Hokeus

I don't know if I should post direct links to articles, but the thaiger had an article last year listing what they claim are some of the best ones available in Thailand. The article was titled "CBD oil review: best cannabis oils to buy in Thailand in 2022". A Google search should get you to it. Perhaps you can find some of the ones they mention in the article on Shopee if you're interested. I noticed Lazada prohibits keyword searches for the word cannabis, so presumably the selection of CBD oils on Lazada will be more limited.

They do let you hold balances in Thai Baht however you are not able to remit Thai Baht into a Wise account. They only allow a select number of currencies to be remitted into a Wise account. Once the money is in there in one of the currencies they accept then you can convert it to Thai Baht and hold Thai Baht in the Wise account.

Correct, they don’t issue debit cards to accounts having a Thailand address on them. Technically you can live in Thailand and get a Wise debit card as long as the address associated with your Wise account falls within a country where they can issue debit cards. This applies to all EU countries, the UK, AU, NZ, USA, and others. If you have a friend or family member residing in the country where your passport is issued from, and assuming it is a country where Wise can issue debit cards, then you could use that foreign address for your Wise account if you like. Also note that Wise will ship a physical debit card to Thailand as well.

That’s good to know, but what I read is that to get an HSBC global debit card it requires you to first have an HSBC expat bank account with a balance of at least £50,000 or a have an annual salary of at least £100,000. So the debit card is mainly geared towards HSBC Premiere customers. The good thing about Wise though is that they don’t require a minimum account balance to be maintained to get a Wise debit card, the account can be opened online from anywhere in the world, and they pay monthly interest on all account balances that are based in USD, GBP, and EUR.

Good point. If they wanted to start taxing that money though then they would probably start having Wise deduct it and withhold it directly from each transfer. And if they would impose it on Wise transfers then they would need to impose it on every incoming foreign bank transfer to a Thai bank too. But I don’t think it would ever come to taxing incoming transfers from foreigners. The money would simply stop coming in completely if they did that and it would be really devastating for the economy. Business would grind to a halt. In fact, I am not aware of any country that imposes a tax withholding like that. Also, any payment that can be made in Thailand using a debit or credit card can simply be made using a Wise debit card. Then the money never has to even be physically transferred in.

But that seemingly is the intent of the law. If you work in Thailand, and are paid your salary offshore for the work you are doing in Thailand, then you should still pay income tax in Thailand on that money. If however you are already paying tax in the domicile where the money is being earned then you wouldn’t be required to pay the tax in Thailand because that would result in double taxation, which I don’t think would be the intent.

Checkout Wise. No overseas transaction fees. FX rates are also based on the interbank rate, minus a small fee.

If they do redefine the classification on “tax residents” to include foreign retirees residing in Thailand for more than 183 calendar days per year then the tax due on 800K of retirement income would still be fairly minimal. The tax code provides for the first 150K of income to be tax exempt and the rest would be taxable on a sliding scale starting at 5%, then 10%, then 15%, then 20%. And the 20% rate only applies to income above 750K. In addition, these new guidelines appear to mainly be targeted at residents and non-residents on their assessable income derived from employment or business carried on in Thailand, regardless of whether paid in or outside Thailand. With this new legislation they are seemingly mainly wanting to tax Thai citizens who are conducting some form of e-commerce business from within Thailand, but where the revenue and income they are receiving from the business is paid into an account outside of Thailand.

Or live mainly from an overseas debit card and never physically bring much money in.

If the subject of the OP is a correct interpretation of the new guideline, which includes the words “tax residents”, then it only applies to residents in Thailand who regularly pay tax on their income in Thailand. Thus, mainly it would apply to Thai citizens and foreigners working in Thailand who do pay tax on income and are defined as “tax residents”. Therefore, that would not apply to foreign retirees who are not tax residents and who are not earning an income in Thailand. It could eventually apply to retired foreigners who show a pension income to satisfy the financial requirements for retirement visas, but that remains to be seen. If they change the classification of “tax residents” to include retirees who reside in Thailand for over 183 days per year then that could change things a bit more, but seemingly unlikely. Also, unlikely any new legislation would ever apply to money transferred into Thai bank accounts by foreigners from a source abroad or the money would simply stop coming in.

So what if they open all these extra clinics then all the added LGBTQ come but they don’t bring their STD and HIV and only bring their AC/DC?

Next announcement will be about increased health insurance requirements for LGBTQ retirees because of added STD risks. Followed by a general increase in the financial requirements for retirees to 1.2 million Baht as a performance bond frozen in a Thai bank account (earning only 1.5% interest and subject to a 15% withholding tax).

Sek Show? Bping Bpong Show? Wear U Go? U Berry Hen-Summ!

A couple of reasons for their seemingly unpredictable behavior could also be that you might have (unintentionally) done something to make them feel uncomfortable, lose face, or embarrassed. In those instances they normally won’t say anything and just start distancing themselves. They may also start to think to themselves that you are a foreigner, so you are incapable of understanding Thai culture, and that there isn’t any point putting in much more effort into the relationship. And then they also start pulling back and slowly flaking out of the relationship over time (which is less confrontational) rather than just breaking it off straight away.

Without meaning to sound cynical, many Thai girls come with a set of obstacles. Following are a dozen of the common ones. Most of them have some and hard to find one without any of them. It’s a matter of figuring out which ones they have (hopefully they don’t have too many) and then deciding if you can live with the issues they have or not. Nobody is perfect or expected to be, and we certainly aren’t either, but some come with too many issues for things to work out well. 1 - Financial problems 2 - Emotional immaturity 3 - Inability to be honest 4 - Family pressures 5 - Don’t like western food/culture 6 - Unintellectual 7 - Superficial 8 - Act on superstitions 9 - Lazy 10 - Unfaithful/Unreliable 11 - Don’t like to communicate openly 12 - Drug/Alcohol problems

The freezer M.O. is becoming a repeating theme. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/24/man-with-uk-passport-charged-in-thailand-after-body-found-in-freezer https://news.sky.com/story/dismembered-body-hidden-in-bangkok-freezer-for-three-years-10595100

“After questioning people living in the area, officers discovered that three people were living on the premises including the dead German” A murdered dead body hidden in a freezer at a crime scene is counted as a resident and considered to be living on the premises? ????????????‍????

Presumably as a means of storage until investigations and searches have subsided and then to quietly dispose of it later. Seems like the only logical reason, but I could be wrong.

So to summarize, your suggesting not to have contact (more or less) with anyone other than maybe some necessary food vendors, otherwise just keep yourself to yourself for general safety reasons, and then you should be happy, thus leading to lots of enjoyment in LOS?

Chances are the drugs they are offering are fake and just another West African scam. Another reason it makes it harder for law enforcement to catch them breaking the law.

When a bank starts pulling out ATMs in high traffic areas it’s definitely an inconvenience. Yes, so many transactions are now done via digital payment platforms and via online banking apps, but there are times we still need some cash and SCB has definitely made it more difficult if you bank with them. Luckily you can still use other bank ATMs so that fills in the gaps. I’ve noticed in one major area though that SCB used to have an ATM at the 7-11 next to the BTS station, then another one up on the BTS platform itself, a third one on the other side of the road in the shopping center next to the BTS station, and a fourth one inside the super market within the shopping center. Now 3 out of the 4 SCB ATMs are gone in this location and only the one at the 7-11 remains. Perhaps that one will eventually go too. And this is a highly foot trafficked area. I guess the real message is that many people don’t really need access to physical cash anymore. I don’t use much cash anyway, I’m practically all digital since 2020, so not really an issue for me, but I’ve started withdrawing larger cash sums now from the ATM and keeping a bit of cash on hand. Then the cash usually lasts me quite a while and I rarely ever need an ATM anymore. Adaptation.

This is probably more of an issue of SCB in cost cutting mode than a trend across the Thai banking industry. For example, SCB is the only major Thai bank to have closed their branch in the large government building where the CW immigration office is. Meanwhile, there are close to 10 bank branches on that floor, including many banks smaller than SCB. And I think SCB closed that branch 3-4 years ago. So this cost cutting policy has been going on for a while.

The fake passports are likely real and government issued, only the alias is fake. Also, presumably the system doesn’t do an automatic search to match every newly entered face or set of fingerprints against an entire existing database to look for duplicates. That would require too much processing power and put a constant heavy load on the system when there are up to 50,000 new entries per day and an existing database in the millions. So duplicates might only be discovered (if at all) under a manual search when someone is arrested.

Some may be protected in some way. But the reality is that most or all come in on fake passports showing they are from South Africa or an East African country, thus the government doesn’t know they are West African. So when they eventually do get deported and black listed for overstay, they just come right back in under a new fake alias. That’s why they never seem to make much progress in getting rid of them. What’s worse about them though is that their scam offers to sell illicit drugs are often used as a means of starting a conversation with an unsuspecting tourist which then might lead to a larger scam involving black money, Bitcoin investment, or one of their other common street scams.

If they want to clean up the illegal foreigners, they can start with the dozens of jobless West Africans sitting around on Sukhumvit Road at night aggressively offering illegal drugs for sale to people as they walk by. They are certainly doing more harm and contributing nothing to the country than the undocumented food sellers who are providing a low-cost service to the locals.