JimGant

I could care less if I'm ever happy with it -- as said, I haven't even bothered reading it. Just want the confusion factors eliminated, so the man on the street, wandering in for a look see, sees facts, not word pies. I guess I took too giant a leap in reading between the lines with this:

Ah, what threshold is that? 120,000baht that PWC says the Code stipulates as when you need to file a return, even if no tax owed? This completely defies logic. My workers, even the new hire earning min wage (400bt/day), will earn 125000 per year, and thus, under the guidance, will have to file a tax return. Insane. You think I'm going to give him, and the other higher paid workers, the bad news that they now have to file tax returns -- by hiring, and paying, someone who knows how? Yeah, right. And do you think I'd advise an expat, who after subtracting out deductions, allowances, and the 150k freebie from his assessable income -- comes up with a negative number -- that he must file a tax return, just 'cause his assessable income exceeded 120k? Come on, man -- I didn't advise tax clients over all those years to take the stupid road (fortunately, the US Tax Code has few stupid roads - just gray roads, that two reasonable folks can arrive at two reasonable alternatives). Anyway, Mike, if you don't want to give advice that's in favor of your client, er reader -- even tho' there's no penalty for not filing if no taxable income -- it's up to you. But, if you meant "threshold" was where assessable income, less TEDA, equaled a positive taxable income -- then I apologize.

Your implication that Thailand might violate the DTA ( "various tax treaties do not limit the extent...") is nonsensical. And, I don't even know what point you were trying to make. Suggest you just flush it, unless you finally figure out that there's something germane to be said re the power and limitations of a DTA. As for the man in the street being an idiot, and not understanding double taxation -- you can't say there will be no taxation in Thailand, then say, if so, you'll get a credit to avoid double taxation. You have to find better words; but as written now, the second sentence contradicts the first sentence. The man in the street may think you're the idiot. This is the first I've ever read any of your tax guide. Have kept abreast of concerns by just reading the critiques from the gang hanging out on these threads. Actually, a nice sample of expats.

You're right. English should be mandated for everyone in Thailand.

You're saying Thailand may violate treaty provisions? How are you going to issue a credit if it's not re-taxed?

Yes, there's definitely a lack of information. And, if in fact, there is no definitive guidance in any official Thai documentation -- well, you're clear to follow omnipresent Thai guidance: It's up to you. So, in your example, use FIFO, which prioritizes the original investment over latter gains and earnings. If ever questioned, you certainly haven't violated any rules and regs not yet in evidence (to my knowledge). But, if there are any adults riding herd on this, we probably will eventually get some guidance. And Thailand has only the UK to emulate, as they are the only other country (that I can find) that taxes remitted income. And here are their rules: And further reading in this UK pub shows that a mixed remittance is, indeed, income first, capital second. Hmmmm.

There are many examples of both countries having taxation rights on the same income -- otherwise, why would you need a credit system, if only one country could tax..... The rental example is the purest, because others involve the "saving clause," whereby the US has secondary taxation rights on all income taxed by Thailand, even tho' the DTA gives Thailand certain "exclusive" taxation rights. [Private pensions, IRAs, etc.] Thus, because of the "saving clause," even tho' Thailand has "exclusive" taxation rights on my private or IRA pension, it practically results in Thailand only having "primary" taxation rights, with the US having "secondary" rights. In this case, Thailand keeps all the collected taxes, and the US gets to keep only the taxes collected after absorbing the Thai tax credit. So, double taxation is avoided, but the country getting "first dibs" per the DTA, gets to keep all the taxes, by not having to absorb a tax credit. But back to Article 6, and rentals. Here, the US is "primary" taxation authority -- per the DTA language of "may" collect taxes -- if the DTA said "may ONLY" collect taxes, then the US would be the exclusive taxation authority, and Thailand would not have secondary taxation authority: Thus, Thailand also has the right to tax your rental income, but must absorb a tax credit equal to the taxes paid the US. A fat cat Thai, with rental property in the US, and in the Thai 35% tax bracket -- would probably find he owes quite a bit of tax to Thailand, as the US tax credit for this rental income would probably be small. But, this is why Thailand would like to have this option of secondary taxation rights, even tho' for paupers like you and me, the US tax credit would probably cancel out any Thai taxes owed.

It's not an either/or situation -- both countries get to tax your rental income, per the DTA. In this case, the US is the primary taxation authority, and Thailand the secondary. Thus, the US taxes you with no regard to Thailand, and keeps all the tax collection, since, as primary, they don't have to absorb a credit. Thailand, on the other hand, can consider your rental income as assessable income, but, per the DTA, has to use the US taxation as a credit against its taxation. So, if in a low tax bracket, your US taxation credit may completely wipe out any Thai taxation. In higher tax brackets, Thailand could net some taxes from your rental income. Anyway, if you figure out on a worksheet that you'd owe Thailand no taxes, after it absorbs the US tax credit, don't even bother to include this rental saga on your Thai tax return, should you have to file for other reasons. Obviously, keep that worksheet should RD come knocking down the road.

You forgot to copy this part of the technical explanation for rental receipts: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-trty/thaitech.pdf Thus, Thailand has secondary taxation rights on rental income from your US (situs) rental property, i.e., the situs country does not have exclusionary taxation rights. For practical purposes, this means the US gets to keep all taxation on that rental income, while Thailand only keeps any taxation left after subtracting out a tax credit for the US taxes. Thus, in many (most) cases there won't be any taxes left for Thailand to collect. Today's Thai tax forms don't allow for you to show a rental taxation net of a US tax credit. So, do the math on a matchbook, and if zero or negative, just don't report it. If there is some taxation due, after subtracting out the tax credit on a worksheet, fiddle with the numbers to arrive at that number, to insert on your tax return. This concept, seen in many DTAs, of primary and secondary taxation countries, is fortuitous for the secondary country, should the primary country not tax the income in question. But, if country A is designated as having "exclusive" taxation rights, well then, country B has no rights, even if country A chooses not to exercise its taxation rights. Exclusive taxation rights are also contained in the DTA phrase: "May be taxed ONLY in country A", while "may be taxed" is code language in OECD Model tax treaty language as having primary taxation rights. Got that? Now you know why the Treasury Dept has seen fit to write technical explanations for certain tax treaties.

There are no laws written about FIFO and LIFO for remittances, at least that are discoverable by the Thai taxpayer, or at least for now. Thus, you're free to choose how to identify a remittance of co-mingled funds. If you got into an argument on this point with an RD official, I believe you'd have sufficient grounds to stand on. Your approach of, "I don't know, you make your own decision" is, I guess, one way to present guidance to folks looking for advice. To me, it's a cop out: You don't even offer a pros and cons scenario, with a recommended best choice. My years as a CPA, doing taxes for airline flight personnel (yes, not expats), showed me the US Tax Code is full of omissions and conflictions. As such, there are gray areas, that have two or more avenues, and where you give your client the avenue best to his advantage. I won most of my audits (and the few I lost weren't with prejudice). You give it your best shot, and if you lose -- because it wasn't a frivolous tax dodge -- you're in the, "well, we gave it our best shot." So, Unkown1, I present a gray area that you can take advantage of, without any possible negative consequence, that I can imagine, under the current law. Or you can take Mike's Simple Tax Guidance, which is so simple, it doesn't provide any guidance, or at least alternatives, at all. Good luck.

Looks like an uninformed decision. There is nothing -- yet -- that says using FIFO to categorize remittances is illegal. You're completely kosher to consider that 30k remittance as non-assessable, by being principal, not income. And, do you think you're on their radar screen, with your (relatively) piddly remittances? Or, you'll be one of the 300,000 expats, with remittances, to be called into the office to parse those remittances? No way, Jose. Forget filing. Go have a beer.

Yeah, they may eventually demand LIFO, or some kind of average. But until they decide, if they ever do, I say you're free to pick and choose, to your advantage. What advice do you have?

At the beginning of all this, the authorities (which office, undefined) said: If you can show a home country tax return, plus a DTA with Thailand, you owe no taxes to Thailand. Not much further news on that, so maybe they had their toes and fingers crossed when they put that out.

Until something is stated on how to treat co-mingled monies, my two-cents says, use FIFO. Thus, your oldest money, the principle, is where your 30k remitted money comes from. You're not going to get audited (certainly RD scarce resources will be reserved for the fat cats). But if you did, you certainly have a plausible explanation -- since until declared otherwise, FIFO is perfectly acceptable.

I'm not. With wrong information being put out by some Thai law firms, and other organizations, what's to be believed? Example from an unnamed law firm: That's complete baloney. Thai RD is not interested in income that is not assessable, and thus not taxable. This would include all non remitted income; income from pre 2024; and income exempt per DTA. Plus, there's no place on a tax return to provide non assessable income -- so if you don't owe taxes, are they asking you to walk into a RD office with an Excel spreadsheet.... Ludicrous. Again, Thai RD is not interested in my US govt pension, exclusively taxable by the US. And they're not interested in my VA pension, which is not even taxable by home country -- so how could I provide documentation that taxes were paid on that income? They may be confusing some reports that, income taxed in home country is completely exempt from Thai taxes, if you show the home country tax return. This has nothing to do with a DTA, however; just a nice possibility to ease all this tax mess. Anyway, too much disinformation making things confusing for the tax situation.

Yes. The only snag, should you be called in to explain the sources of your remittances, is if you opened a new bank account post Jan 1 2024, and in this account all your post Jan 1 2024 monies were deposited, and these are the monies being remitted to Thailand. For appearance sake, you need to have transferred enough money from your pre 2024 account to your post 2023 account -- up to the 175k GBP grandfathered amount -- to cover remittances to Thailand. Yes, with the fungibility of money, you shouldn't need to play this game. But, should you get a bean counting nerd in RD on your case, this would give cover. But if you don't go this route, I certainly wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

Ah, that's what it was. I was sitting in the dental office when a gurney wheeled out with what I perceived as a corpse. My immediate question to myself: Did he get a discount?

I'm just curious -- what are the sources of your remitted income to Thailand? If largely current year private pensions, then, yes, assessable income. But not assessable are govt pensions and social security, from current or past years; any and all monies from a financial account established pre 2024, where the balance on 31 Dec 2023 exceeds any and all monies remitted; and IRA Required Minimum Distributions, and other distributions, since, if you're taking RMDs, your IRA contributions were well before 31 Dec 2023. So, not sure where your worries are coming from -- unless most of your remittances are current year private pensions. Otherwise, doubtful you have any Thai taxable income. Worried about bad guys (or bad wives) getting sensitive data? Your information is never on review, unless you get a tax compliance audit (unlikely, unless you're remitting tons of money, and not filing a tax return). And even here, you can redact all your information on the supporting 1099s, except payer, payee, and amounts. Relax.

But of course. The bank clerk will sit down with you and divide the $15000 into four piles. The first is from your latest private pension check, say $2500, so it's assessable income. The second, say $5000, is from your govt pension, thus it is not assessable, per DTA. The third, say $5000, is from a savings account that was closed on 31 Dec 2023 -- thus this is money grandfathered, and thus not assessable. And the last $2500 is from rental receipts from a house in your home country. Now, home country gets primary taxation rights on this, but Thailand has secondary rights, per most DTAs, so it is assessable income ('tho Thailand will have to apply a credit of home country tax against its Thai tax). So, you have a total of $5000 (180000 baht) of assessable income. Now the law says you must file a Thai tax return for assessable income over 120000 (single, 220000 married). Stupid law, since if you're over 65, you won't have any taxable income until assessable income exceeds 500000. So you won't owe any tax. And there's no fine or foul if you don't owe tax. So ask yourself -- why file? Anyway, back to the bank. Obviously, this scenario is absurd. As it would be for all cash flows -- SWIFT, Wise, etc. So, it's "up to you" (famous phrase of Alfred E. Somchai) to self-assess your remitted cash flows as to whether or not they're savings or income. And if the latter, is that income assessable, or not. Just keep good records, including rationale for judgement calls (like using FIFO), in case you're amongst the 1% called in for a compliance audit. Way too much over-thinking on this matter.

Of course they have the right to tax foreign income, if the tax treaty allows. And these same treaties prevent double taxation, through exclusivity or by tax credits. But, yeah, they don't have the right to tax savings -- and there's no plan to do so. The rumor that all remittances into Thailand will be subject to taxation is pure baloney. Unless it's a direct deposit of a taxable foreign income, like a private pension, then it's up to you to parse what's income and what's savings, in that cash flow of fungible money into Thailand. The banks certainly can't determine what is and what isn't income. Nor can RD. So it's up to you to determine whether or not you have a Thai tax obligation. For many of us, already paying our home country taxes on worldwide income, our total tax bill between home country and Thailand probably won't change -- with, now, Thailand finally getting some tax revenue, and the home country losing same tax revenue, by having to grant a credit. Ho hum. Certainly it wouldn't be cost effective for RD to man up to check all tax situations of foreigners. In fact, it may make sense to go with what we've already heard, namely: "Pay tax in your home country, no need to file Thai tax return." But, just to make it scary for tax cheats, set up random tax compliance audits. And, of course, if you're not paying tax to your home country, now you have the opportunity to pay someone something. Sounds good to me.

Bingo! And right in bed with Mike Lister.

Shouldn't be advised!?. You're kidding. Folks reading these tax threads certainly are looking for advise. The waters are still so muddy on all this new tax rumor that it's impossible to have a definitive thread on what's what -- and to "lock" a thread to make it definitive, by disallowing further argument, is ridiculous. Anyway, in a situation like, do I file 'cause my assessable income exceeds 120k, and the law says so -- or do I not, 'cause I have not taxable income and there's no penalty for not filing -- is a question begging for advice. At least a "pros" and "con" discussion of this is warranted. Without such, all these tax threads, spewing forth much rumor and speculation, are pure crap.

The official reporting threshold is having 120k (220 married) of assessable income. But, for someone over 65, with a TEDA of 500k, you have no taxable income until assessable income exceeds 500k. Thus, with assessable income up to 500k, there is no tax due. And, as you said: "There is no penalty for not filing a return, when no tax is due." So, now that you're no longer an employee of AN, and thus have no further 'tow the legal line' responsibility to AN -- are you now recommending that common sense says: Don't waste your time filing a Thai tax return if you have no taxable income, thus no taxes owed, thus no possible fines or penalties?

Yeah, my dog-eared Receipt of Notification is from 2016, and doesn't have my address on it. I guess I could update it online, with the online TM30 system. Is that system now working ok?

So you'll only need to get one Tricare letter -- the one you get in the year of your five-year update -- since it will reflect that you've had coverage for the previous six years.