ukrules

Nope, the fee was the same regardless of whether I had a full chanote in my name or not. He entered the address and the Mrs name into a computer, clicked print and 2 minutes later it was a signed rental contract, simple as that. His fee was in my opinion fully justified merely by going to Bangkok twice on my behalf, now maybe he had more than one passport application to process at the same time but I don't care, good on him. People have to make a living somehow. I know it would have cost me far more to go to Bangkok and do it myself as I'm not making any round trip to Bangkok in one day so we're talking nice hotel fees, someone to drive me to Bangkok in comfort - twice - would have cost me multiples of what the agent charged. So it was cheap and well worth it.

This proof of address is also complete nonsense. You know what we did (my agent and me) - we made a rental contract from my 'wife' (I'm not actually married but have lived with so long I may as well be) - aka 'common law wife' in some countries. The rental contract for where I live is in her name, so we had a new standard boilerplate contract printed out with her renting the house to me in my name and that was acceptable as proof of address. What a load of <deleted>. Such arrangements are pure nonsense yet required due to bureaucratic overkill.

I must admit I'm partial to a schnitzel once or twice a week but I mostly eat what would be considered 'international' food and I hardly ever eat anything Thai, except for the occasional curry. I've also been here for 15 years and not changed one bit during that time.

An audit going back a few years would put a very quick end to that kind of practice for the audited individual I'm going to do this but while non resident in the year of realisation and remittance, I'll also reset the cost basis of the investments that remain. This is my approach, to sum it up in one sentence : Hope for the best but expect the worst

Influenza is far worse than this

Indeed, but in future years as that fairly recent date becomes more distant the net will gradually widen to include all sorts of liquidated income / earnings. I believe the main issue will be people selling assets back home to retire in Thailand, back in the UK it is quite common for many people to buy a house and live in it for decades or even their entire working life, then maybe sell it when retiring. Of course the tax rate is 0% if you sell your main residence in many countries, quite unlike in Thailand. Some people will sell the house, bank the profit and remit a big chunk of it to buy somewhere to live in Thailand and that's great, so long as they don't stay for more than 180 days, but if they move to Thailand in March or April of that year and transfer the money this is where they will fall into the trap of residency and personal income tax on something that's taxed at 0% back home as everyone already knows - the difference will be the whole amount and could easily creep up into the 35% bracket. This problem stood out immediately to me when they first announced it and I expect some unfortunate people will have significant issues due to this and not being aware of it. Which they won't accept as an excuse.

lol, 10 million baht is currently worth $270,000

I think you missed my point. I would tell my lawyer to go and handle the agent and make sure the purchase is all above board and conducted properly. The lawyer would be working for me, they don't get any commission. Normally this would be called conveyancing.

Of course a law firm should handle any purchase.

For sure, this will kill many real estate projects - but rightly so. Setting up a company with a 51% Thai ownership with a Thai you don't know is not something that any serious person with any experience in business would do - ever. It's a giant red flag.

Online work my arse

I'm going to book a flight with my debit card from Kasikorn. There's no name on the card but I have used it online. In fact last week I used it to pay for a year of advert free youtube as the ads were annoying me. When I look in the Kasikorn app on my phone I see that the debit card is listed with my full name along with the number, expiry date and security code. Also - I would like to use this card while I'm down in Cambodia but have no trust that it will actually work - I don't believe anything the drones in the bank say. They told me before it would work about 10 years ago and it didn't.

I don't believe that for one minute, they will do the same as a lot of us. It's trivially easy to lose that residency status due to the 180 day rule whether Thai or not. May 5 is just day 126 of 2024, day 180 is on June 28 this year.

Plenty of water in the sea, but they don't want to pay for the desalination do they?

Would be nice to have that clarified even once when this kind of thing happens but so far it's never happened.

I've been saying this for years. They hate us, only now are we seeing highly publicised evidence of this, it was more subtle before.

No - you won't ever hear any more on this. How or why was he arrested? He was attempting to leave the country - normally a fine is payable and you're on your way. Not a Phuket though - things seem to work differently there. Is there a reward for finding a foreigner on overstay?

They always are when these murky arrests happen at the airport.

I'm not there yet but going pretty soon! Want to leave some room for a couple of trips back later this year with room to stay under the 180 days

Whilst you're a shining beacon of virtue and an example to us all 🙄 Actually taking the time to write a complaint about others comlpaining, that's quite the achievement there!

I watched his earlier videos, he's on a tourist visa or exemption (exemption I think) - been here a couple of months. He's going to be denied an extension of stay and given 7 days to get out. When he next applies for a visa on his next trip to Vietnam it will be mysteriously denied - then we will hear all the real stories.

I never let those whom I hate know it, I respect nothing that goes on this this country and I find a lot of it very distasteful. But I'm allright Jack so fack them all.

Here's his channel - I have no doubt he will say something dumb later today : https://www.youtube.com/@tom_greatorex There's only 3 videos in his main videos link but several more in the 'live' section.....including one saying a major tv station did a highly edited hit piece on him comprised of little snippets designed to get him booted out of the country. He has notably launched a new business in this Pai area and there's some people who don't like him but I have a feeling they might like get their hands on his business. Now that sounds like Thailand to me

I just told you the channel name - scroll up a little, he's deleted most of his videos.

Did you just damage the nation there? Careful as you go there...... Having said that, I know this youtube channel - it's named 'Esoteric Entrepreneur' and the guy is a bit of a nut 🤣 He's started posting videos again, if they boot out this idiot then we had better all get ready to lick boots for the rest of our lives or risk his inevitable fate - I reckon he will almost certainly get kicked out.