Offshore bank account

[salavan]

Just inquired about opening an offshore account with skiptons. 

They asked me where I'm tax resident (Thailand) will I be taxed by the Thai revenue department on the interest I receive. 

[ChaiyaTH]

Answer no, next.

[salavan]

11 minutes ago, ChaiyaTH said:

Answer no, next.

I assume skiptons will inform the Thai revenue department under the new exchange of information act recently brought in so will I have to declare the interest I have received? 

[oldcpu]

26 minutes ago, salavan said:

I assume skiptons will inform the Thai revenue department under the new exchange of information act recently brought in so will I have to declare the interest I have received? 

 

With regard to declaring, I suspect only if you meet some conditions, where it only needs to be declared if:

(1 you remit the interest to Thailand when a tax resident of Thailand and

(2) your combined income with this remitted interest meets or exceeds the Thai threshold for income tax filing, and

(3) you don't have an LTR visa.

 

However i am no tax expert. As always, its best to double check and obtain better advise elsewhere.

[koolkarl]

First, it depends on which country you will be opening the bank account.  

In my opinion, eventually you will have to report worldwide income to Thai tax dept. if you are in Thailand more than 180 days a year.  When this happens, who knows.  

[jojothai]

On 6/26/2025 at 12:25 PM, salavan said:

I assume skiptons will inform the Thai revenue department under the new exchange of information act recently brought in so will I have to declare the interest I have received? 

I think your original post was not clear. Its not Skipton asking whether you will be taxed.
Its your question on the forum.
Read the post from oldcpu. It currently primarily depends if you are resident and  remit the interest amount to Thailand which will be considered as income and whether you need to complete a tax return. 
However, be aware that Skipton should require that you provide a Thailand Tax ID. It is mandatory under the CRS (Common Reporting Standard), but there are some specific exemptions.
If you do not have a Thai tax ID, thats perhaps going to take some effort. If you read related posts on the forum you will see that many people, and tax offices, do not consider it necessary or applicable.
You will have to go to your local tax office to request.
Some Thai banks are now starting to ask for Tax ID, and it will eventually get implemented here under the CRS .
So, IMHO its best you deal with getting one. Other people may disagree.

If you have a Thai tax ID it does not mean that you have to submit a tax return every year.
See oldcpu post item 2).

[hullmonkey1]

2 hours ago, jojothai said:

f you have a Thai tax ID it does not mean that you have to submit a tax return every year.
See oldcpu post item 2)

Can you post a link to oldcpu post. Thanks

[oldcpu]

2 hours ago, hullmonkey1 said:

Can you post a link to oldcpu post. Thanks

Better yet - I  will repost.  Its not long:

 

 

With regard to declaring, I suspect only if you meet some conditions, where it only needs to be declared if:

(1) you remit the interest to Thailand when a tax resident of Thailand and

(2) your combined income with this remitted interest meets or exceeds the Thai threshold for income tax filing, and

(3) you don't have an LTR visa.

 

However i am no tax expert. As always, its best to double check and obtain better advise elsewhere.

[hullmonkey1]

18 minutes ago, oldcpu said:

Better yet - I  will repost.  Its not long:

 

 

With regard to declaring, I suspect only if you meet some conditions, where it only needs to be declared if:

(1) you remit the interest to Thailand when a tax resident of Thailand and

(2) your combined income with this remitted interest meets or exceeds the Thai threshold for income tax filing, and

(3) you don't have an LTR visa.

 

However i am no tax expert. As always, its best to double check and obtain better advise elsewhere.

Thanks oldcpu much appreciated 

[K2938]

5 hours ago, jojothai said:

Some Thai banks are now starting to ask for Tax ID, and it will eventually get implemented here under the CRS .

Some Thai banks are now starting to for FOREIGN or THAI tax ID?  Or regardless?

[topt]

5 hours ago, jojothai said:

However, be aware that Skipton should require that you provide a Thailand Tax ID. It is mandatory under the CRS (Common Reporting Standard), but there are some specific exemptions.

From what you say it sounds like you have a Skipton off-shore account and know this for a fact?

Can you please elucidate what the "specific exemptions" you  refer to are?

[jojothai]

14 hours ago, K2938 said:

Some Thai banks are now starting to for FOREIGN or THAI tax ID?  Or regardless?

A tax ID. Under the CRS regulations it is a requirement for the banks to get it.
I suppose if you give them a foreign tax ID they have to accept it, but i do not know.
I have a Thai tax ID so I have no problem declaring it.

As a related note, but not something that happened for Thai Banks, I had problems before from an offshore bank wanting two tax IDs when I was working in Israel and classed as living in Thailand. They were asking for a Thai tax ID. 
It took a few efforts to get them to understand that I was not (tax) resident in Thailand at the time and there was no reason for them to request it.
Perhaps if you give a thai bank a foreign tax ID they may ask for a thai tax ID as well,
in particular If you are resident and remitting money from overseas.
Its something we wil not know until somebody reports such an issue.


 

[jojothai]

14 hours ago, topt said:

From what you say it sounds like you have a Skipton off-shore account and know this for a fact?

Can you please elucidate what the "specific exemptions" you  refer to are?

NO,
I have other offshore bank accounts, uk accounts, etc.
I know for a fact what the CRS requirements are and what several institutions have required.
The declaration of the Tax ID is always a must have.
I had enough battles over what other information has to be given or not and had to read a lot of the CRS implementation requirements to reject the banks requests for extra personal information.
If you want to know more about requirements and any exemptions then go and study the CRS requirements.
you can start at 
https://www.oecd.org/en/networks/global-forum-tax-transparency.html

and
https://www.oecd.org/en/networks/global-forum-tax-transparency/resources/aeoi-implementation-portal.html

[Yumthai]

3 hours ago, jojothai said:

The declaration of the Tax ID is always a must have.

It's not always a must have. There's a field on the CRS self-certification form where you can explain why you are unable to obtain a TIN from your country of tax residence. But of course any financial institution can set their own policy and deny/open accounts accordingly.

 

https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/topics/policy-issue-focus/aeoi/crs_entities_self-cert_form.pdf

[topt]

8 hours ago, jojothai said:

The declaration of the Tax ID is always a must have.

Not necessarily.

 

5 hours ago, Yumthai said:

It's not always a must have.

Agreed along with the rest of your post. 

[jojothai]

18 hours ago, Yumthai said:

It's not always a must have. There's a field on the CRS self-certification form where you can explain why you are unable to obtain a TIN from your country of tax residence. But of course any financial institution can set their own policy and deny/open accounts accordingly.

 

https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/topics/policy-issue-focus/aeoi/crs_entities_self-cert_form.pdf

I said that there are some exceptions, but you need to study the requirements in detail to find what can be accepted.

One i do know. If the bank / institution is in your home country where you are tax resident. That makes sense, since its only a tax issue in that country.

The whole idea of the CRS is to stop people from tax avoidance across international borders.

You will need a very good reason to explain why you have no tax residence anywhere.

Its not going to work with some lame excuse. Perhaps somebody may be able to show that the local tax office will not issue them with one. As seems to be a problem reported in posts here. Maybe that would work.

It is a requirement that you declare tax residence, and the forms include the requirement to also self declare tax ID.

All the financial institutions i have used insist they must have the declarations including the tax ID. Since the CRS started. Its been a long time and its not just a few.

Best of luck to anybody who may encounter the issue.

[JontS]

This can be a bit tricky. I just recently moved here from Denmark and by moving away from Denmark, the authorities there no longer consider me a tax resident for future income.

 

Soon after I made the move, the 4 banks that I had in Denmark, and Interactive Brokers, started asking for a tax ID. I then went to the authorities here in Thailand only to find out that they will not issue one until after at least 6 months, or when I am due to pay taxes.

 

It took a bit of back and forth, but they all accepted my explanation that I couldn't provide at tax ID at this time. I was even able to open an additional account at Interactive Broker using the same explanation.

 

 

[jojothai]

7 minutes ago, JontS said:

This can be a bit tricky. I just recently moved here from Denmark and by moving away from Denmark, the authorities there no longer consider me a tax resident for future income.

 

Soon after I made the move, the 4 banks that I had in Denmark, and Interactive Brokers, started asking for a tax ID. I then went to the authorities here in Thailand only to find out that they will not issue one until after at least 6 months, or when I am due to pay taxes.

 

It took a bit of back and forth, but they all accepted my explanation that I couldn't provide at tax ID at this time. I was even able to open an additional account at Interactive Broker using the same explanation.

 

 

Thank you.

It fits with what i just posted.

You had a very good reason why you could not provide the tax ID.

However, in my experience you should expect that they are going to be asking for it later.

[Yumthai]

3 hours ago, jojothai said:

I said that there are some exceptions, but you need to study the requirements in detail to find what can be accepted.

OK, but you've also further said "The declaration of the Tax ID is always a must have". Sounds contradicting.

 

3 hours ago, jojothai said:

You had a very good reason why you could not provide the tax ID.

Being tax resident with no taxable income is also a very acceptable and sufficient reason not being able to provide a TIN.

 

Now some zealous financial institutions may have stricter requirements, but not OECD requirements related.

 

As a Thai tax resident, my offshore banks and IBKR have well understood that I can't show a Thai TIN as I have no taxable income in Thailand, the only country I am currently tax resident. I know many other people in the same situation.

 

[jojothai]

1 hour ago, Yumthai said:

OK, but you've also further said "The declaration of the Tax ID is always a must have". Sounds contradicting.

 

Being tax resident with no taxable income is also a very acceptable and sufficient reason not being able to provide a TIN.

As a Thai tax resident, my offshore banks and IBKR have well understood that I can't show a Thai TIN as I have no taxable income in Thailand, the only country I am currently tax resident. 

 

It is a "must have" for the financial institutions. Thats why its on the form. And they must request it according to what will be in their own regulations otherwise they will be non- compliant with their requirements.

If you can justify not having it and get them to accept your situation, then i do not consider it contradictory.

 

For an offshore or overseas bank it is not related to whether you have taxable income within thailand.

Its what may be taxable from within their account that is the reason for them needing to know if you are thai tax resident and TIN. They are required to exchange information and need the tax ID to do that, unless you have a very good reason for not declaring it.

 

If you have no interest on savings or income on any of the accounts then perhaps you can argue that there cannot be any tax due so no need for the TIN.

However many people will have accounts with interest paid on their savings. Then that is income within the account.

 

You should also be aware that any pension income paid into the account would be classed as income under the thai tax system and is taxable unless your country DTA excludes it.

Or, its not taxable here if it is not remitted to thailand as the laws currently stand.

The offshore bank does not make any decisions on that. They should report information on income regardless.

If there are any remittances to thailand, the individual would have to make any case for it not being taxable in Thailand.

 

In relation to this if there is a change to worldwide income being taxable could have a serious impact on those with pension income outside the country. Unless their DTA covers the pension income.

[JontS]

One thing I still haven't figured out is how the Thai tax authorities view accrued interest in e.g. IBKR, that is left in that account and not remitted into Thailand. Money that I remit into Thailand comes from savings, so as long as I leave the interest and gains in the IBKR account it won't be taxed anywhere? Sounds almost too good to be true.

[oldcpu]

5 hours ago, JontS said:

This can be a bit tricky. I just recently moved here from Denmark and by moving away from Denmark, the authorities there no longer consider me a tax resident for future income.

 

Soon after I made the move, the 4 banks that I had in Denmark, and Interactive Brokers, started asking for a tax ID. I then went to the authorities here in Thailand only to find out that they will not issue one until after at least 6 months, or when I am due to pay taxes.

 

It took a bit of back and forth, but they all accepted my explanation that I couldn't provide at tax ID at this time. I was even able to open an additional account at Interactive Broker using the same explanation.

 

 

 

At the risk of beating a 'dead horse' in repeating what I have posted in the past, i had an issue where a bank in Canada froze my funds until I could provide a Thai  tax-ID.  Further at the same time in attempting to open a trading account in Canada, I was asked for a Thai tax ID.

 

I actually applied (on line) for a Thai tax-ID (my wife did this for me as it was in Thai language), but that application (which goes to Bangkok) was then forwarded to the Phuket office who contacted me.  Since they spoke in Thai my wife handled all the communications.  Since I was remitting no money to Thailand, the local Revenue Department would not provide me a Thai tax-ID. They did note thou, that if they were to provide me a tax-ID, that my Thai pink-ID # (which comes from the Yellow Book #) could be my Thai tax ID ( if they activated it as a tax-ID ) . But they had not done so since I was remitting no money to Thailand.

 

I then passed to the Canadian organisations my Thai Pink-ID #, with a written comment from me that it was not yet activated as a Thai tax ID per the Thai Revenue department decision. Those organisations accepted that.

.