snail mail and arrived in my mail box exactly one day before the voting deadline.  Not even enough time to return by EMS - absolutely useless!

The only practical way to vote from here (and I suspect almost anywhere else from overseas) is to appoint a proxy. If you have a family member or a friend whom you trust to vote as you wish that works ok. My son does it for me. Once set up, renewal is a simple exchange of emails every year, at least that's the way it works with my local authority.

For anyone who wants to try and get their head round it, here it is:-

CARSON AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM (coe.int)

1 hour ago, pelagicpete said:

I would like a rational explanation of what they think they are up to and hope to achieve.

It's difficult to provide any rational explanation as they don't seem able to themselves. Whenever they are challenged in an interview they just start raving about "the climate crisis".

In 2011 I had a work permit for a year. Thank goodness I kept a copy. It doesn't show an expiry date. It's good to know that a K-Bank transfer is an easy process if I need it.

12 hours ago, OJAS said:

Looks like the water supply to the tea urns in HMPO's Liverpool office has been turbo-charged!????

Or some of them got so bored with pretending to "work from home" that they decided to actually turn up to the office.

57 minutes ago, JayClay said:

Sorry. I understand that you only quoted the first line of my post when you originally replied to me, but I was working under the clearly -erroneous assumption that you had actually read the entirety of the post. My bad.

I inferred from your subsequent post that Labour in power might be more sympathetic to our cause. It was the Blair government that fought for the status quo tooth and nail all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, so I don't expect Starmer to view us as a priority. Perhaps we agree that at any time, these petitions are worse than useless.

4 minutes ago, JayClay said:

Right. So Tories 0 and Labour 1.

 

Pretty much backs up exactly what I was saying...

If you imagine a Labour Government will do anything about this, dream on.