ukrules

What happened to dumping the fuel in an emergency situation - don't they do that any more?

This would apply to pensions only of course - he specifically speaks about pensions like the UK 'old age pension' - not a 'government pension' from being a pimms quaffing whitehall type civil servant (as exampted by the treaty, of course - these are the very people who negotiated the treaty and they exempted themselves) but the basic pension which most people seem to get which is essentially 'social security' and Thailand doesn't tax that for Thais so they can't tax it for foreigners because it would be discriminatory, now a DTA may come into play with a non discrimination clause - but maybe not - because if the Thais are not taxed on it then they can't just go ahead and tax the foreigner for whatever made up reason they want to. This is the first time I've heard this argument presented by Carden and his team. His employee (the Thai accountant woman in the video) has been talking to the revenue department about it for a long time according to the video. Seems legit to me. Anyway I have no pension but I figured I'd mention it here because I know a lot you guys do.....and I like to think many people can avoid this completely If I were a Thai tax resident I would speak to the one of the many Thai accountants who works at his company.

Perhaps, apparently according to some video I watched foreigners must be treated the same way Thais are treated and apparently Thais are not taxed on 'social security' - which is an often mistranslated term. Are Thais taxed on pension income ? The dude in the video seemed to think not and said this also applies to foreigners, perhaps this explains why some people have been told they don't have to pay anything while others have to pay something. Anyway - it's Carden from AITA and here's the video at the exact part where he begins to discuss this equality thing : Is it accurate - who knows?

I know, I'm referring to the ordinary Brit or American moron who's out shopping in Walmart or Tesco, they're going to look at 30 different brands of rice spread across a couple of shelving units and most likely not care about what it is or where it came from - if by some chance they have been buying Thai rice and the price shoots up by 50% they will just choose a different brand and THEY won't care, they won't even think about it for more than a second, there's always something cheaper from somewhere else. The Thais have already 'lost face' for being called out on their price gouging.

Yeah nobody cares, when out shopping if the price has gone up by 50% they will just switch brand. No big deal.

I doubt it - if anyone gets denied entry due to this then the airlines who are not stupid, which is all of them will deny boarding to anyone who doesn't meet this entry requirement because they're not going to pay for the repatriation - which they would have to do - plus a fine equivalent to 1000s of USD which is why they scrutinise visas before allowing you to check in - every single denial of entry costs the airline - and it's normally more than the airfare. Expect the worst possible outcome from all of this. Half empty planes, cancelled routes, etc.

Just watch Vietnam, Cambodia, etc reduce their tariffs to this new 10% 'minimum' and reap all the rewards. As the manufacturing companies all flee to whichever country does it first will they then act - or will it already be too late?

They do something similar in Cambodia, at first I believe it required approval but that was quietly dropped - now it seems to be something that's submitted and a QR code pops up. They changed it in some way, presumably to make it more useable - it was chaos at the airport in Phnom Penh and it's a tiny airport. I guess denying boarding at the gate for people who don't have the QR code and making them wait 3 days is an absolute disaster in the making - so just for a laugh here's my prediction. It will last for 1 or 2 days maximum before they alter it in a drastic way and remove the 3 day thing - because those planes will be taking off half empty.. At least with the Cambodia e-entry thing you could do it on a 'tablet' in the airport on arrival. Thailand - always making things as inflexible as possible = maximum problems expected - this won't disappoint unless someone with half a brain intervenes.

I believe it does happen but you should be able to talk your way out of it depending on circumstances with some banks, especially if it's July or later during the year in question. Example : Just moved to Thailand at the end of July, opened a bank account (proof of address) - need an Isle of Mann account - don't have a TIN yet as don't qualify for one due to less than 180 days left in the year and won't need to submit a tax return for a year and a half is an acceptable 'excuse' when opening an account. What happens after the account is opened is different as you've already got your foot in the door. Some banks will be far more strict regarding this than others.

This is not a computer hardware lesson, those tariffs will affect the HD market. People have been giving examples of teak wood figurines and maglites as things made in Thailand. Those are irrelevant, HDs are relevant.

If you've ever had a computer with a 'spinning disk hard drive' inside it then there's a good chance that hard drive was made in Thailand as it's one of only a few mass production places on earth where they make them. There's all sorts made in Thailand that you might not know about. When the factories flooded in Thailand a few years back (12 or 13 years ago from memory) the global hard drive market went nuts and prices were off the charts, companies were hoarding and the supply chain was in melt down for more than a year - from 1 flood

Exactly this - if you have nothing to do all day then it doesn't really matter where you are.

Spend a few hours poking around and then you will know.

That will be a job for President Vance.

Very little to negotiate here, reduce tariffs on one side and they will come down on the other side - do nothing and there's plenty of room for them to increase and match it 1:1 which would be double the current rate. There may be other things to negotiate with from the Thai side though - like that $280 million 'consulate' they built in Chiang Mai

Reduce the greedy protectionist tariffs and the numbers will come down - do nothing and there's plenty of scope for them to go up and match 100% like for like. Right now they're getting a big discount - even with the new increased rate - the discount is there for when they think they can negotiate. I read earlier that Vietnam already removed their tariffs in response to this. So Vietnam is all set, in fact there's a growing list of countries who immediately reduced their tariffs.

There won't be any negotiation, if they lower the taxes the reciprocity will be automatic, at least for now. I would like to point out that what Trump did here was actually very generous - he only applied a 50% reciprocity. Why would he do that? I suspect it's because if these countries do not alter their tariffs then the rest will come. So for Thailand that rate could double. No negotiation required, just act and reciprocity will be delivered. This is the exact kind of thing I've been wishing for for a very long time and as far as I'm concerned it doesn't go far enough - there should be full reciprocity for all things - like citizenship for example - if there's some arbitrary number per year like 100 then that number should exist in the US as well. Same for permanent residency, land ownership rights, etc. All countries should do this.

About time some reciprocity was introduced here. People simply don't purchase goods from the US due to local import taxes and this addresses this problem - because somehow over the decades and we're going back to the 1940s and 1950's here the morons running the US decided it would be better to buy foreign which decimated their domestic supply chains. US gonna be busy building. So when you old guys lived the boom times over in the US - this is why - it hadn't got out of hand back then.

Zoiper is just a generic SIP client, there's loads of them out there, I made a separate thread about this. I purchased Zoiper Pro but it's useless to me due to saving the phone call in WAV format only, so I settled with the free MicroSIP - any of these 'software phones' will work with any of the SIP / VOIP services.

Oh really. In 2024, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Thailand was $45.6 billion, marking an 11.7% increase from the previous year. This means that the U.S. imported more goods from Thailand than it exported to Thailand during that period. Data can be found here : https://www.fool.com/research/us-trade-balance/

Ah so Trump finally did what was needed, reciprocity. Good to see it. Would be nice if a few other major countries did the same thing. Tax the imports and be taxed right back. Simple. No negotiations are required at all.

I keep hearing about these stakeholders, am I ever a stakeholder? It sounds like a complete load of <deleted> to me

Isn't it just vertigo?

It sounds to me like you have an idiot processing your renewal back in the UK

Don't bother - they turned off tweet embedding so save your breath - it's not wanted