Mike Lister

That 10% surge in new food business openings in the past year comes from people leaving other businesses that have failed and looking for new self sufficient opportunities.....I have no job, what can I do, I know I'll cook something and sell it. These are becoming desperate times for many. My wife operates a successful, from home bakery that has seen stellar growth over the past five years, this years the business is struggling for the first time ever. It's discretionary spending and people aren't spending.

I gave you those links because they are just two of the many different sources of information that we have found over the past six months which when combined, create a picture of what the TRD rules are. You asked me to post the TRD rules confirming something or other, that's not the way this game is being played. It's being played by joining together various Q&A's, video interviews with embassy and TRD staff, articles by Big 4 consultants, dissemination of court cases and legal opinions written in Thai and also first hand information from visits to the TRD by members. The latter however is unreliable because such visits reflect only one persons opinion at a time, from a single office, by a single TRD officer and is highly likely to change based on the office and the TRD attendees, we've seen that repeatedly. Infamously, we have seen minutes of a meeting between a Dutch taxpayer in Hua Hin and several senior TRD officers, including a TRD lawyer, where the things that were said, contradict much of what had been learned p[reviously and opened up more new issues than it closed. That is the nature of what we are attempting to unravel here.

Everything that happens today has happened in the past, so using the old, based on history line, doesn;'t really wash. The realities are that the markets function is specific ways. Spending by the population is first noticed in small companies, because they are smaller the spending shows up more quickly. Ditto when the population ceases to spend, the small caps are the ones who feel it first and where it shows up soonest. Large caps and giants need momentum and greater levels of spending that come with sustained economic improvements, that why small caps are so volatile. The same is true of index rises and falls. Of course there is a historic pattern , there's a historic pattern to everything. But pattern in itself is not the cause of any future prediction, the predictions for the future is generated by understanding what causes the pattern in the first place!

Your 35% to 45% of GDP figure is not even remotely supportable, even if all of international tourism is included ,which is only 9% of GDP at most. Resident western expats, intended to include retirees and expat workers, account for perhaps 3% of GDP at most. The 4 million foreigners are low income workers from neighbouring countries and negligible contributors.

Area and District are pretty much interchangeable terms, the District Offices in Chiang Mai having only recently been bedged from Districts to Area. : 101) The main office of the TRD is in Bangkok. The country is divided into tax regions and each region is sub divided into districts. Small TRD offices are located in many tessabahns which serve the local community. When dealing with the TRD, it is advisable to deal with at least District Level offices. The address of the TRD Office in Bangkok is: The Revenue Department 90 Soi Phaholyothin 7 Phaholyothin Road Phayathai Bangkok 10400 102) The following link shows how the country is divided into tax regions with their different districts. https://www.rd.go.th/337.html

Perhaps read through the Q&A's in the link below, there are others in the series that will help fill in knowledge gaps. Note also Q13: https://sherrings.com/foreign-source-income-personal-tax-thailand.html More Q&A's here: https://www.expattaxthailand.com/your-questions-answered/

There is no provision in Thai tax law for capital losses under DTA rules.

Yes you can, if you file jointly.

It's all opinion, what else did you think it is! If it were provable fact, the relevant documentation would have been posted months ago. I thought you understood that those people with tax and accountancy experience in these debates have been trying to assess information from a variety of sources in an attempt to decipher what the TRD Code actually says and what operational practice is. But since foreign assessable income is not well documented and not in practise taxed heavily todate, this is all new ground for everyone.

So if you're younger you're expected to have a stronger immune system, in which case why brag that you haven't caught covid, despite not being vaccinated!

So where do you draw the line? If stocks and shares are really only savings and not capital investments, what about property, is that also savings too, it is after also only a capital investment as well. You have savings and you buy something, it's therefore no longer savings. Savings are where you don't exchange the money for anything else.

We're in the same boat, 74 years old and just completed by second bout of covid a week ago but both wife and me feeling exhausted all the time, she with cough also. We may get checked again but have already had one course of anti-virals, it's not fun.

Once again, those are home country tax rules, not Thailand Revenue rules.

No, we've been round that loop before, that is not the correct depiction of how the transfer takes place. Every remittance of capital gains comprises capital and gain, until the total amount is exhausted. You cannot cherry pick whether capital or gain comes first or last, they both come at the same time..

The things we do know are recorded below but many aspects remain unclear, whether that is intentional on the part of the TRD or whether policy has not yet been been decided regarding foreigners overseas income, is also unclear. But it is clear that taxing worldwide income will not be implemented quickly because it requires a change in the law and parliamentary approval.

Most people see such things and panic. 99% of the time they do as you've done and make an appointment to get it checked, spend 15 seconds and 600 baht for the Dermatologist to tell you it's nothing and then leave. I've done it myself once this year already and several times in the past. Better safe than sorry.

Great to know those things happen in your home country. Thailand Revenue however doesn't too much care about those things I imagine, all they see and care about is the remittance of a capital gain from the sale of an investment. That said, I imagine any tax paid as a part of the home country settlement process can almost certainly be offset against any PIT liability that results in Thailand. I don't have a horse in this race, I'm only repeating what has been said previously on these issues.

It was said earlier that principle and gain cannot be separated and that any partial remittance contains a mixture of both, until the entire amount has been remitted. Savings change their form once they are invested, they are no longer savings, they are an investment, not just a part of the money, everything that is invested. The gain, if there is one, is on the total investment, not just on a part of it.

The moment you use your savings to buy stock, you no longer have savings you have an investment. You don't earn income from that investment until you sell the stock, until the point of sale, you don't have savings, you only have an investment and you only have a paper profit and no taxable event. The taxable event occurs when you sell the stock and realise the gain which takes place after 1 January 2024, outside the terms of Por 162.

Stocks are capital gains, capital gains are only realised when the stock is sold, until that time there is no gain and nothing was earned.

Of course it's an unrealised capital gain, he tells us that. Your assumption about FIFO that follows is an assumption based on what you think, not what is fact. That may be fine but you have to tell people it's an opinion/assumption, not a fact.

Yes, I agree, and I wonder why that is.

BL, love you to death but your continued scaremongering on this point is just so far over the top as to be unfunny any more......sorry.

Maybe they do, wouldn't it be great if we knew rather than just aguessed or assumed.

Thailand operates a remittance based tax system, end of story. No country can change their tax system mid year and make it retroactive. You are spreading false rumours and distorting fact, both against forum rules.