TroubleandGrumpy

I will respond to you for 2 reasons. 1. Because I have debunked you several times, but you deserve more 'kicking' - and you have at last givcen some reational behind your opinion. 2. Because some Aussies getting the OAP will read your comments and think they must pay income taxes on their Pension. Here is just one of the posts I provided in response to your rubbish before - go look up the rest of my posts where you have been debunked as an alarmist and fear mongerer. The Ministerial Correspondence Team for the ATO do not provide rulings or advice - they have absolutely no authority to do so and I know because I worked in a Ministerial Correspondence Team (Telco related). There is NIL official ruling from ATO that the OAP is taxable in Thailand for a tax resident - that is an interpretation of one Clause by some 'technical officer' and IMO it could easily just be a fake statement - it certainly does not look like any Ministyerial SAadvice letter I have evber seen before. And as far as I could find there has been NIL official determination by the TRD that the Australian OAP is taxable income in Thailand under the DTA. If you can find either of those - not opinions from forums or comunity groups - then and only then will I re-consider. But eher is somewthing for you to thiunk about - if TRD was to give an opinion, I gurantee even if it was they consider it taxcable income, they will caveat that it all depends on individual cirstances - many of whihc are covered under other Clauses in the DTA and in the TRD Guidelines and in the Taxation Act itself. As I said before, it is not a matter of one Clause and that is it. There are many other factors that are involved in a decision regarding taxable income and taxability of a person - as I have detailed many times before. What happens when someone is a tax resident of Thailand and is still a tax resident of Australia? What happens if they are taxable residents of two States? What happens if they are domicile in another State. To use the informal views of someone not authorised in Australia to decide how the TRD sees things, is total khrapp and illogical - you are clearly unaware of how the Law and the management of the collection of taxes is conducted in Thailand. If/when Thailand TRD makes a determination about taxing the Pensions of any Expats, then and only then will we know where they are coming from - but even then, that is challengeable in Tribunal and Court. The Thaialnd tax system is self-assesment - I have elaborated on this many times - and if you assess that you do not have to pay any income taxes and those reasons are valid, then that is it. The TRD can later question that assesment - but as long as you have the documentation and valid reasons why you made that assesment, then IMO you are fine. Stop being a fear monger and I sure hope people do not listen to you. Oooo effin rooo to yourself mate.

Suggested changes in caps bold underlined.

Oh you poor virtue signaller - it must be so bad being inside that victimhood head of yours - the inhumanity of it all 🙂 So you have been in a 'relationship' with a gay - well I do bow to your 'understanding' of your and your partner's feelings of victimhood. But I do not bow to you speaking on behalf of all gays - the majority of who just want to be left along to live in peace, and who do not like the activism that has sprung up in their name claiming victimhood and outrage on their behalf.

Coke No Sugar means they have used artifical sweeteners and natural sweeteners like corn sucrose. They all have the same effect - make the khrapp taste better and activate the body to 'jump into action' and store more fat. Sorry about that.

Yes indeed mate - they have the teenage girl mentality - never wrong despite obvious facts showing otherwise - they call that 'The Princess Bitchface Syndrome'. It involves a lot of things and is a recognised mentqal disorder with a clear pathology of cognitive bias. Most teenage girls ghroew up and out of it - but many dont - and many young men have been infected too (we'll do anything for a roo**) The Princess Bitchface Syndrome 2.0 by Michael Carr-Gregg - Penguin Books Australia

Read my posts - obviously you have not out of spite anger or whatever. I have provided another alternative to those words, plus several additional reasons why an OAP is not taxable income.

Your an ignorant person who has no idea. I played golf most weeks for over 20 years with a gay guy - met his partner many times over dinner/beer, Both were good blokes - and he disliked the 'gay activists' a lot more than I do - and their views are very much what I am talking about and know a lot about. But people like yourself who see any comments from anyone that are not 'compliant' with the dogma being spewed out by the gay activists, label them as homophobic and thereby claim a win (virtue singalling). I dont care if you are gay or not - I care about what sort of person you are and I will agree or disagree with your opinions impartially and fairly.

You got a link? I dont want to waste my time looking for your khrapp posts. Knowing you will not do that and that I will not bother anyway, my response it obvious. You are wrong - the OAP is not taxable income in Thailand. If you were correct you would be able to respond to my posts in this thread and refute them. Because you cannot do that and because you have not even tried. IMO THE OAP IS NOT TAXABLE INCOME IN THAILAND (see my posts above for proof)

100% agree about the gyms - which are a huge part of the exercise scam - they are for young men and wanna be women. More walking is absolutely needed, but clearly that works only as long as you have a 'moderate diet'. There is no doubt about walking increasing metabolism etc. but at a minimum it will only work as long as the diet is also a good one. If you drank heaps of beer every day and ate nothing but Maccas and other take away, you will get fat even if you walked 10k a day. But walking a lot and eating well is the best thing for older blokes - we actually need some exercise and do better when we do it - women do not. Women 'carry' wieight far better than us - they are designed that way. Men do need a little exercise, but a good diet is far more important because we are not designed to carry too much excess weight. Most obese unhealthy men are over 100Kgs (like I was) - they are the target for my advice about changing their diet - walking/jogging 5-10ks a day while being 120kgs will probaby kill you - but eating far less khrap and lots of good stuff will make a huge difference. Congrats on making it to 70 - I only made it to mid/late 70s - when/if I get to 80 I start to focus again (life too short and I am weak 🙂).

Yes they do - and justyified. Whenever we are in a hotel we first clean the AC units (wash filter etc) and those that work best as Mitsubishi and Daiken consitantly. You say there are two Mitubishis - I assume that is 'Normal' and 'Heavy Duty'. Is there any known difference in quality durability etc.

Same same - we drive a lot and see extremely dangerous driving every time. And over 10 years I have never seen a police vehicle that is/has pulled someone over. They will setup a road block, and cause traffic mayhem, to check regos and licences (tea money?) - but they never actually patrol the roads pulling over the idiots/nutters. The thing I noticed in that video was something far more dangerous than the idiot/druggie in the SUV. The unladed truck that flew past down the inside lane and ended up going over the dividing barrier. That is extremly dangerous and I see it all the time in Thailand - using the inside lane to overtake at serious speed is very common on Thailand highways. As already posted, the reason for the accident was the a***hole in the commerical van/truck going too slow in the right lane and refusing to move over. They are everwhere in Thailand and IMO they cause a lot of these accidents. Sure Somechai the nutter/druggie should not be going so fast and try to make that gap, but it was Otherchai in the ute/van that caused the accident - and they are everywhere on the highways here.

I would state with 99.99% certainty that there is a far larger percentage of the 'they/them' that dislike non-theys. They call us CIS and it is used in a derogatory and insulting manner by most the 'they'. Excellent idea - but more likely that they would remove the rights of an Expat women married to a Thai.

Exercise is total BS - this whole lose weight by exercising scam annoys me. IMO 'physical activity' is NOT required to achieve or maintain a healthy weight. Certainly not sitting down all day is obvious, but all that is needed is to walk a bit every day and do a little bit of exercise. If all that BS was real, then all Thais would be fat - they dont walk much at all and just do basic physical stuff. The issue and the only issue, especially for those over 40, is the type of foods and drinks consumed, and the amount consumed. Eat mainly 'natural/good' foods, and dont consume much of the 'bad/processed' foods, and avoid the 'bad/processed' products so prevalent in food and drink available in the stores, and you will achieve/maintain a healthy weight - over time. When I decided 15 years ago that enough was enough and I started this diet regime, I was astounded at how many things for sale in shops were 'bad'. It was worth it, and despite the occasional fall off the wagon, I am now consistantly over 20 kilos under what I was when I started. My regime is simple - and the first thing came from a mate who had a heart attack at 42. He was told to cut down the beer and to stop eating one big main meal a day. He was told to eat more small meals - that gives time for the body to process and absorb the amount. Eating a huge meal at night and then going to sleep is exactly the wrong thing to do. Eat fruits in the morning - and then have 2-3 small meals each day - no big ones. He also did other things, but he reckoned that not eating that one big dinner at night helped lose heaps of weight. I did that, and also I did not consume food or drink that has a long shelf life - cakes, coke, food bars, etc. I avoid as much as possible sugar and grass and salt. Sugar is in many processed foods (and added by some Thais to food). It is impossible to totally avoid it (cuppa tea/coffee, etc etc) but it is needed by the body - but bring it down. Avoid over-consumption of salt - which is often combined with sugar and grass - such as in bread, cakes, etc. However, in Thailand salt is not as bad for mammals as it is in a colder climate where the loss of body water is not as high. Although, the local salt lacks Iodine and that is why so many of them have thyroid problems in later life - get salt with iodine and have a little now and then - but limit bacon and things extremely high in salt etc. Grasses are very fattening. The animals that are the biggest mammals on the planet all eat grass. Avoid anything that has processed wheat, rice, corn etc. they are all cultivated grass crops - cheap and easy to make and easily concentrated. By all means eat it in is natural form (rice, corn) but not 'too much'. Breads, Cakes, and long shelf life products are all made with processed concentrated grass as the main ingrediant - it is a massive fat gainer to mammals. Avoid as much as possible. Lastly - drink lots of water - my favourite form of water is that light brown one with bubbles. Seriously though, beer has no sugar and has very little salt - but it is made from grass and alcohol is a stimulator of fat growth - especially in the liver. But beer is 95% water and is it is far far better for you than coke and such drinks. Drink lots of water, moderate the beer, and dont drink any coke, fanta, etc. Plus get a set of scales - so you actually know how much you weigh and you can see any changes. Every now and then I weigh myself and oiften it is 'ooops - time to cut down for 2 days'. 2 days of cutting it right down (being hungry) forces the body to consume the stored fats. Do not do that to extreme and not anymore than 2 days - or the body will think 'famine' and then when food arrives it will think 'quickly store as much as possible for the next famine'. Slowly and surely (quietly quietly) is the only way to catch the fat monkey.

Something is not quite right about that story 😅

They can all shove that BS up their **** They (I use they/them to cover all variations) claimed a desire for equality under marriagelaws and that is justified, with resultant property rights after death, taxation deductions and rights, and other 'equality' issues under the Laws. But I hope the Thailand Govt does not fsll into the same traps as the Western Govts did and cave into their constant demands for 'more and more equality' which has resulted in a man claiming to be a woman because he is wearing a woman's clothes, and children being medical changed for life. Certainly in the West, much more than in Thailand, there needed to be a balance taken against the old school belief that 'they' were to be treated like lepers - but that is not needed in Thailand where they are generally treated equally in Thai society. Give them and they equality under Laws in a 'personal union' (marriage) - but nothing more and nothing less.

Still waiting for your reply with details of why you think the Old Age Pension is taxable income in Thailand - so are others. All I/we have received is a cut and past from the DTA - where is your rationale and thoughts?

Thanks for saving me the time. What you have said is what a lot of Expats are thinking of doing (Cambodia, Vietnam and Philippines seem the most popular options) - and it is clear that many will pull the pin on Thailand too if they start nailing Expats. Surely the Thai Govt will realise that Malaysia and Philippines (maybe others too) have stated that they do not want to tax the Pensions of retired Expats brought into their country - they have been specifically exempted. Is your foreign-sourced income exempted from tax? (pwc.com) There are (I am told) almost 500K of Expats in Thailand - working and retired and married. I dont know how many working versus married/retired, but even if only half (250K) were retired/married, that is worth a lot of money every year to Thailand. How much Baht does the average Expat bring into the country? 500K? 1Million? Someone on the Australian Pension alone (no other savings) brings in about $26KAUD (630K Baht) and at that rate the total money brought into Thailand would be over 150Billion Baht. Why put that at risk by trying to tax it?? Surely they will soon make it clear, one way or the other, if they will tax Expats bringing in their Govt Pensions and other money/savings all ready taxed in their home country. Hopefully, they will also not force them to prove it has been taxed, by excessive and unachievable documentation demands that will make complying with all the Immigration documentation requirements look easy.

That is definitely what they are all doing, but me thinks that a lot of them are not haters of Jews like the NAZIS, but they are just disenfranchised woke progressives who use virtue signalling to bolster their own conitive bias about the issue - they are actually driven by their desire to be a 'good person'. They should all read the Bible or Koran - not for religious reasons, but to get some wise advice. Both books clearly state that 'The road to Hell is paved with good intentions'. What that means is very broad, but part of thqat means that there are always a lot of bad/evil people who will strive for the moral highground - so you must beware of following their 'attractive' claims. As they say - shine a light on a good and a bad person - they will both act good. Hamas in Gaza are the worst sort of evil activists, and their messages claiming the moral highground are often believed by the young, the foolish and the ignorant.

Not to the socially progressive virtue signalling woke lefties it doesn't. I think it was AOC who said she was 'morally correct' despite it bring proven that her stated facts had been proven to be wrong. Even WPO and CNN criticised her for that approach to the truth and facts - but they never examined the basis upon which so many lefty nutters will decide that their opinon is more important and counts more than the facts. I think it was Shapiro who said that facts dont care about your feelings.

What about you - it is not what your country has done for you ............ Can you link any posts you made on AN about Myanmar - and anything about all the other 'atrocities and genocides' in the world?

Not sure about that (yet) - but I do have many of them - how about you?

Cheers - I asked about different spec shafts at the very few places that had some and the universal response was 'huh'. They are just like the sales girls in most Thai shops - they know SFA about the products they are selling. I am sure the experts and coaches are somewhere in Thailand - like you said it will be just trial and error going forward - I might get lucky one day.

I have a question - to all those people outraged and angry by what Israel has done to Gaza. What have you done and/or what have you said about the atrocities being committed by the Military Dictatorhip in Myanmar since they illegally took over in a violent coup and imprisoned a Nobel Peace Prize winning politician? Now please dont take that as a criticism - take it as a genuine open question. When you answer that with the truth - then you may begin to realise that your 'selective' outrage is being fanned by the media. Then you might think about all the other atrocities being done all over the world every year. Then you should take a look at all the media driven outrage not involving Israel - where is it? And then you might realise that the media drive discontent and outrage because it sells - they love wars because they do best in times of war and Israel is a very easy target.

I hear you - my bad. When you said you lived in Thailand for years I assumed you were not the person who visits for 3 mths a year. It does not look to be a mistake by LA - I just visited the Thai Evisa website we use in Aust - see below: That is done by the Dept Foreign Affairs in Thailand - so if there is a mistake it came from them. Official Website of Thailand Electronic Visa (thaievisa.go.th)

Update/Report - nothing suitable was found. Visited all the driving ranges and they had nothing like a 'fitting' service - and that included the Driving Range at Siam Country Club. In Chiang Mai at the old Stardome Golf Course (now called Pimantip Golf Course) there was a bunch of golf shops at the attached driving range and several of them sold after-market shafts - you could connect them to your club (Ping, Taylormade, etc.) and try them at the range. There was nothing like that (that we found over 2 days) in Pattaya/Chonburi. All the golf shops, including the one with Ping sings outside, had nothing but sets of clubs for sale, They all had very few shafts in stock, most had no fittings, and you had to buy them on order to give them a try - and at 4000 to 8000 baht each my answer was no thanks. The only store that was 'good' was the new Ping store on 3rd road, just up from the shop with ping signs out front (which had SFA Ping clubs). It was all new Pings and they had sets of all ther new Ping clubs. They only had a few shaft options to try - but they are newly opened and will have more soon. This new Ping store had a screen and trackman (very old one) to try clubs, but they only had one lightweight shaft (45gs) with a fitting toggle attached. I gave that a try but it's kickpoint was too high and it was not a lot better than my current soft regular shafts (which is all that Ping offered in the G425 clubs as the 'senior' option 2-3 years ago). I looked up this new Ping store on google and google maps and they are not there from street view - and nothing was found on the google searches. They said they are new (and that was clearly true) and that they will have more stock as things go forward. I think I will return there and try any new shafts they get in for the G430 clubs. Ping now offers 9 different stock options for shafts with the G430, including some very lightweight shafts with low kick points (for high launch). Unlike in Australia where there are Pros in the shops on all the golf courses selling clubs, giving lessons and available to provide advice - all the golf clubs in Thailand (I have visited) do not have any Pros or anythign like that. Most golf courses have a basic shop with listed prices on balls, gloves etc. but none I have visited have what is available at every golf club in Australia (and rest of the world?). I am sure you can buy what is in stock on the wall, or order what you want from them - but I am not impressed at all. But lets fact it, they dont play 'competitions' here under PGA/RAA rules like I did back home - it is all social golf and it is mainly for the tourists. From what I have seen, the golf scene/industry in Thailand is amatuer and total khrapp - what Thais I have seen coaching other people at the ranges are absolutely useless. I was a National cricket coach and learned how to coach, and I taught the wife to play golf when she was in her late 40s and she is good - the Thai coaching I have seen is atrocious. But there are many very good Thai Pro players in Thailand, especially the women - where are they getting coached and fitted? Are they all the kids of Thais that own a golf course, like the Jutanagarn sisters? Where are they getting their equipment from? I am just stunned - we wasted 2 days chasing windmills. Do I have to go back to Australia or maybe Japan or Korea?