TallGuyJohninBKK

Speaking of TRD being a clusterf of ignorance, just saw this new thread elsewhere in the forum... Yikes!

Yep, you're absolutely correct. There are several very key issues where the advice from Carden's office and ETT are diametrically opposite, with both saying they're basing their advice on guidance they've received from TRD officials and/or attorneys. That's exactly why I wanted to ask Carden's office about the cash in the bank vs total account value issue. Because in all of the various Carden interview videos that I'd reviewed prior to going yesterday, he had NEVER used the same CASH only phrase that ETT has used repeatedly. FWIW, from what I've seen, there's also nothing in the language of the very sparse TRD regulations that have been issued that narrows exempt pre-2024 savings to being only CASH amounts, nor to only cash held in banks. Just to be clear, when it came to the pre-2024 savings issue, Carden's office advice was that the exemption would apply to TOTAL balances as of the end of 2023, regardless of whether held in cash or stocks, and including all the various types of accounts, bank, credit union, brokerage, etc. The other main area where they're at odds is on the issue of whether TRD wants expats who've remitted only tax exempt funds to file a Thai tax return. ETT says no Thai tax filing required in that situation. Carden's office says TRD has told them that expats need to file a zero sum return at least to claim exemptions allowed under any particular DTA. It's a bad and unfortunate situation overall, which I mainly put down to the TRD's thus far failure to issue clear and public written guidance about how all this is supposed to be implemented. And there's some thinking that they haven't done so thus far because there's actually no Thai law that's been enacted thus far that supports their whole new scheme changing the rules on foreign fund remittances.

If the only funds you remitted into Thailand were from U.S. Social Security, then the TRD guy giving you that information was simply WRONG. U.S. SS is absolutely EXEMPT from all Thai taxation 100% and can only be taxed by the U.S., under the terms of the US-Thai DTA. There's some debate about whether someone remitting only exempt foreign income is or isn't required to file a Thai tax return to document and claim that exemption. But there's NO debate on the fact that the Thais cannot assess any Thai taxes over U.S. SS income. One thing that I think is becoming apparent is that for all the ordinary peon TRD staff spread throughout the country, they pretty much never had to deal with or know about the details of the 60+ different DTA treaties before. Because most foreigners here were never filing or paying Thai taxes. But now with the TRD's new rules that took effect starting in 2024, suddenly there's some tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of foreigners in Thailand who potentially need to be looking at what their country's DTA says about Thai taxation, and then having to deal with those details if they decide to deal with their local TRD office. For the time being, it's a cluster-f of ignorance.

You can't rely on a general article and its wording from the Enquirer back in 2023 to accurately reflect all the details and nuances that apply when looking at what particular DTAs spell out. Thailand has some 60+ DTAs with various countries, and the specifics vary from DTA to DTA. You gotta look at them on an individual country basis. What probably is generally true, from DTA to DTA, is the general notion that if Thailand is entitled to tax some particular income that you've already been taxed for in your home country, that you're generally entitled to claim the home country tax paid as credits against whatever Thai tax a person may owe.

That, as a blanket statement, simply is not true.... Having a DTA with Thailand doesn't automatically exempt everyone from needing a TIN, filing a Thai tax return or owing Thai taxes. However, having a DTA for one's home country MAY mean that given a particular individual's types of income and amounts remitted into Thailand, that no tax filing is required and/or no taxes will be owed. But that determination is going to depend on a lot of individual factors that require delving into that person's financial details.

That's a pretty big difference between owing 14,000 THB and owing NOTHING! What are they doing, throwing a dart and seeing where it lands for any given filer??? 🙂

I didn't ask them about what had become of their prior advice on how to supposedly make US regular IRA account withdrawals not taxable in the U.S. by having the person cite Thai residency and invoke the provisions of the US-Thai DTA... I've never gone down that road personally, so I left that for another day! 🙂 The Roth account issue was a bigger concern, because I have in recent years gradually been converting modest amounts of regular IRA funds every year to tax-exempt Roths, and paying the U.S. tax on the conversions. Believing that my U.S. tax rates in the future, once I start drawing SS income, will be higher than they are now without it. But if Thailand ends up deciding that THAILAND is going to tax all future (post 2023 savings) Roth funds remittances into Thailand, and Thailand is my long-term home, I think that's going to cause me to at least adjust my current IRA-to-Roth conversion plans... FWIW, even if Thailand decided to tax Roth distributions for the future once brought into Thailand, that would only cover income first earned in 2024 and beyond, and not pre-2024 savings, which would remain exempt under TRD's prior savings policy.

Their first and primary position was that expats who are Thai tax residents who move foreign funds into Thailand should file, regardless. That's their base recommendation, and is advice they say they have confirmed with the TRD's legal staff.... But it was only later after much back and forth between myself and them, that our discussion later turned to the point that if you DON'T file, as long as the TRD never concludes you actually owed any Thai taxes, then the penalty for not filing a return that owed no taxes is very minimal. But if summoned somewhere down the road, you'd better have all your necessary documentation in order to show that your remittances were in fact non-assessable for whatever reasons, the pertinent DTA or the TRD's own policy about pre-2024 income. One of the interesting things they were very clear about, which was one of the important points I wanted to seek advice on, was whether pre-2024 savings would only be counted as CASH holdings, or also include the value of stock holdings, in other words, total account balances as of the end of 2023. And they were very clear without any waffling that any pre-2024 savings calculation would be based on TOTAL account balances, stock and cash balances inclusive.

Jim, it's just a matter of scheduling. My appointment with Carden's office happened to come first. My appointment with Expat Tax Thailand is later this week. I wanted to hear both their opinions and the basis for them, and ask about some specific details, before coming to any personal conclusions. I asked about A LOT of different related topics, one of those being TRD's stance toward Roth IRAs. Carden's office's main Thai attorney sat in on our conversation. And basically she said, they've had queries in with TRD on the subject of Roths, but haven't gotten any firm guidance back from TRD's legal staff as yet... They said they hoped for some update within perhaps a coming month. I recorded our conversation for my personal use, so I need to go back thru that later... But as best as I recall from this afternoon, when I pressed Carden's Thai tax attorney on the issue of Roths, I believe she said her current GUESS is that the TRD will end up treating Roth account remittances as TAXABLE, because they're not specifically exempted in the current U.S.-Thai DTA.

OP, so, are you saying that the ONLY funds you remitted into Thailand during 2024 were savings from pre-12/31/2023 sources? If so, those would be tax-exempt under the TRD's policy of exempting pre-2024 source income. If that's the only funds you remitted in calendar 2024, I would be surprised to hear the supervisor there telling you you needed to file a Thai tax return.... unless you had some other non-pre-2024 income remittances.

I believe it's correct that for the current 2024 tax year filing season, neither the Thai nor the English language versions of the Thai tax filing forms have any provision for reporting non-assessable foreign remittance income! One possible answer is that's they don't expect it to be reported. The other possible answer is they DO expect it to be reported, but are so slow in working thru the details of this whole new foreign remittances tax regime that they haven't updated their systems as required.

One of the other bottom lines of their advice, which I found reassuring was, if someones chooses to NOT file.... as long as when the dust settles they don't actually owe any taxes in the TRD's opinion if it ever comes to an audit or whatever... then there's no serious consequences involved. It's only if you don't file and then the TRD later concludes that you DID owe taxes and failed to report taxable remittances and failed to file the required return, that's when things could get very messy.

Thanks... Appreciate the update. Unfortunately, my wife, bless her soul, who's proficient in English and Thai, nonetheless would not be a person I'd expect to understand and correctly translate Thai Revenue Department advice about the implications of the Double Taxation Treaty between Thailand and my home country, and whether or not an actual tax filing is required to make use of its provisions....

Yep, that's part of the concern. There's obviously a financial self-interest at play here when it comes to the various expat Thai tax advisory firms. Today I was quoted 7500 THB for them to do a TIN application, and then about 15,000 THB to actually prepare and file the Thai tax return.

Do they handle English speaking advice there, or only Thai, if you know?

Sheryl, I just came back this afternoon from a meeting with the tax staff at Thomas Carden's office in Bangkok. I'm not arguing or claiming their advice is correct, and other tax advisers have agreed with your position. But FWIW, Carden's office is claiming they have confirmed with the TRD legal staff the interpretation that for an expat to claim Thai tax exemptions for foreign remittances like U.S. Social Security & government pensions under the DTA or pre-2024 savings under the TRD policy, that the expat supposedly needs to file a zero income Thai tax return and then attach a statement specifically claiming the pertinent exemptions and the related amounts brought in. Again, I'm not saying that's correct or accurate. Just reporting the advice they're giving out. FWIW, another well-known expat tax advisory firm, Expat Tax Thailand, has the exactly opposite opinion matching yours -- that as long as the only income an expat brings in is non-assessable, that no Thai tax filing is required. Another member here also recently reported a conversation in Thai with the TRD help line that confirmed the same thing. It would be nice if they could all agree on such things and what the TRD really does or doesn't plan to enforce.

Dunno about the cheaper part, considering what it really costs Thailand to implement and then keep operating anything requiring a modicum of technical knowledge expertise... The normal pattern is that such stuff quickly falls into disrepair and iffy operating status. Plus, and this is more to the point, when it comes to traffic/speeding enforcement, AI cameras are a thing that Thailand doesn't actually have up and running right now as we speak. Whereas they've got hundreds (thousands?) of traffic enforcement officers who COULD be deployed to enforce such things right now/today. But hey, it's better to wait around, do nothing, make delay excuses, and then spend a lot of public funds on fancy equipment that probably will mean good profits and perhaps kickbacks for some connected supplier vs. getting the traffic officers who are already getting paid now to go out and actually enforce the traffic laws!

If you want to learn about political court/judge shopping that occurs in federal courts, some of the worst abuses of that occurred by Republican/conservative groups during the Biden administration with a single U.S. District Court judge in Texas who was a Trump appointee, and before that, had worked for the conservative Christian legal organization First Liberty Institute from 2014 to 2019. Per Wikipedia: "Matthew Joseph Kacsmaryk ... is an American lawyer who serves as a United States district judge in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. He was nominated to the position by President Donald Trump in 2017 and sworn in for the position in 2019. Conservative groups and the Texas Attorney General tend to file cases in Kacsmaryk's jurisdiction so that he is likely to hear those cases, as he reliably rules against Democratic policies and for Republican policies.[3][4] His court has been hospitable to conservative lawsuits that many lawyers consider meritless. ... Conservative groups have strategically chosen to file lawsuits challenging many Biden administration policies in Kacsmaryk's division. Kacsmaryk is the only federal judge in the Amarillo Division of the Northern District; 95% of lawsuits filed there are assigned to him.[34][3] By March 2023, the Texas Attorney General's Office under Ken Paxton filed 28 lawsuits against the Biden administration in federal district courts in Texas; of those, 18 were filed in single-judge divisions, including Kacsmaryk's division and a single-judge division held by another Trump appointee, Drew B. Tipton.[35] Kacsmaryk and Tipton have denied various Justice Department motions to change venues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Kacsmaryk

What ever happened to that extremely high-tech method of having actual traffic police officers use speed guns to track and cite speeding motorists? On ya, that would mean they'd have to get off their arses and go out and actually do their jobs! Or, maybe they're having a problem because they decided to buy their traffic speed cameras from the same manufacturer who built their infamous bomb detector units....

Of course, BOI has a vested interest in making THEIR product as appealing to buy as possible. In the end, it's not what the BOI says, or what Siam Legal says, but what kind of tax regime the TRD puts forward and tries to enforce that will matter. Like so many things on this whole topic, there are many entities putting out many different details and interpretations of how this or that aspect of things is going to/supposed to work. No wonder, so many of us are confused and unsure of where we stand.

Interesting commentary from Siam Legal on the prospective legality of all this stuff TRD is putting forward, because it's largely based on regulatory statements not supported by underlying actual legislation. Sounds like Siam Legal is looking for a would-be client to challenge this whole new tax regime: 2024-08 Siam Legal Experts Answers 23.mp4 https://youtu.be/syQXa8gcVfE

I'll note, your excerpt above opens with the terminology of those being the "minimum" that FIs are required to report... I've been clipping the various tax advice opinions that the various local folks have been putting out. I'll try to go back and find the CRS-related post that I was recapping above... Of course, that doesn't mean that the advice/guidance they're giving is accurate/correct!

Another niggly detail I've been coming across is the whole area of tax exemption for LTR visa holders. I've seen it described here and elsewhere as a blanket exemption for bringing in foreign source income. But now, both Siam Legal and another tax advisory firm have both been limiting that, advising that the tax exemption for LTR holders ONLY applies to remittance of foreign income earned from the PRIOR year... and not the current year, like if someone was transferring their salary every month as it was earned. Example, per Siam Legal: https://youtu.be/syQXa8gcVfE?t=1915 Meaning, the TRD seems to be interpretting the LTR exemption in the same, prior year way that they used to treat all foreign remittances, that they were tax-free as long as they were earned in the prior year (and not the current year).

What some of the expat tax consultants have been saying is that Thailand will have the ability to do an annual exchange of info with other CRS countries, and they've described that as potentially very far encompassing, going beyond just bank account stuff. But I'm just repeating what they've been saying. CRS is not my personal area of knowledge.

And yet, he's been one of the most visible and active expat Thai tax figures opining on all this stuff, appearing before the Pattaya Expats Club and in various other presentations/interviews.... He's providing information, but he's also heavily pitching his company's paid services to prospective clients.