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Mike Lister

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Everything posted by Mike Lister

  1. Feel free to ask questions or read the tax guide, or both
  2. I third all that.
  3. A combination pragmatist and fatalist, urgh, messy.
  4. From a Revenue perspective, this rule change is quite minor. Traditionally, the Revenue do not make formal public announcements about such things, instead, the change is announced through formal channels and the news picked up by interested parties such as the major tax consultancies like PW, Sherrings and Mazars. Those consultancies have attended briefing sessions held by the Revenue and have fielded questions and received answers, all of which have been published. Here is one such Q&A: https://sherrings.com/foreign-source-income-personal-tax-thailand.html You have to remember that only a small percentage of the population is interested in this, it isn't like in the West where a change of this nature impacts almost everyone.
  5. I have, I have sat with Revenue staff as well as with specialist tax consultancy staff to discuss these things. What you posted previously was incorrect and remains so.
  6. By people like you I mean, the wait and see what happens brigade. The options for using agents in the future, assuming tac clearance certificates are required at some point, involves too much conjecture and whatiffery for me to be able to comment sensibly. Needless to say, it would make life more difficult and certainly more expensive, rather than the obverse.
  7. TAX EXEMPTIONS DEDUCTIONS & ALLOWANCES (TEDA) 58) The Thai tax system contains a series of Tax Exemptions, Deductions and Allowances (TEDA) that will help you reduce your tax bill and they are very generous. It is easily possible for the average expat foreign retiree to reduce their taxable income by 500,000 baht or more each year. For example, a retiree aged 65 years of age, married and living here full time, supporting a Thai wife who has no income and doesn’t file tax return, is allowed the following: a) Personal Allowance for self (PA1) - 60,000 b) Personal Allowance for wife (PA2) - 60,000 c) Over age 65 years exemption (OAE) - 190,000 d) 50% of pension income received, up to 100k (PD) - 100,000 e) In addition, the first 150,000 of assessable income is zero rated and free of tax (ZR) From the Simple Tax Guide: 59) Additional deductions and allowances exist for health or life insurance premiums paid in Thailand. A complete list of deductions, allowances and exemptions can be found in the links below: 60) https://www.rd.go.th/english/6045.html or from Sherrings below. 61) https://sherrings.com/personal-tax-deductions-allowances-thailand.html
  8. We're aware that the District Tax Offices are each hiring one Tax Attorney each to handle DTA related matters. Local tax offices are not great to work with but District and Regional Offices are much better equipped and usually very capable.
  9. Have you read the Simple Tax Guide? No, I thought not! DUAL TAX AGREEMENTS (DTA’s) 18) A Dual Tax Agreement/Double Tax Agreement (DTA): is an agreement between two countries that sets out which of the two countries has the right to tax specific types of income and all the associated rules. Its purpose, in part, is to ensure that the same funds are not taxed twice by two different countries and provides a means by which tax that is paid twice, can be recovered, how and from where. Note: If the taxpayer income arises in one country but the tax payer is resident in a second country, use of a DTA can result in increased tax being paid, if the second country has a higher rate of tax on the type of income in question, than the other. Obversely, allowing income to be taxed in Thailand, may result in paying a lower rate of tax than in your home country. It should also be noted that the rules contained in a DTA, take precedent over national tax rules. Copies of all the Dual Tax Agreements between Thailand and other countries are available to download from the following link although we understand that some are being renegotiated at present.
  10. Just to play devils advocate on this.......tax clearance certificate laws have been on the books for many years, Immi already requires them from certain classes of visa holders and before those classes can leave the country. Extending that system to a wider audience would be trivial, it's just a nother piece of paper, you the visa applicant must collect and supply.
  11. How many times have I seen you say that, I've lost track. And you still haven't bothered to read the tax guide and understand your DTA, otherwise you'd realise that you almost certainly wont be taxed any more than you already are. You'll forgive me for saying but you are your own worst enemy.
  12. Great, so she pays tax, how she pays it is of no interest or concern to me, juist that she pays tax. If she pays business tax, brilliant, it's one of the main input taxes for government.
  13. It's about ignorance, if people would stop and bother to understand what's involved they'd realise that for most people there are no issues. Instead what we see, all to often, is the cavalier types so swear..... they'll never pay tax in Thailand.....it will never happen........how will they know.......etc etc. We've seen repeatedly how relieved people have been once they understand the issues and do the basic math, there are tens if not hundreds of people in that category. It's not us that is the problem we're trying to educate and help. The problem is those cavalier types who confuse others and give them false hope, those are the ones you should be disagreeing with. About DTA's: my best guess is that most tax offices don't understand DTA's because it's impossible to make sweeping statements that include everyone. The US DTA excludes Social Security Payments, the UK one doesn't exclude their equivalent.....one excludes some pensions, the other excludes other pensions but not some! Saying that only net pension are being transferred, is wholly wrong and misleading.
  14. Great! I don't understand what your wife's business is., how it is structured for tax or income etc and I don't need to know, bottom line sound like she pays some tax on her income. My wife operates her business as described and that's cost effective for her. Is there a point anywhere here?
  15. I'm not sure what you point is, you said that those coffee shops didn't pay tax and I gave you an example of where my wifes business, akin to a coffee shop, is registered for tax and you have confirmed that your wife pays tax also....so? We know that only 11% of the workforce is registered for tax and that only 6% of the WF pays tax, 4% via a PAYE equivalent. That is one of the smallest tax nets in Asia and the Revenue is working to increase it, case in point, the new tax ruling. We all know the capture rate is low, the Revenue knows it also, that's why more people will be forced into that net, mostly by using electronic bank information I imagine.
  16. Every day we see new readers posting questions and getting answers to their tax issues and becoming less stressed as a result. Every day I receive at least two PM's from people wanting tax information but too afraid to post their questions on forum. Every day we see that the number of downloads of the Simple Tax Guide increases by several hundred. If continuing to inform and help people and get the message across, irritates or annoys some people the answer is simple....don't read tax threads and/or put me on ignore. If reading tax threads stresses people out, don't read them. But don't ask me to backpedal and allow misinformation, disinformation and complete and utter lies go unchallenged because it's not going to happen.
  17. That isn't what a Dual Tax Agreement means and it doesn't work that way.
  18. At the risk of sounding like Mr Doom and Gloom, let me tell you how I think this will play out for people like you. Firstly, there will be no letter from the Revenue, inviting you to file a tax return and giving you lots of easy instructions in English, goodness me, where do you think you are! One of two things will happen. EIther, your bank will require you to log a TIN against your account and if you don't you wont be able to operate your account. Or, the Immigration people will require you to prove taxes were paid and any Revenue needs were satisfied, before you can extend your visa. Do not expect much notice of either and don't expect to be notified personally.
  19. Did somebody mention privacy laws? I must try that the next time the Revenue asks me why I didn't file a tax return when I had assessable income. I can say, how do you know that, don't you realise there are privacy laws here, you shouldn't be allowed to know that.....it might work I suppose. 🙂
  20. Depends how you want to look at things. If you want to follow the Revenue rules strictly, you must file if you have assessable income (that is before deductions), greater than 120k per year. You know what, you'd be a great candidate to read the tax guide, it might just jog you out of the denial stage...here ya go: https://aseannow.com/topic/1319807-personal-income-tax-guide-for-foreigners-thailand/
  21. All banks have to withhold 15% on any interest paid on bank accounts and to forward that to the Revenue. The banks also have to identify the account holder to the Revenue so that if they do file a tax return and try to reclaim that tax, they are able to match them. For example, when I file my Thai tax return each year, all I have to do is to enter one of my banka ccounts where interest was paid and tax was with held and voila, just like magic, all my bank accounts appear showing all the interest paid and all the tax wit held. Now, about those coffee shops. I don't know exactly how those coffee shops are registered for tax but I suspect it's the same way that my wife has her business registered, as a self employed business. Others will have heard this before but in case you haven't.....she sells baked goods from home and turns over more than 1 million Baht a year. Generous tax concessions for the self employed allow her to deduct 60% of her sales cost as expenses so that she only has assessible income of around 400k. With tax deductions etc, she pays tax of around 12k per year but is required to file a tax return twice a year. I reality she takes home around 50k per per month, tax paid as described previously. So yes, those coffee shops are registered for tax in some way or another and the till receipts and bank account transactions confirm their revenue. FWIW my wifes BB bank account sees EVERY cash transaction both in and out, because everyone pays by bank transfer.
  22. No links apart from they're both part of the same government that is looking for money and wants to tax people more.
  23. Here, let me help you and make things more clear:
  24. And of course if you don't register for a TIN, the persons bank account wouldn't yield any clues whatsoever to the persons identity.! :))
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