OJAS

IMHO this would all only work if the RD were to tear up each and every foreign double taxation agreement entered into by Thailand since the amounts which they would otherwise be able to screw us for by way of taxation would almost certainly amount to peanuts. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the international response to such unilateral action on the RD's part would take the form of punitive economic sanctions targetted at crippling the tourist industry upon which Thailand relies so much. Not to mention that hiso's with significant economic investments in our home countries would almost certainly find their assets and bank accounts there frozen. They alone should ensure that the RD's hare-brained proposals are unlikely ever to see the light of day in any meaningful way, I would have thought!

https://www.rd.go.th/fileadmin/user_upload/AEC/AseanTax-Thailand.pdf

And can RD tax returns be filed in English? Or is Thai the strict (& sole) order of the day?

I strongly suspect that it will be more for Nationwide to decide whether @Keith5588 constitutes a UK resident within the meaning of their terms and conditions. However, it doesn't look to me like his chances of being regarded as such are that great. That said, If he still considers it worthwhile seeking clarification of his residency status from HMRC, then the following link would appear to be a good starting-point:- https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rdr3-statutory-residence-test-srt/guidance-note-for-statutory-residence-test-srt-rdr3

Looks like the water supply to the tea urns in HMPO's Liverpool office has been turbo-charged!????

IMHO the finger of blame in your case would be far more appropriately pointed at those clowns at HMPO, whose bungling incompetence and ineptitude is presumably the reason why you didn't get your old passport back at the same time as your new one.

Sorry to hear about your cancer situation. But the sneeringly patronising arrogance which you have thus far gleefully displayed in this thread with a "Me Mr High & Mighty Ultra-Perfect & Ultra-Superior Westerner" attitude is really doing you no favours at all IMHO.

Just as is the case back in our home countries if you haven't already noticed, with many instances of expats here having their bank accounts back home, usually of many years' standing, summarily closed with minimal notice, solely on IMHO totally irrelevant non-residential grounds. A particularly sore point for us Brits at the present time, but equally true of the USA and other Western countries, I strongly suspect.

Just be aware that your initial retirement extension will be dated from when you apply for it at Immigration rather than from when your current permission to stay expires. Subsequent annual extensions will, however, be dated from when the permission to stay granted under the preceding extension expires.

I'm sure that any thread on here this time 5 years ago suggesting that the American, Australian and British embassies were about to discontinue their income confirmation services would similarly have been dismissed as rubbish. But we all know what, in the event, happened just a few months later.

So does this mean that our mobiles are likely to start emitting deafening wailing sounds over which we have no control, like they did on a test basis in the UK last April? https://aseannow.com/topic/1292603-uk-emergency-alerts-service-test-23-april-2022/

Looks to me like Smarty/Three are joining the UK party (along with HM Government and banks) in making our lives here in LOS just as difficult and miserable as they humanly can be.....

Sadly the Paypal option is no longer available from Thailand for foreigners.????

Yep, in typical Yes Minister-speak debit cards will no doubt be provided by Wise "in the fullness of time and at the appropriate juncture".???? I strongly suspect that it's Thai banking regulations that are proving a major stumbling-block here.

Because the UK Government as a whole is out to make our lives in LOS just as difficult and miserable as they humanly can be, with the eager and willing assistance of its Thai counterpart.

Nothing to do with the law but everything to do with individual UK banks' terms and conditions, I'm afraid. Even though they are IMHO effectively acting as a cartel as regards the residency requirement, successive UK governments have shown no appetite for flexing their legislative muscles in order to force any change - most likely, I strongly suspect, because of the general indifferent (and even downright hostile) attitude shown towards expats generally (not just those based in LOS) back in Blighty.

The issues which you have highlighted could potentially arise in our dealings with not only the RD here in Thailand but also with the taxation authorities back in our home countries. For instance, we British expat retirees are, generally speaking, only required to file annual tax returns with HMRC if we are in receipt of non-pension sources of income such as rents on UK properties which we own. As I see things, though, all of us could be forced into filing such returns as a prerequisite to avoiding double taxation, with all which that would entail - for the first time ever in many cases, I strongly suspect.

IMHO we should all have our fingers firmly crossed that the RD's Director-General doesn't have in mind the various international double taxation agreements entered into by Thailand under this heading.......

In any event it wouldn't look too great presentationally, I would have thought, if a hiso aged 70, but not a loso aged 69, were exempted from paying income tax.

So how come that 76 of the 79 foreign embassies in Bangkok are still able to provide income confirmation services to their nationals, presumably in full compliance with Immigration Bureau requirements, then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diplomatic_missions_in_Thailand

What a pathetic response.

I have attached below a link to the current DTA between the UK and Thailand, from which it should be apparent that it is not confined to pensions:- https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80bddc40f0b623026953eb/uk-thailand-dtc180281_-_in_force.pdf In particular income from your UK property rental is covered by Article 7, as will be the capital gain from its possible eventual sale by Article 14(1). Pensions are dealt with in Article 19(2), but not all pensions are covered by the DTA: only those relating to public sector occupational pension schemes (Civil Service, local authority, police, military, NHS, etc). Private sector schemes are not covered - as is not, more crucially in the case of most of us, the UK State Pension, for which I have calculated that I would be theoretically liable to an annual tax payment to the Thai RD on my perpetually frozen pension of around 7,000 THB or 160 GBP. Much good would such a "contribution" on my part do to alleviating the Thai national debt! What I personally find extremely worrying in all this, though, is that, once it dawns on those numbskulls in the Thai Revenue Department that the amounts they'll be able to screw us expats for by way of tax are likely to be severely constrained by the terms of the DTA's entered into with not only the UK but also other Western countries, their reaction would simply be to rip up these DTA's unilaterally. I would therefore like to think that the Western diplomatic corps as a whole in Bangkok would be sufficiently geared up to ensure that swift and appropriate international retaliatory action was targetted at those responsible in the RD and more widely the Thai government as a whole, should such unacceptably outrageous actions ever come to pass.

Long may that happy state of affairs continue! I earnestly hope for your sake, then, that it isn't the dreaded Bangkok Bank Bualuang m-Banking app! Accessing it has proved a hit-and-miss affair (with increasing emphasis on "miss") in my experience. After placing my finger on the screen icon and going through security checks, 1 of 3 things, then tends to happen:- (1) Nothing at all. (2) A dark blue screen with the Bangkok Bank logo pops up and then lingers around for several seconds before disappearing. (3) Even worse the dreaded black screen of death appears. So frustrated have I become at having this happen whenever I attempt to make a scanned payment (meaning that I then have no choice other than to make the necessary payment by cash instead), that I have now jacked this worse-than-useless piece of excrement by binning the app in disgust. In future I intend to rely on the far superior and user-friendlier Bualuang i-Banking facility for my modest electronic banking needs instead. In case some IT geek on here is minded to tell me that there's absolutely nothing wrong with the Bualuang m-Banking app and that it's all down to my smartphone, I should say that I've never experienced similar problems with other apps - most certainly not with Wise's app, for instance, which I do find particularly useful in scheduling transfers (although Wise do appear to have messed about with it according to the latest version I installed earlier today). Based on my experience, you'd better brace yourself for an almighty leap from the frying pan into the fire if you're minded to go down the app route with Bangkok Bank (if you haven't already made the jump), I think!

Would not surprise me in the slightest if quite a few of us were driven to the bottle in any event by what might be in prospect!

More likely, I fear and suspect, that, if we were unable to file tax returns in the Thai language ourselves (with doubtless particular regard to specific requirements for all dates to be expressed strictly in the B.E. calendar format and all numerals in the Thai (rather than Western/Arabic) numbering format, the RD would be expecting us to line the pockets of accountants who were well versed in local linguistics at considerable expense to us in all certainty.