ballpoint

Following from the previous post... (Not a joke, but a real comparison is kind of funny).

As I said in (one of the many) the tax thread(s), I have the same issue. My fund managers send me an annual statement showing the earnings of each fund for that year (from dividends etc), which I get reinvested, but these rarely surpass USD80k. The true earnings are the combined gain in unit prices, which almost always do exceed that amount. But, until they are actually sold there is no proof of this gain, other than me showing the total value of the funds from year to year - which would be complicated due to the number of them. In any event, this wouldn't be classed as a capital gain, unless I actually sell USD80k worth of them. I suspect that even if I did so, they'd want to know that the amount was sustainable annual income, which would lead me back to the problem of showing the annual total increase in value of my holdings. I can easily see that, by trying to follow the Wealthy Pensioner proof of income method, my loss of investment from annually selling more funds than I need to, or remitting USD250k of my capital to Thailand, would end up greater than any taxes I'd be paying here. Maybe one day, when I'm not so interested in growing my holdings and am more interested in keeping things simple no matter the (affordable) cost, I'll jump through their hoops, but as I'm still under 60, that will be more than a few years from now. In the back of my mind, there's also the nagging suspicion that one day this, or a future, government will change the tax laws making LTR holders liable for tax, and taxing all overseas income, in line with other countries. Having provided documents proving that one earns at least USD80k per year, it would be very hard to wriggle out of paying taxes on that. No doubt this paragraph will be jumped on by LTR holders, and there's nothing what so ever to say that both those things will happen, and I strongly hope it never does, but it's not as if governments in general, and the Thai government in particular, haven't back tracked and broken promises before. The Australian government is doing it right now with their proposed changes to what constitutes tax residency, and redefining non-taxable Australian property. If I could easily get an LTR here, with no change in my current investment scheme, then I would, but if I'm going to be weighing up gains and losses through complying, then I'd rather stay under the radar until I reach a definite conclusion.

What this has taught us, and every despot globally, is that modern warfare is about owning nuclear weapons and threatening to use them should the enemy dare do to you what you have been doing to it for years.