Thailand Customs to Apply VAT on All Postal Imports

[brianthainess]

No worries, soon it won't be posted it will all come on a fast Chinese Train......

[Arkady]

5 minutes ago, dogfish180 said:

Could you imagine the lines in the PO, if this is applied to Lazada items from China! 

 

That seems to be what is not thought through, even though in Thai language reports they admitted they have been wanting to do this since the time that Abhisit was PM, i.e. 13 years.

 

But many, if not most, of the items bought from Lazada and Shopee Thailand and drop shipped from China now seem to come via Flash and other couriers.  Aliexpress also seems to deliver some things at least the last mile by Thai courier, although some packages from Aliexpress and Chinese sellers on Ebay come from the Singapore and Hong Kong post offices. Not sure how this all works, whether Flash is contracted by China Post or by Thailand Post.  Aliexpress vendors seem to under invoice higher value packages automatically without the buyer having to ask,  whereas US Ebay sellers often put up warnings saying they will report buyers who request under invoicing to the FBI.

[HuaHinNew]

So the VAT charged on imported goods is to protect local items available and sold in Thailand.

 

Based on their announcement statement, if the product is not manufactured or available here in Thailand, there should be no VAT incurred on those imported goods.   

 

Tongue in cheek statement! 5555

[sidneybear]

On 4/29/2024 at 11:47 AM, John Drake said:

Prayuth was better.

Indeed he was. Thaksin's clique has a long history of charging foreigners and all things foreign. 

[Highlandman]

On 4/30/2024 at 9:35 PM, John Drake said:

 

My view right before the election was that PTP/Thaksin were the supreme campaigners and political maneuverers. And it's true. Nobody in Thailand can compare to them. They run circles around everyone else. I also feared, however, that PTP grabbing power would be bad for expatriates in particular. Prayuth basically left immigration alone--just the 400K year round maintenance, I think. He was a status quo politician. And for me, that's what I want. No changes. Now we're getting changes galore, and I can't see anywhere it's for the better, not only for expatriates but for average Thai people. And ultimately, it's their interests that count. And I think Prayuth was better. I now look at 2021 to 2022 as a sort of Golden Age in Thailand.

 

Prayuth was the best thing to happen to Thailand politically for many years, but the expat libtards will get in a tizzy about the "junta" this and that whenever his name is mentioned. 

 

Aside from the destructive Covid policies that Prayuth and Anutin implemented (granted, I think if this government had been in power during Covid the rules would have been even stricter) his party actually accomplished quite a lot. A lot of infrastructure has been built in Thailand since 2014.

 

Thaksin did absolutely nothing. Not a single Km of intercity expressway built under that corrupt dictators watch.

 

Prayuth comes along 10 years later and actually begins to get the job done although it's a work in progress.

[Highlandman]

On 4/29/2024 at 3:49 PM, wealthychef said:

exactly.  I'm in the middle of trying to figure out how to get FedEx to deliver my vitamins I ordered from Amazon.  I have to submit a passport, give someone power of attorney, and fill in some forms.  Bureaucracy here can be maddening!  LOL

None of this is needed if you use the post office. Never use a courier for vitamins or anything other than documents. 

[mrwebb8825]

On 4/29/2024 at 12:09 AM, SpaceKadet said:

Simple. The seller will just increase the price.

Your grasp on economics is staggering.

[Lorry]

On 4/29/2024 at 2:25 PM, richard_smith237 said:

 

Happend before - we purchased something for my son from Next Thailand with free delivery (value was about 1300 baht)...   but the shipment came from overseas....  Thai customs calculated delivery which nudged the total cost up over 1500 baht, and then they charged us something in the region of 700 baht Tax (which included their handling charge or something similar)... 

 

Seemed very dodgy to me... 

In one European country it works like this:

You order something worth 3 € directly from China. 

Post office in Europe will figure out taxes and customs. This takes about 3 weeks.

During this time, your widget is stored at the post office. Storage isn't free, obviously.  They charge you 20€ for these 3 weeks storage. 

 

European middlemen were not happy that customers ordered directly from China, the middlemen used to live very well from easy profits of 1000%

[Lorry]

On 4/29/2024 at 2:42 PM, Liverpool Lou said:

Yes, it is just you.   Where has it been stated that this change is directed at expats as opposed to the other 99.99% of the population?

Expats are quite a bit more than 0.01% of the population

[wozzlegummich]

This is just another Thai politician/official making claims to do something but has now idea whatsoever how they will actually put those claims into action. 

[Liverpool Lou]

11 hours ago, Lorry said:

On 4/29/2024 at 2:42 PM, Liverpool Lou said:

Yes, it is just you.   Where has it been stated that this change is directed at expats as opposed to the other 99.99% of the population?

Expats are quite a bit more than 0.01% of the population

Figure of speech, that's all, to emphasise the daftness of the comment to which I responded but, to be as accurate as any of us can be, does 99.5% Thais/0.5% foreigners make you happier? 

[Arkady]

15 hours ago, Lorry said:

In one European country it works like this:

You order something worth 3 € directly from China. 

Post office in Europe will figure out taxes and customs. This takes about 3 weeks.

During this time, your widget is stored at the post office. Storage isn't free, obviously.  They charge you 20€ for these 3 weeks storage. 

 

European middlemen were not happy that customers ordered directly from China, the middlemen used to live very well from easy profits of 1000%

 

It is unclear who the Thai middlemen are who allegedly complained about this.  Thais cannot make any of these products.  If they import themselves in bulk, they will have lower prices but will have to pay import duty as well as VAT because the value will be over 1,400.  However, there don't seem to be any Thai wholesalers willing to stock low value Chinese products, since so many are drop shipped from China. 

 

I recall there was a lot of complaining from a Thai mom and pop store association when foreign supermarket and hypermarket operators were allowed to own l00% during the Tom Yam Kung crisis because their Thai joint venture partners were busy putting out fires in other parts of their businesses and were unwilling to put in new capital to cover losses from USD borrowings.  So the stores would have closed down with huge job losses.  The mom and pop association complained bitterly about many things they couldn't compete with including 24 hour opening. The government passed new laws to restrict the freedoms of the foreign owned stores. The mom and pop association that the government cited as the excuse for these laws eventually turned out to be the CP Group which had refused to put new capital in Tesco Lotus and Makro, so got diluted to minority shareholders when the foreign shareholders were forced to inject new capital. The genuine mom and pop store owners actually benefited from the hypermarkets because they were selling stuff cheaper they could get it from the wholesalers controlled by CP and other big Thai corporations. So they were buying their stock there and marking it up.

[SingAPorn]

I'm starting to feel that life was better with the military was in power and there were no such absurdities

[Mr Meeseeks]

You will pay the tax, you will eat the bugs. 

[Lorry]

5 hours ago, Liverpool Lou said:

0.5% foreigners

"Foreigners" are more than 5% of the population, not a negligible number.

But that includes legal and illegal foreign workers from neighboring countries as well as legal and not so legal Chinese. 

 

As for "expats", the term you used in your first post, the numbers depend on what you mean. Only farang? Only western farang (i.e. not including Russians)?

 

I guess you know all this. 

[Bill97]

PO delivered overseas box today no charge for vat.

[Liverpool Lou]

18 hours ago, Lorry said:

As for "expats", the term you used in your first post, the numbers depend on what you mean. Only farang? Only western farang (i.e. not including Russians)?

 

I guess you know all this. 

 ""...expats", the term you used...I guess you know all this."

What I do know is that it was OldmanJ who specified expats originally in the post to which I responded, not I.   I guess you don't know all this?...

"Is it only me or does it appear that the Thai government are trying to slowly drive us expats out..."

[Liverpool Lou]

18 hours ago, Lorry said:

23 hours ago, Liverpool Lou said:

0.5% foreigners

"Foreigners" are more than 5% of the population, not a negligible number.

Well done for misquoting me and contravening the forum rules by clipping my post to alter the context and make it appear that my question was a statement, it was not.  My actual post was...

"...to be as accurate as any of us can be, does 99.5% Thais/0.5% foreigners make you happier?" 

[Lorry]

On 5/3/2024 at 12:12 PM, Liverpool Lou said:

Figure of speech, that's all, to emphasise the daftness of the comment to which I responded but, to be as accurate as any of us can be, does 99.5% Thais/0.5% foreigners make you happier? 

So here is the whole quote.

You wrote "foreigners", didn't you?

I did not misquote you and I did not violate forum rules.

All I did, I am just as pedantic as you are.

 

"99.5% Thais/0.5% foreigners" is just wrong.

The population of Thailand does not consist of "99.5% Thais", they are much less. Foreigner are a very sizable minority here, more than 5% (but I guess less than 10%)

 

As for the word " expats", you avoided to say who exactly that might be. 

Only anglophones?

Only westerners?

Or does the word include Eastern Europeans?

Does it include Russians?

Arabs? Indians? Chinese? Burmese, Laotians, Cambodians? Hill tribe people born in Thailand without Thai ID card? etc...

[Liverpool Lou]

1 minute ago, Lorry said:

I did not misquote you and I did not violate forum rules.

You did.  You clipped my post to a couple of words and posted it as my quote which altered the context from a question to a statement and was, therefore, inaccurate, that is a transgression of the rules here. 

[vinny41]

22 minutes ago, Lorry said:

So here is the whole quote.

You wrote "foreigners", didn't you?

I did not misquote you and I did not violate forum rules.

All I did, I am just as pedantic as you are.

 

"99.5% Thais/0.5% foreigners" is just wrong.

The population of Thailand does not consist of "99.5% Thais", they are much less. Foreigner are a very sizable minority here, more than 5% (but I guess less than 10%)

 

As for the word " expats", you avoided to say who exactly that might be. 

Only anglophones?

Only westerners?

Or does the word include Eastern Europeans?

Does it include Russians?

Arabs? Indians? Chinese? Burmese, Laotians, Cambodians? Hill tribe people born in Thailand without Thai ID card? etc...

This recent thread puts the number of Western expats seem to total about 300k.

 

[Liverpool Lou]

58 minutes ago, vinny41 said:

This recent thread puts the number of Western expats seem to total about 300k.

 

Most of the figures used in that five-year old report were from 2017, hardly recent statistics!

[vinny41]

6 minutes ago, Liverpool Lou said:

Most of the figures used in that five-year old report were from 2017, hardly recent statistics!

Read what I posted "This recent thread"

Did I post  recent statistics answer is NO

[Liverpool Lou]

1 hour ago, Liverpool Lou said:

1 hour ago, Lorry said:

I did not misquote you and I did not violate forum rules.

You did.  You clipped my post to a couple of words and posted it as my quote which altered the context from a question to a statement

28. You will not make changes to messages quoted from other members posts, except for purposes of shortening the quoted post. Do not shorten any post in a way that alters the context of the original post.

[Liverpool Lou]

6 minutes ago, vinny41 said:

14 minutes ago, Liverpool Lou said:

Most of the figures used in that five-year old report were from 2017, hardly recent statistics!

Read what I posted "This recent thread"

Did I post  recent statistics answer is NO

My point was that those stats are meaningless because they are so out of date.   Read what I posted, i.e. "that five-year old report".  Did I post, "that recent thread"?  The answer is NO.

[vinny41]

12 minutes ago, Liverpool Lou said:

My point was that those stats are meaningless because they are so out of date.   Read what I posted, i.e. "that five-year old report".  Did I post, "that recent thread"?  The answer is NO.

I can see why your known on this forum as Mr. Picky

And those stats are the latest available and I sure the mod that posted those stats 2 months ago would disagree with you on the point of them being  meaningless or not

The Thailand Migration Report 2019 is the fifth publication that members of the United Nations Thematic Working Group on Migration have produced since 2005.

https://thailand.un.org/en/50831-thailand-migration-report-2019

[Liverpool Lou]

13 minutes ago, vinny41 said:

15 minutes ago, Liverpool Lou said:

My point was that those stats are meaningless because they are so out of date.   Read what I posted, i.e. "that five-year old report".  Did I post, "that recent thread"?  The answer is NO.

I can see why your known on this forum as Mr. Picky 

And those stats are the latest available and I sure the mod that posted those stats 2 months ago would disagree with you on the point of them being  meaningless or not 

And I can see why you are known on this forum as "Mr Didn't-Read-The-Post".

Being the latest available does not make them less irrelevant seven years later, neither does your speculatively confident opinion of Mike Lister's opinion of my comment.

[vinny41]

32 minutes ago, Liverpool Lou said:

My point was that those stats are meaningless because they are so out of date.   Read what I posted, i.e. "that five-year old report".  Did I post, "that recent thread"?  The answer is NO.

Just because the stats  in your opinion are  meaningless because they are so out of date doesn't mean that other forum members might find the information useful given that these are the  latest stats available from the UN 

[Lorry]

I perused this report,  I haven't seen it before. 

I found it very interesting. 

Yes, the statistics are a bit old, and I find some parts of the report ridiculous, but I don't think the rough picture changed a lot. Probably more Chinese now, certainly more refugees from Myanmar and a lot more Russians and Ukrainians. I don't know whether many Westerners left,  personally I know 3.

 

I am sure LiverpoolLou will bring us new, up-to-date statistics very soon. 

 

 

[Arkady]

I received a low value item from Aliexpress on 3 May without a demand for VAT payment.  Still no announcement of the new rule from the Customs Dept.