Sydebolle

As a non-American I hope that the Americans - for once - come to terms with responsibility. If I look at all the manure flying around on the internet, then I wonder, why at all there are elections. Give the rest of the world Trump; not because he is better but he is less bad. If here moves back into the White House, then WW3 will not rage over Europe and some serious crooks holding Europe as hostage like Von der Leyen, Stoltenberg and all those Central European governments of clowns will have to look for new jobs. Harris, well it might take a little more than being a female with coloured ethnicity for such a job - or not?

The US requires the "defenders of freedom" to add 15% to the consumption - compulsory. As earlier on said, the VAT applies to all businesses with a turnover over a certain amount (THB 1.6 mio. as far as I remember), below that VAT does not apply. Service charge is not compulsory; yet if it is on the menu, then you get charged for it - alternatively vote with your feet and dine elsewhere.

Another, completely bloated out of proportion, arm of the government ......... nothing will happen while the above shown aircraft, a prestige luxury version, is shuttling some big wigs up and down the country.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce81e2zq0jjo was the source of the 60kgs, his arrest in Scotland and the rest. There are no flights from Bangkok nonstop to any Scottish airport and hence he landed in Stansted. Anything else you want to bla, bla, bla me with?

Well, exports are dying as well. But it is more noteworthy to quote tourism as that is, where the goons in Bangkok want to introduce a landing tax upon arrival in the land and likewise, they are toying around with taxation of retirees pensions et al. Make up your mind but even in Thailand you cannot have your cake and eat it. Give a potential tourist or retiree a reason why to come to Thailand with fees and taxes while their currency's values go through the roof and the West is in a huge crisis?

In all fairness, Thailand has legalized cannabis for medical purposes some time ago and the next thing you saw is cannabis shops literally everywhere. Some feared "medical" trips to Thailand by all those nationalities coming from countries, where cannabis remains illegal. Some 2 - 3 years into the modus operandi here in Thailand, I can say that 80% of the cannabis shops disappeared again as the market got saturated pretty quick. I also cannot see an increase of cannabis users. Given the fact, that the term "medical use only" is interpreted rather loosely, nothing really changed. So I consider the move as a very positive step in the right direction; it decriminalized the business, the government gets its share of taxes (or not, but that is another story) while the crime rate etc. did not move an inch. Well, well, never enough it seems. Jay Emmanuel-Thomas arrived from Bangkok with 60kgs of cannabis and I seriously wonder, what did he really expect when getting off the plane in Scotland. Scottish liquids are banned in most islamic countries and cannabis is banned in Scotland; make up your mind what you want to do where ..........

Lets put Bugs Bunny onto the political stage ............. If a country may choose between two candidates for presidency while you have fifty young women queueing for the title of Miss America, then you know that it must be a weird country. The result is evident and, in many cases, a catastrophic impact for the rest of the planet 😞

Meet Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, the chief of the secret police under the days of Stalin. Beria was a prolific sexual predator, who serially raped hundreds of girls and young women, and murdered some of his victims. His home is today's Tunisian Embassy in Moscow who had some utility works done in the cellar of the building just to find decayed bones, pelvises and skulls of women buried there during Beria's days. Beria got executed in part for that (some political background as well into which I am not going into here). It should be possible in the 21st century to do a psychological analysis of applicants. Air crew undergoes this, not only flight deck but cabin crew applicants and the same could and should be implemented for applicants of privileges jobs. If this CIA man would have been caught outside the US with a diplomatic passport, the host country could not even touch him. Repatriating him back to the US (where is immunity does not grip) and do a cross border trial with Mexico - I wish you good luck with that. In this particular case it gladly surfaced; in many other cases it gets wiped under the big carpet of diplomatic immunity. May this rapist rot in hell; I still opt for the death sentence in such cases as you cannot un-rape a female, you cannot un-pedophile a child and the same applies to drug dealers. And let's see, how many years this prime example of a government officer is really serving in jail; it is certainly not 30 years - me fears.

I referred strictly to Thai banks. If you want to understand banking - see Switzerland

Throw all those officials, who look the other side, into the slammer for good; you will need to built a lot of new prisons though. All those officials dealing with the stuff = death penalty! As long as one side abides by the rules and the other side can do what they want ..............

Well, that's where the officials kick in. Working without a work permit has a fine and being in the land with the wrong visa might have another fine. Fine the boys, tell them to get work permits (if the alien business law does allow so) and close the file. Really newsworthy - I wonder?

Hot potatoes usually get passed on; maybe the interior minister Anutin can help or the minister of health or the top cop in the land? I would pass it on and publicly state, that due to a family related possible conflict of interest I passed it on. I have full confidence in Thailand's statement of no corruption, no nepotism and everything according to the law and above radar 😉

Never change a winning horse - enjoy the ride while it lasts 😉

Wan Muhamad Noor Matha is not up to date. Prawit is known as the toad which dozes off on a daily, if not hourly basis. Sometimes it happens during house sessions and the rest of the time it happens everywhere else. What else do you expect from a tattering 79 years old geezer - honestly?

Well, as an infidel I do not qualify and if I am not mistaken in my rather poor understanding of the Fidels rules, they are not allowed to charge interest either. Anyway, I am too old, too infidel and too small with my little banking business these days ..........

Never a dull moment - really. What happened to those tenants who possibly paid a one-year rent in advance and have used only part of it? Their chances for a refund - nil - I would assume. A professional alternative would have been to get the tenants to pay their dues to the "Legal Execution Department" as so done in Bangkok. 20+ years ago I had rented a big office space in one of Bangkok's office towers. The landlord had some court cases, which he must have lost as the above-mentioned department as the latter wrote a letter instructing tenants (like my company) to pay the rent to them rather than to the landlord. I - in turn - wrote back saying that there is a valid rental agreement stipulating who does what to whom. The Legal Execution Department was asked to provide official details and rulings whereby my company would be indemnified from the rental-contractual obligation of paying rent to the contractual party - the landlord. That paper never came and I kept paying to the landlord but moved at the first possible moment. The Samui story is yet ...... another Samui story. Honestly, how can a building get public water, electricity etc. without a blue house register. Latter is issued against presentation of a building permit and latter stipulates the limitations of the structure. At least that is the case in other upcountry provinces. So someone must have greased quite a few on the way; most likely nobody knows nothing anymore today. The losers are the tenants = see my first paragraph 😞 Excellent headlines for a country which so desperately needs non-Thai money in form of tourism and long-staying non-immigrants 8-)

Missing Thammanat Prompao as an expert among the safety insurers to make sure that nothing illegal is being consumed ....

All the while, all PayPal accounts of non-Thais in Thailand were blocked, under his watch (pun intended)!

Siam Commercial Bank lost me as a customer, as they halted their website presence "for security reasons" and hence can be accessed only by smart phone applications. Have you tried to pay a couple of invoices through a smart phone application, when you have to enter things like invoice number etc.? I did and still do it on a desktop computer but no longer through Siam Commercial Bank. Citibank pulled the retail plug earlier this year and passed on their business to UOB. What a disaster for non-Thai customers; they must have lost the majority by now already. Credit Card customers get their statement only by mail or through an App again; Citibank at least sent a password protected statement. On the other hand, UOB hammers you with COUNTLESS useless advertisements, which cannot be stopped (unless you block them online). Consequently I moved my credit card business away from UOB, despite having been a loyal Citibank customer for 40 years. Banking was not invented in this country - that's for sure, but why not have a look, how other professional countries are handling their banking business electronically; Switzerland as a banking heaven springs to mind 😉

Well, Chartsiri Sophonpanich should sit in for digital banking with his own financial institute - to start with. iBanking Bualuang works not 24/7 (FDC accounts) allows only 40 beneficiaries on the "transfer to" list very limited to transfer for public (PEA/PWA/MEA etc.) fee table slightly mind-boggling - see screen capture hereafter:

6% - 8% is the interest a customer pays for a loan (mortgage, not consumer credit i.e. credit card installments) 0% - 2% is the interest a customer gets for a deposit (current account to fixed deposit parking) So the earning for the bank is between 4% and 6% and, as we know, in Europe on mortgages it is considerably lower. Consecutively you cannot expect the poor, poor Thai banks, they are burdened with very complicated procedures and instructions and more a temple of inefficiency rather than a bank. So, as the owners want to see profit at the end, the customer shall burden these costs. Thai logic behind it is, that it was not the bank which hacked ........ capitol?

Prof. Dr. Crystal Ball is required

Nope, the very last one bites the dust - that is the whole idea of VAT. The final end user, beneficiary, whatever you want to call it, pays the tax on all the "value addition" since creation, import etc. The only accounting advantage could be that, if the friend has a company and books the car(s) as assets, then he can also mark 7% VAT as input tax. As a private individual there is no avoidance or possibility of refund (unless the cars would get exported for good). The VAT always* applies and can a positive or negative amount. 500 = purchased new by the first buyer 35 = VAT of 7% added on the above 535 = price paid by first buyer The 35 go, in this example, as input VAT into the seller's tax listing to be net balanced by the end of each month and result in settling a payment or enjoying a tax credit (for the next month) 100 = is the price the above article gets sold on (i.e. a loss of 400) 7 = VAT of 7% added on the above 107 = price paid by the second buyer (or revenue for the seller, i.e. the first buyer) This results in a tax credit of 28 to the benefit of the first buyer. *the VAT applies only to products, on which something has been done; fresh unprocessed meat or veggies are VAT-free, a sausage or a plate of cooked veggies in a restaurant are subject to VAT. To complicate matters; if you give it away free of charge (say, a hotel gives you a lucky draw award of a free suite with breakfast), then the 7% of the walk-in price still applies. If you have a restaurant and offer free drinks (i.e because you goofed up in the kitchen), then the revenue department is not accepting that. With non-measurable units (i.e. a glass of house wine) or a scoop of ice cream out of the two kilogrammes pail - no issue as the revenue department will never find out. But if you offer a round of beer in stubbies, you give away 10 stubbies with zero revenue which you initially bought. A physical stock control would reveal, that the stock is 10 bottles short of the sales figure. Having had restaurants, I usually just threw in a few boxes of beer on a just-in-case-basis, which happened years later. There were still stock deviations in the individual product listing (buying two cases of Heineken to cover 7 Singha, 12 Leo, 15 San Miguel Light, 9 Asahi and 3 Tiger). As you can see, there are still two stubbies too many in the stock and my accountant explained, that this happens often as staff open the wrong bottles at times.

Deport them, that is OK, I assume the provisions of the law give the court the necessary space to breathe. My point was more that if no non-Thai would have been involved, a Thai-only performance so to speak, then it would not have made any news. Given the educational understanding of our hosts here - specially upcountry - easily could reflect, that foreigners are serious b"%ç*"kers who need to fornietac at every red light or traffic jam and hence - very strange race. Explain otherwise, why most Thais refer to Caucasians as "rich" (ฝรั่งก็รวย), but never mention work, paying taxes, saving, employment loyalty and further education after school years. Another myth can be heard in a supermarket at the cashier's queue. When a child whines (สะอื้น) for a biscuit or a sweet, the child gets, heard actually quite often, reprimanded by the guardian who says, that to better stop the whining before the Caucasian in front will turn around and bite. I am fluent in Thai so I am aware what certain "news" can create. In closing, nail the pick-up passengers down and treat with them according to the law and rules but do not blow up a delicate picture completely out of proportion - me thinks!

Well, the VAT responsibility is with the seller. Correct is, that his friend will be charged 7% of the sales price and the collection is done by the seller, here the company. The latter then has to balance the VAT account against purchases done by the company and the net left over is then to the benefit of either the Company or the Revenue Department, whoever had a higher tax exposure/income (i.e. here the VAT amount).