jayboy

I don't recognize this at all.The established accounting firms are very well positioned to give sound tax advice, and by definition they will or should be professional in their dealings with clients. I would be more concerned about the dodgy legal firms where I think your criticism has more application.Their market is often the less sophisticated expatriate.The warning signs are a unconvincing web presence, some oily foreigner in lead position and young inexperienced Thai legal staff. When you hear one of these hustlers pushing a tax webinar, head for the hills.

Good to know the forum's classy reputation is in no danger.

“Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait” If youth only knew, if age only could. It's a well known French proverb with much truth to it.I think that it is right that in most cases wisdom comes with age - though Thailand has many examples of there's no fool like an old fool.With age comes the relief of not much caring what strangers think of you, or feeling the weight of fashion or modish opinions.Generally with age, unless having led a feckless or unproductive life, one is free of financial pressures. It's important to be able to look back on a life with some meaning.As VS Naipaul memorably said, "The world is what it is.Men who are nothing or have allowed themselves to become nothing have no place in in it." The owl of Minerva takes flight only at dusk.Awareness and wisdom often tend to be apparent when the shades are drawing in.

My understanding is that in such circumstances it is not necessary.

It's been said before several times that for many expatriates the pressure to obtain a TIN comes from overseas banks.When (or if) the time comes to file a Thai tax return, obtaining a TIN will be a simple administrative step.As it happens I did get one (my old employment one having lapsed), mainly because I recognized my attempts to fob off my Channel Islands bank were not getting anywhere.The TRD holds no terrors for me.Being debanked does.

555

For many years Cathay employed station managers, always youngish and very capable - graduate high fliers (often Oxford or Cambridge) who were expected to advance within the Swire Group which included Cathay.They were expected to be energetic and resourceful, and as I recall were required to meet every CX flight, Don Muang in those days.This problem outlined in this thread is exactly the kind of situation they would be expected to sort out diplomatically.Whether Cathay still employs people like this I don't know, probably not as the employment of that type might be seen as elitist.It is true that in addition to their Oxbridge background they were mostly of a certain patrician class.

I believe the system at the Ministry of Interior changed quite a few years ago so that, at least in my case, after a long gap after I finished employment my current TIN was issued with the number the same as on my Pink ID. In short my old TIN was no longer operative.I would be interested to know when the Ministry of Interior rejigged the system.

Nigel Biggar, a Cambridge professor takes a different view - "Had it been sitting in judgement on the prosecution of the war against the massively murderous Nazi empire by Britain and the US, the ICC would have issued arrest warrants for Churchill and Eisenhower. While invading Italy in 1943, the Allies caused old men, women, and children to be torn apart by bombs and shells, exposed to the wintry elements by the destruction of their homes, and starved of food and water. They did this ‘knowingly’, aware of the effects of their unavoidably imprecise bombing and shelling. But they didn’t intend civilian harm and sought to minimise it, as far as war-winning allowed. Nonetheless, their efforts weren’t ‘adequate’ to save tens of thousands from perishing. The presumptuousness of a court that declares itself devoted to the cause of ‘lasting peace’, its novel and imprudent intrusion of a concept of fundamental human rights into the laws of war, and its neglect of the principle of double effect, all combine to drive a legal interpretation that makes successful war-fighting unlawful, however just its cause. Thereby the ICC undermines its own authority, forcing states intent on military victory to repudiate its jurisdiction."

No it couldn't - ridiculous suggestion.In any event the Oxford Union is a private members club and is not part of the university.Furthermore every shade of opinion has been expressed there for over 200 years and this has never been sanctioned, even when members declared before the Second World War they would not fight for King and Country.Many of those who took that position shortly therafter died in the air and on the battlegrounds and beaches.

Perhaps you didn't notice the writer is a Labour MP.

When people say it's pretty common knowledge, invariably as in this case what follows is inaccurate.Rich Thais do pay taxes but as with rich people everywhere are smart enough to minimize their payment, or more to the point hire accountants who are smart enough to minimize payment.By the way for legally employed Thais, it's quite hard to wriggle out of PAYE.

I don't vehemently disagree because I can see your logic but I think you are wrong, and it is not in my view a "massive folly" to acquire a TIN. I have a TIN and as matters stand will not be submitting a tax return for 2024 because i will have not remitted any assessable income in 2024.But more to the point I do not think it likely, even remotely likely, that the TRD will be checking whether non working foreigners with a TIN have submitted returns.

Is it nitpicking to distinguish between a biological woman and a bloke in a frock?

It's a fair point.Possibly because Thais including transgender Thais tend to be delicately built and usually not hirsute, backed up by graceful good manners in most cases.Not always the case elsewhere where a cross dressing man can sometimes be mistaken for Fred Flintstone in drag.