I recently read an article in the BKK Post which said that the current land transfer tax was to be lowered from the current rate of (2% - i think) to 0.01% -  in a move to kick start the almost dead housing market.  I was wondering if this would apply to any ferang who may want to transfer a house currently held through a nominee company set up to his Thai wife.

Does anyone know what the main costs of doing this are - excluding the future possibility/likleyhood of loosing all rights to the property!

i mean, the way i understand it, it is not a simple or cheap option to simply transfer a house to ones wife - but if the land transfer tax was a major part of the cost then it is a lot cheaper now??

confused - appreciate any insight

I believe what we read in the Bangkok Post was the normal 'proposal' rather than current news. But if it has or does happen it should make it very inexpensive to do the transfer. Will let others with current knowledge outline the costs.

I have heard of a proposed land tax cut. Can't remember the details of the article exactly. I think it is only proposed to affect certain sectors of the property market, such as first home builders or something like that.

That aside - The sysytem would work much better if the land department used realistic or actual sale values (even though they say they do) in the calcualtion of land transfer tax.

Where I live, listed land values for local areas by the land department are more than double what the banks valuations & for sale prices realised in the last two years that I have been observing the market.

Just recently my father in law bought 100 rai of overgrown rural land for 18,500B per rai. He had to pay a transfer tax fee based on a figure of 60,000B per rai even though there has not been one parcel of land in that area sell for that much in the last 5 years.

It seems the land department speculates as much as anybody else.

Cheers,

Soundman.

The proposed reduction in transfer fees has not gone though. Land transfers still provide too much tax revenue for local governments to give up.

In fact I understand that it has been dropped, in favour of interest rate reductions and the proposed tax rebate measure that was announced recently.