OJAS

Link (assuming, of course, that it wasn't the Bangkok Post where you read this)?

Until such time as the pink card can be made to act on an equal footing to our passports for ID purposes (presumably through the inclusion of the most important piece of personal information in our case, namely the date when our current permission to stay in Thailand is due to expire) then it strikes me as really not worth bothering about, as @scubascuba3 has said.

You might be best advised to include a completed version of the following form along with all the other docs needed for your next marriage extension application in any event: https://www.immigration.go.th/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/22.Transfer-Stamp-to-New-Passport-Form.pdf 2 and 8 on the second page can safely be ignored, I think. Nothing can beat the madness of the dreaded With-It Tower Passport Renewal Experience for us Brits at passport renewal time, I think, not even anything which the Immigration Bureau might throw at us!

Not just letting them know his new passport details, I think. Since he plans to enter Thailand with a 30-day visa exemption he needs to check with them specifically whether or not he will be permitted to board his return flight in the absence of a confirmed onward flight reservation out of Thailand within the following 30 days. IMHO he would be strongly advised to purchase a cheap throwaway ticket for an Air Asia flight within this period to a destination in an adjoining Asean country in any event.

Yes, we could well, I think, be the low-hanging fruit here in the RD's eyes. And, given the dual pricing tradition in LOS, could we seriously discount the possibility of being clobbered for tax at "special" foreigner rates which were, say, double the corresponding ones paid by locals?

I suspect that others, though, may have unwittingly had the light shone on them as a result of demands imposed on them by home country banks in the context of Common Reporting Standards (under pain of having their accounts with these banks closed) for specific evidence of their Thai tax residency in the form of a suitable reference number (i.e. a TIN).

If this means that we are going to have to report each and every last satang of each and every transfer from our home country during a particular Thai tax year, regardless of whether or not these transfers are derived from income earned pre-1/1/24 or covered by a DTA, I have to say that would find this a truly horrifying prospect. The obvious question which would then arise is how we could get such income exempted from the return. As I see things, this would almost certainly prove to be a time-consuming and protracted process which the RD would no doubt conduct at extreme leisure, and then only after we had provided them with reams of supporting paperwork (which would probably put to shame the amount of paperwork we provide to our immigration offices each year in support of extension of stay applications). In the meantime the RD would no doubt have gleefully and unhesitatingly provided us with a tax assessment based on the full amount declared in our tax return, and have insisted on 100% payment within whatever tight deadline they prescribe for tax payments.

An interesting point does, however, arise in the case of pensions not covered by DTT's which are directly remitted to a Thai bank account by the home country pension provider (as often appears to be the case on here for UK State Pension payments, for instance). Is it the THB amount appearing in bank statements/passbooks which constitutes assessed income, or a conversion of the frozen GBP amount based on the prevailing BOT rate as at the date when the remittance hits the Thai account (notwithstanding that this will almost certainly be different from the actual THB credit)?

Mike A couple of further points occur to me (apologies if they have already been covered in your revised draft): 1. It might be worth a mention that it is important for us to establish what information the taxation authorities in our home countries might need from us in seeking any tax relief which might be due under the relevant DTT. In the case of us Brits for instance, HMRC require the following form to be completed, including specific input from the RD regarding our tax residency status (this could, in practice, prove a right PITA for those in receipt of UK company pensions in particular): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1119722/Double_Taxation_Treaty_Relief_Form_DT-Individual.pdf 2. I gather that the RD insist on remittances from our home countries being converted into THB for assessment purposes on the basis of the prevailing BOT Transfer rate for the date when a particular remittance was finalised - which, if true, might also be worth mentioning: https://www.bot.or.th/en/statistics/exchange-rate.html

Apologies if this point has already been raised in the intervening 4 pages, but there appears to be a small - but nevertheless potentially significant in my case - omission in the following sentence included in paragraph 19 relating to capital sales proceeds: "If the capital and/or was acquired before 1 January 2024, it is free of Thai tax." Should this sentence, in fact, include the additional word which I have shown in bold below? "If the capital and/or profit was acquired before 1 January 2024, it is free of Thai tax."

IMHO @hotandsticky is to be congratulated on getting anything out of your rambling post. Are you planning to submit it as an entry for the latest Leo Tolstoy War & Peace award by any chance?

Anyone aged 50 or more is eligible for non-immigrant visas and subsequent annual extensions of stay for retirement, regardless of their official retirement status in their home countries.

In practice this would only have been a requirement as far as a non-o visa conversion is concerned had you and your wife been planning to settle in Pattaya, rather than Buriram! Strikes me that you are now well-set for your planned move to Thailand.

Assuming that the OP is a German national, he may instead be able to obtain a 40k monthly income guarantee letter from the German Embassy as per 7.1. of the Immigration Bureau's list of requirements for marriage non-o conversions: https://www.immigration.go.th/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/6.FOR-PROVIDING-SUPPORT-TO-OR-BEING-A-DEPENDANT-OF-A-THAI-CITIZEN-SPOUSE-VISA-NON-O.pdf @Sparkling - below is a link to details (in German) of the notarisations and certifications provided by the German Embassy in Bangkok, which hopefully includes pointers as to how you go about obtaining the necessary letter should you be interested in pursuing this particular option: https://bangkok.diplo.de/blob/1394716/23a3dbb1493e7ef375d7ae931b627050/beurkundungen-und-beglaubigungen-data.pdf Alternatively a link to the Embassy's home page (again in German) is as follows: https://bangkok.diplo.de/th-de

This concept, which was much-espoused by Tony Blair and his cohorts, was subsequently firmly knocked on the head by the Cameron/Clegg coalition government. Each individual component part of The Great Government Machine (including HMRC, DWP, HMPO and FCDO/Embassy) now appears to be acting under orders imposed by the Cabinet Office (which has the overall responsibility for its allegedly "smooth" operation) to confine their activities exclusively to matters which fall strictly within the purview of their particular silo, with blinkers firmly fixed so as to prevent any "undesirable" sideways glances into neighbouring silos!

Equally likely, of course, is that these 2 pathetic specimens of female Western humanity could instead have told the Thai tourist to f*** off (or worse).

Was your wife with you when you unsuccessfully applied for a marriage extension?

It is not, in fact, crystal clear from the wording which the OP has used whether he is, indeed, referring to an annual extension of stay for marriage. Or to a non-O visa conversion for marriage (for which "under consideration" stamps are also issued initially), as set out in the following link: https://www.immigration.go.th/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/6.FOR-PROVIDING-SUPPORT-TO-OR-BEING-A-DEPENDANT-OF-A-THAI-CITIZEN-SPOUSE-VISA-NON-O.pdf Both processes are as different from each other as are apples from oranges!

Heads should now roll ASAP at both Fujitsu and the Post Office IMHO.

This is the crucial point, I think. Not a particularly good idea to leave all such checkings until just before your next extension of stay application is due, as appears to have been the case here!

Or maybe to one of these???

The British Government as a whole, not just the Embassy here, is infinitely more useless IMHO. Take those incompetent clowns in His Majesty's Passport Office, for instance. While they have made an online system for the renewal of British passports available (and, indeed, are openly encouraging its use in the UK), they steadfastly refuse to allow us Brits renewing our passports from Thailand to use it for some ridiculous reason. Indeed, even snail mail technology dating back nearly 200 years is considered far too advanced in their eyes, meaning that we are forced to make 2 extremely time-consuming and awkward trips in person (or have an agent make these trips on our behalf at an additional cost of 5,000 THB) to a rundown office building with an extremely silly name located somewhere or other in deepest darkest Bangkok (or its Chiang Mai equivalent), firstly to submit paper applications completed in our neatest handwriting and secondly to collect our new passports a few weeks later! Contrast this with the 90-day online system through which I, like @Mutt Daeng, was able to submit my latest 90-day report from the comfort of my home in under 5 minutes. On this basis, I am supremely confident that the effort which I will need to expend on submitting 90-day reports over the 10-year lifespan of my current passport will still prove to be infinitely less than that which I will need to expend on renewing my passport next in 2032, should the existing horrendously cumbersome and bureacratic procedures inflicted on us by His Majesty's Passport Office still be around then.

Previous advice on here has been to wait a month and, if you still haven't received the receipt of notification slip by then, go to your office with the PO EMS slip as proof of posting.

Plus the "boom-boom" brigade who take great delight in inflicting their sad, pathetic and miserable existences on us in a particularly sadistic manner by cruising around our neighbourhoods in pickups bearing multi-megawatt sound systems with volume and bass controls turned up to max.

Since you are a British passport holder you should be able to enter the USA under the Visa Waiver Program as set out in the following link:- https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/tourism-visit/visa-waiver-program.html Assuming that your grandchildren are exclusively Thai (and not dual British) nationals, they will need non-immigrant visas in order to be able to enter the USA as set out in the following link:- https://th.usembassy.gov/visas/nonimmigrant-visas/