Mike Lister

Good, I hope that continues, not everyone has had the same good fortune however.

Small elephants, maybe, but the elephant protection league may have something to say. But of course if enough smaller purchases over a long enough period of time and your card issuer will start asking questions, I believe we already had that discussion, did we not.

....and calls to the IRS to see is he filed a non-resident return or indeed, filed a return at all. This is the cue to mobilise Homeland Security, the FBI and probably Delta Force to do an extract.

Carrying this nonsense to its logical conclusion, if we absolutely must......so RD sees that person A, using card number X, bought an elephant in Thailand and asks if there were any other transactions also, maybe yes, maybe no. But since an elephant is a big ticket item and RD is concerned about financial impropriety and evasion, it asks Immi to run your name and birth date (both known at this stage) and Immi says, yep, we got a Mr A, born on that date and BTW, he has a long stay visa. Hmm says RD, I wonder, did he ever file a tax return.....whoa, he didn't, best get out the sherlock holmes kits, alert SWAT plus we'll need some rubber gloves.

You can assume that if RD has the card number that they have the ability to find out ALL the details associated with the owner of that card, including name, date of birth, address and any other information that the bearer has provided to the card company or the issuing bank, be it written or in the form of a transaction. Your 16 digit card number uniquely identifies you. How is this possible? Because Visa/Mastercard needs BOT (or central bank) approval to operate in Thailand, or in any other country. BOT or the central bank has a relationship with the banks, Visa/Mastercard also provide BOT with financial analytics regarding card usage, average spend by nationality etc, this information ends up in TAT's hands and is even published in the media and discussed in this forum. So if you accept that there is a working relationship and linkage between the banks, the central bank and the RD, all one has to do is to ask the other......and that's what they do. There's then the law enforcement link that a police department or law enforcement agency can make a request for information as part of an investigation, do you really think they wont provide that data!

If the RD or anyone else has the card number, they can easily find out who it belongs to, all they have to do is ask Visa/Mastercard.

The name and card number are enough to identify you to Visa/Mastercard, it belongs to you, that is undeniable. The issuing bank is is also known, which means all the details about you can be obtained by some means. Which piece of data links you to the transaction, tell me you're not really asking me that question...it's your card!

Interestingly, expats having more than a certain level of income and capital are frequently told that Thailand is no place for them either, which begets the question, who should be living here?

I'm going to leave it with you because none of what you have written makes any sense at all and I'm losing interest in trying to help. Let me just say that income that arises in Thailand must be reported on a Thai tax return and filing a UK return doesn't absolve you of that. Out, goodbye.

A Thai tax return?

Great, it's just that you don't seem to know that you've filed a tax return and doubt that one was actually filed so I might pass on that kind offer!

So magic then, do the RD ladies have a box of cash under their desk and do they pay you directly or do do you get a cheque in the mail? The good people at the RD office have created a tax account for you online and entered the bank details you supplied, into the online tax reporting system. You completed a tax return except you never knew that. In future, knowing as you do now that you're completing a tax return, you may want to provide them with all of your income details, rather than just the part that earns you a refund, otherwise your your return is potentially fraudulent because you failed to report income.

That my friend is the only way you will get your tax withholding back, is via a tax return, there is no other way.

You used your card in Thailand, Visa/ Mastercard networks know this because that's where the transaction was made. The debit on your card was then returned to your issuing bank in the US so that you could be billed. In theory, the Thai RD could request transaction data from visa/mastercard networks Thailand, all of which must pass through the Thai banking system as part of cross border payments. Alternatively, the elephant turns out to to speak English and has a cousin who works for the RD and he rats on you.

Presumably that's because the people at the RD complete the return for you, as they used to do for me. 15% tax witheld on interest

"They claimed that over 3,500 taxi vehicles had amassed at the hall, a figure that appeared to dwarf the 2,429 vehicles officially registered with the local authorities just a week prior". arf arf,

Some of the best Thai restaurant food I have ever eaten can be found at a restaurant that sits behind the Topland Hotel downtown Pits. We visit Pits every other month or so because a niece is at Uni there and sometimes we stay at Topland. The food is inexpensive, but of the highest quality, you will not be disappointed. The restaurant is located behind the hotel, as you exit the parking structure, facing onto the road.

Jerry, if you guys are getting something out of it, far be it for me to spoil the party, I'm just expressing my view. I think those parallel threads are equally as bizarre, if not more so. It's people scaremongering, fantasising, grasping at straws, all of which might be understandable were it not for the fact that RD has pretty much said this is WIP, stay tuned and we all know that.

Sure, but when the it's done it's done, it's like life support for a corpse.

Sure, but what about after page 100!

Just to be clear, this article talks about Thai business FDI in other countries, lest somebody should go off at a tangent!

The question in my mind is the same one that others will likely have, there is still no clear explanation of what level of detailed information CRS provides in total. That said, your latest post (above) does go some way towards providing that, for the very first time. I don’t know with certainty if you know all the answers on this or not, you try to persuade us that you know but thus far you have been unable, for whatever reason, to provide a complete explanation in a manner that everyone can understand. You have the arrogance and bad taste to tell us that others don’t know what they are talking about on the subject of taxation and should be ignored, because you are a tax consultant to banks, yet we still don’t have a complete concise easily understandable explanation about what CRS does and doesn’t provide, hmmm! On the one hand you write that CRS does not include transactional data but elsewhere say that it is aggregated data. What you don’t say but imply is that the level of detail depends on the subject being reported and these can be divided into different groups or types. Stock market trades for example are reported at a detail level, or so you say, but transfers are not and other types of transactions are not. Does that mean if a bank sells your stock market holdings in a nominee account and transfers the funds to you, they are not reported under CRS.The average poster here can be forgiven for being confused when even the above average ones are still confused. You took me to task because you understood me to say that CRS data was at the detailed level, I didn’t believe it was for the same reasons other think it is not, because the volume of data would be horrendously massive. Yet soon afterwards, poster @ben zioner also took me to task for suggesting that CRS data is not at the detailed level and he responded by posting the field layouts, to which I invited you to debate the issues with him but you stayed away, hmmm again! The problem may be that you are unable to summarise the necessary information, succinctly and in a manner that everyone can understand, or, it may be that whilst you tell us you know, you don’t really. Social network forums are notorious for such antics hence no poster is above suspicion, until they have proven themselves beyond doubt! My personal needs in this area are almost non-existent, my tax and financial affairs are very clear and simple enough. Others, however, will want to understand their exposure that results from CRS but thus far, this thread hasn’t provided the necessary clarity. Lastly, whether or not the thread should have been closed a long time ago is a matter of personal preference. I personally fail to see the sense of talking around a subject when precious little more fact is known today from the RD than was known months ago. There is only so much hypothesis, supposition and conjecture that can be debated without rehashing the same things repeatedly and recovering the same ground, but that’s just me.

I'm betting that you don't understand exactly how many Thai females have spent at least part of their younger years "working" in similar profession and how many professional women continue to work in the same, from time to time. I also think you probably have this stero type of what a bar girls is, in your mind. I don't know if you have middle class Thai or farang/Thai friends here in Thailand that you socialise with, you'd be surprised at many of their backgrounds, before they became middle class.

I understand the distrust of governments but I don't think it's a good idea to extend that distrust across the board. If you do, you end up trusting only the things you can touch and see which leads to a warped perception of reality.

90% of 39 mill, so they're looking at 35 mill in 2024, seems doable to me given the increase this year over last year 11 mill was substantial