Guderian

Pattaya City celebrating trees....Oh, the irony of it! Please don't tell him that there's still several dozen large, shady trees on Jomtien Beach Road that they haven't cut down yet and replaced with scraggly, sick, shadeless palm trees.

Sounds like they were filming an episode for a remake of "Rab C. Nesbitt"... lol

There you go, I've fixed the title for you! Excessive tourism could jeopardize Thailand's future

They were digging up Pattaya Beach Road to hide the cables when I first moved here back in 2004. Glaciers move faster than City Hall and this project to beautify the city, probably says something about their priorities, lol.

PM sent

Probably here on a Muay Thai visa and suffering from brain damage...

Here's a new wrinkle. The tax has come down a lot, but the bill they sent me has a QR code and a bar code that don't work. I tried paying via the SCB app on my phone using the QR code, and the payment amount is right as is the reason, but the payee details are missing. So I took it to the 7-eleven to see if they had better luck with the bar code, and no they didn't. I remembered I was told before Covid that you could only pay it at a branch of their bank, Krung Thai, so this morning I popped down to the branch on Thepprasit. I showed the greeter the bill and said I wanted to pay it, but she just showed me a piece of paper with 'Go to Pattaya CIty Hall' written on it in English. Evidently, I'm far from being the only person with a bill that has codes that don't work. I see no reason to drag myself across to Pattaya City Hall and sweat for an hour in their non-air-conditioned billing section, so I'm not going to pay it this year. That might give them an incentive next year to do things properly, incompetent idiots.

Right, that's Thaksin's bank account then! lol

Will the proceeds go into Thaksin's or Yingluck's bank account?

That was my reaction 8 years ago when they sent me a bill for 10 years of back taxes that they'd never billed me for! Then they sent me a legal letter which I took to my lawyer and he said they were threatening to ask a court to allow them to seize the house and auction it off if I didn't pay up.

Thanks, I wasn't aware that there had been a change in the way they calculate it. Looking at the arcane calculation in Thai on the back of the bill, which I never understood under the old system as it seemed to be quite arbitrary, they start with the land plot size, use a nominal value of 30K Baht/talang wah to calculate it value, then invent some numbers, probably for the value of the house (I'll use Google translate on the phone tomorrow and try to work it out), add them to the land value and multiply it by 0.03% to get the tax. Suits me, just about 10% of the old tax.

Please read the title, this is a house not a condo and the 0.02% is irrelevant as the calculation is largely based on the size of your plot of land, which you don't have.

Before Covid, I was paying 7,500 Baht/year. During Covid, like everyone else, I benefitted nicely from the large (almost 100%) discounts. Last year, as far as I'm aware, the tax should have been back to normal, but they never sent me a bill. I assumed they'd simply double-charge me this year, but the bill has just arrived and there's no extra charge for the 2023 tax. Even more surprisingly, they're only asking around 10% of what I was paying before Covid for the 2024 tax. I'm definitely not complaining, anyway, but I'm wondering if there's been a major reduction in the annual property tax in Pattaya City? Has anyone else with a house noticed the same thing?

It can't be long before we see one of these monuments raised in Bangkok or Chiang Mai in honour of Thailand's new hereditary dynasty...

Thanks or the happy ending, teelac, here's tip of a trillion (Zimbabwe) dollars! lol

Many years ago, before I moved out here and settled in Pattaya, I loved the char-grilled burgers in Tony Roma's on Sukhumvit. If the meat is good and properly cooked, then you don't need all the salad and bacon and relish, just the taste of the char-grilled beef (done medium rare) was enough. Even better, it was just a stone's throw from Nana Plaza! I gather it moved to Terminal 21 by Asoke, but has now closed down. Is there anywhere else in Bangkok that does a genuine US-style char-grilled half-pound burger?

The Thais are such a bunch of moneygrubbers that they'd grovel for Zimbabwe dollars, never mind the US ones, lol.

What next, will we have Thaksin's pet paramilitary cops shooting dead weed shop owners and people vaping in his new war against anybody having a bit of fun?

He should get together with Pita and Move Forward, they've got similar complaints about the rotten system.

This must mean that all the new drains they've laid over the last three or four years are too small and they will all have to be dug up again and replaced with a larger size. The mayor and council must be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of all those juicy new contracts! lol

Lots of Swiss speak German, too. 😉

It's just a question of how much damage he's allowed to do to the country before the military decides to eject him again. Of course, things have changed since 2006, and the soldiers probably won't find it so easy this time, if you know what I mean. <wink>

It can only be a matter of time until we see them getting "LaThaksin" tattoos in pursuit of endless wealth... lol

If they're clearing the warehouses of the stench of Yingluck's rice pledging scheme after a decade, they must think she'll be back soon.