8 hours ago, Gaccha said:

....

The issue is that any movement of money from anywhere to anywhere will result in an autoconversion to Thai baht if your account is Thai based. The autoconversion will almost certainly count as a remittance in Thai tax law (experts are currently seeking clarification from Thailand's tax offices). And that means every satang will count towards your taxable income of that year.

....

These changes then are extremely significant, indeed they are existentially significant, if you are Thai based and if you use Wise as a global linkage mechanism for tax avoidance (not to be confused with tax evasion) and other sensible measures.

That is a good example IMHO - where one might be inappropriately subject to taxation. In such a case, one would need to make an extra effort to show such funds were covered already by a Double Tax Agreement between one's source country (and Thailand) or extra effort to prove such funds were covered by Thai ministerial directives PAW.161/162 (and were pre-1-Jan-2024 savings). ... Having to keep internal records to document that would be a bit of an annoyance given the funds were never intended to be (in practice) remitted to Thailand as the end destination of the funds.

And it further illustrates that a Thai based Wise account/card is not very suitable for use outside of Thailand if the source of one's funds is not Thailand. Only LTR visa holders (such as LTR-WP or LTR-WGC) don't have to be concerned about the taxation aspect. ... But even they (LTR visa holders), if using a Thai based Wise account, get 'hit' with the double conversion fee (ie say Euros > Thai Baht > Hong Kong dollars ). ...

So the 'Thai' based Wise account is more limited, than say a 'Germany' based Wise account.

A tax expert website has offered a rather nice list of those people who will be especially affected in these upcoming May changes.

The key point is the issue of "remittance" in Thai tax law. Thailand has a remittance tax system unlike many other countries (the UK, by contrast, has for its tax residents a global tax regime). So controlling and timing or avoiding remittances is extremely important to minimise tax levels.

If like clockwork you simply move money month by month through Wise from a specific income source then probably nothing needs to be done.

But if you use Wise in a more sophisticated manner then this website will be worth reading:

https://www.expattaxthailand.com/wise-thailand-tax-update-2026/?hl=en-GB

I can think of a couple of crucial problem areas where the Wise account is used as a bridging mechanism:

-If you move money between two countries, neither of which are Thailand.

-You use the Wise virtual accounts for local transfers within a country between your own accounts. (If you have no idea what Wise virtual accounts are then you have nothing to worry about)

This website also makes similar points although not getting to the issue of tax:

https://neobanque.ch/blog/wise-bank-of-thailand-regulated-money-transfer-app/?hl=en-GB

I think I'll stick with my Revolut card that just got banking approval in the UK.

11 hours ago, Gaccha said:

A tax expert website has offered a rather nice list of those people who will be especially affected in these upcoming May changes.

A point worth noting, mainly for those who know nothing about Wise , is that the some of above mostly applies to those who have a Thai address in their Wise. it is not fully applicable to those with a Wise card with an address from outside of Thailand.

Each year I pay my medical insurance annual premium by transferring GBP from an offshore investment a/c to Wise using BACS (no charge). This transfer can only be made to an a/c in my name.

I then transfer the GBP to the UK insurer's UK GBP a/c, once again using BACS. As the funds do not enter Thailand there is no tax liability.

So, does this mean that I will now have to transfer GBP from my offshore a/c to Wise Thailand, presumably by SWIFT with charges. Have the GBP converted to THB, at cost, convert back to GBP, at cost, and then transfer to the UK using SWIFT, at more cost. And then, to add insult to injury, pay Thai tax on the premium of several thousands of GBP?

As I live in Thailand with no other address, UK or otherwise, does anyone know of an alternative to Wise? Thanks.

In addition just noticed on the Expat Tax web site that non-THB balances can not be sent directly to overseas bank accounts. Effectively meaning I can not even pay the premium using Wise!

1 hour ago, RupertIII said:

Each year I pay my medical insurance annual premium by transferring GBP from an offshore investment a/c to Wise using BACS (no charge). This transfer can only be made to an a/c in my name.

I then transfer the GBP to the UK insurer's UK GBP a/c, once again using BACS. As the funds do not enter Thailand there is no tax liability.

So, does this mean that I will now have to transfer GBP from my offshore a/c to Wise Thailand, presumably by SWIFT with charges. Have the GBP converted to THB, at cost, convert back to GBP, at cost, and then transfer to the UK using SWIFT, at more cost. And then, to add insult to injury, pay Thai tax on the premium of several thousands of GBP?

As I live in Thailand with no other address, UK or otherwise, does anyone know of an alternative to Wise? Thanks.

In addition just noticed on the Expat Tax web site that non-THB balances can not be sent directly to overseas bank accounts. Effectively meaning I can not even pay the premium using Wise!

In all those various ways you just described you are exactly the kind of person who needs to act before the May date arrives. You don't have much time. You'll find that moving the money around and trying to liquidate assets and filling in all the paperwork will take a good solid month.

You might determine that simply taking the tax hit as well as the various conversion charges is the best way ahead.

From checking around I simply could not find a truly equal alternative to Wise among Fintech alternatives. There are certainly other companies that will send your money at cheap cost direct from your offshore account to a non-Thai location, but I think you'll find they do not offer the same auto transfer option or an option to sit the money with them. You would lose a lot of your flexibility and a lot of time.

An option that you might consider is opening a high-value or elite bank account in the third country to act as a new bridge between your various financial locations. Unfortunately this requires quite a large sum to be in the account for the bank to be willing to open it (banks typically do not want to open accounts for people not resident in a country) but they will open it for free and in fact they will throw money at you to open it.

Examples are Standard Chartered Priority, HSBC Premier, Citigold etc. the absolute cheapest that I can think of would be HSBC Premier in Malaysia which is probably only around $100, 000 of funds needed for them to open it. This option is very popular among wealthy Thais.

They all have pluses and minuses. HSBC will automatically upgrade all your accounts across the whole world to premier level and link the accounts. So if you opened the Malaysia one on the cheap then you would also get your UK account upgraded to Premier level as well. Suddenly you would find free transfer across the globe between the accounts.

By contrast the Citigold is exceptionally good for travellers with a great deal of perks, and has a very deep well of wealth fund options.

The details are really what will make them the right place for you and only you can decide that. But you must act.

I started looking around almost the instant I heard about this and it has taken me until this week to get it all done.

31 minutes ago, Gaccha said:

In all those various ways you just described you are exactly the kind of person who needs to act before the May date arrives. You don't have much time. You'll find that moving the money around and trying to liquidate assets and filling in all the paperwork will take a good solid month.

You might determine that simply taking the tax hit as well as the various conversion charges is the best way ahead.

From checking around I simply could not find a truly equal alternative to Wise among Fintech alternatives. There are certainly other companies that will send your money at cheap cost direct from your offshore account to a non-Thai location, but I think you'll find they do not offer the same auto transfer option or an option to sit the money with them. You would lose a lot of your flexibility and a lot of time.

An option that you might consider is opening a high-value or elite bank account in the third country to act as a new bridge between your various financial locations. Unfortunately this requires quite a large sum to be in the account for the bank to be willing to open it (banks typically do not want to open accounts for people not resident in a country) but they will open it for free and in fact they will throw money at you to open it.

Examples are Standard Chartered Priority, HSBC Premier, Citigold etc. the absolute cheapest that I can think of would be HSBC Premier in Malaysia which is probably only around $100, 000 of funds needed for them to open it. This option is very popular among wealthy Thais.

They all have pluses and minuses. HSBC will automatically upgrade all your accounts across the whole world to premier level and link the accounts. So if you opened the Malaysia one on the cheap then you would also get your UK account upgraded to Premier level as well. Suddenly you would find free transfer across the globe between the accounts.

By contrast the Citigold is exceptionally good for travellers with a great deal of perks, and has a very deep well of wealth fund options.

The details are really what will make them the right place for you and only you can decide that. But you must act.

I started looking around almost the instant I heard about this and it has taken me until this week to get it all done.

Many thanks Gaccha. I will consider this but the downside would seem to be that I will have USD100k sitting there not earning. My other option is to transfer direct to my GDB FC a/c with Bangkok Bank and suffer their high charges for international transfers, not to mention the hassle of going to one of their few international branches and completing the numerous required forms in duplicate, cannot be done from my online banking without converting to THB first and then back to GDB! Alternatively cancel the insurance which seems a shame after 30+ years.

3 hours ago, RupertIII said:

the downside would seem to be that I will have USD100k sitting there not earning.

In fact that is not the case. They will encourage you to invest into shares or mutual funds or ETFs or bonds on their platform since they will want the commission.

And if you don't want to invest, they typically offer multiple currency accounts (normally around 15 currencies are automatically opened for you) so you can simply tactically slot your money into a high interest currency.

You might also want to leave a bit of money to be "frozen" (around $10,000) so that you can be given a free, extremely desirable credit card with infinite lounge access etc. That's not my thing but I know it is on offer.

They don't actually require money to sit in the account but simply require that you have in total enough across their various products. They will add that all together every three or four months to make sure you have enough. They will provide some leeway if it goes a bit below for a time. If it does go a bit below they typically charge about 10 or $15 a month. There could be a problem if there is a major share collapse etc.

Make sure when you open it you mention the freebies offer (just check on their websites for their latest cash giveaways etc). Free money is free money after all.