Huge Tax Hikes On Liquor And Cigarettes

[charlesfrith]

These are not huge tax increases.

100 Baht a pack would be a reasonable price at this stage for a pack of cigarettes.

[judyel]

This will not reduce anything... What it will do is reduce the income of the Thai family...

Agreed. Higher taxes don't mean fewer smokers. It only means poorer smokers!

[Mid]

These are not huge tax increases.

100 Baht a pack would be a reasonable price at this stage for a pack of cigarettes.

purely out of idle curiosity ,

Do You Have Any Idea What the Minimum Daily Wage is ???

question is for the poster quoted , I'm well aware of the answer thanxs

[marshall]

I*m Sure That 3 Baht Is Going To Stop Millions Of People Smoking (Ye Right)

Could Be Worse For Us Farang Eh, Could Be In The UK, I Hear Cigs Are Nearly 6 Quid A Packet Marlboro Lights)

[grtaylor]

I'm not a smoker (but I'm not vehemently anti-smoking either) and I'm a light social drinker, so neither will affect me greatly, but what really annoys me is that this measure, and many others, are being put in place by an INTERIM and NON-ELECTED government!

Thailand is littered with laws (sorry, military decrees) made by previous non-elected governments, and some of them are the worst ones! Doesn't the whole 49% company ownership thing have its origins in a previous post-coup military government?

Is it really the role of an interim government to be doing this sort of thing?

G

Edited August 29, 2007 by grtaylor

[robsamui]

These are not huge tax increases.

100 Baht a pack would be a reasonable price at this stage for a pack of cigarettes.

purely out of idle curiosity ,

Do You Have Any Idea What the Minimum Daily Wage is ???

question is for the poster quoted , I'm well aware of the answer thanxs

OOO HOOO - huge bag of fish, here!

In Bangkok?

In Yala or Surin?

Across what range - registered workers or not?

BKK Post quoted 11,000 baht a few months ago, but I know of many (thousands?) of workers who are on 100 baht a day.

Out of BKK, a building worker gets 3-4000 a month - if someone can speak English and work in a hotel, maybe 8-9.

10 years ago the Prime Minister's official salary was 124,000 a year - and I was earning more than this as a teacher!

Simple answer - nobody has the faintest idea!

R

Edited August 29, 2007 by robsamui

[robsamui]

PS -

The Thai restaurant that I go to regularly employs school-leavers at 2,000 a month. These 16-year olds are happy to do this ... they have no school certificate and can speak only Thai - who else will employ them? one of them has been there 2 years now on the same money.

R

[JimsKnight]

If they hike it again its time to cut back.

I smoke in LOS but simply went with the flow when the tax hikes started, I cut back on the intake.

Now I just smoke at night when I'm out drinking, no more than ten smokes and thats me

If it gets me it gets me but everyones gotta die some day!

[MengWan]

A bottle of Thaï whisky is still too cheap compared, for example, to the price of a bottle of Evian water !

I suppose that foreign water, being bad for health, is heavier taxed than local whisky, which is good for health ?

[wilko]

These are not huge tax increases.

100 Baht a pack would be a reasonable price at this stage for a pack of cigarettes.

purely out of idle curiosity ,

Do You Have Any Idea What the Minimum Daily Wage is ???

question is for the poster quoted , I'm well aware of the answer thanxs

Cho0nburi - 160 baht per day......or 30 cigs!

[wilko]

11k per month is ridiculous - simply not true - maybe an average wage or something like that.

Minimum wages are set by region, I believe and it can be a 10 hour day - overtime rates can be as little as 10% extra

[wolfmanjack]

11k per month is ridiculous - simply not true - maybe an average wage or something like that.

Minimum wages are set by region, I believe and it can be a 10 hour day - overtime rates can be as little as 10% extra

The legal working day is 8 hours and the legal overtime is 150% of the normal wage. According to the labor law you are supposed to pay overtime for every hour over 8 hours and all day on sunday or any other holiday.

I am curious if anyone knows of a website that lists the wages for gov workers that we can make sense out of. A starting salary for a thai school teacher is what? 7,000 bat per month ?? A low level gov worker makes what ? After 5 years what can they expect? Go to any gov office and you will see many new vehicles that would carry monthly payments of 10,000 per month or more.

[PeaceBlondie]

Most Thai teachers in govt. schools have been there for over ten years, and make between 15K and 50K per month, plus good health plan, pension, other benefits, etc. Agreed, 11K is surely not the minimum for Thai laborers. I know hotel workers with good English, management skills, long tenure, etc., that don't make 11K and never did.

Do you think the 30 baht health scheme (which is now the zero baht scheme) paid for lung cancer, cirohssis of the liver, emphysema, etc., patients? Nope. Do car insurance premiums pay for drunken driving? Nope.

[sweetchariot]

The thing that concerns me is that all the shop/bar owners will now use this as an excuse to hike all their prices. Somebody said earlier that Leo went up 4 bt at 7/11, beer was NOT included in this tax swoop.

I went to my local wholesaler to buy a carton of Marlboros last night and he claimed not to have any when I could clearly see them behind the counter. He said come back tomorrow (by then he will have agreed the price with the local cartel). I went to the next shop who had already increased the price by 45 bt (4.5 bt per pack).

This is all small potatoes, but I hate being exploited by greedy retailers, and everyone will now feel the effect of this. I guarantee that prices at your local bar will increase even if you don't drink whisky, and the price hike in retail outlets will be roughly double the tax increase.

[Mid]

These are not huge tax increases.

100 Baht a pack would be a reasonable price at this stage for a pack of cigarettes.

purely out of idle curiosity ,

Do You Have Any Idea What the Minimum Daily Wage is ???

question is for the poster quoted , I'm well aware of the answer thanxs

Cho0nburi - 160 baht per day......or 30 cigs!

CORRECT , where the rest of the rubbish quote by others eg : ( 11k ???? ) comes from is anys guess ,

ps , robsamui min wages ARE Gazetted by province .

[capaotung]

CORRECT , where the rest of the rubbish quote by others eg : ( 11k ???? ) comes from is anys guess ,

ps , robsamui min wages ARE Gazetted by province .

Hi Mid, according to the latest (Q1 2007) official realeased numbers form the Bank of Thailand, the AVERAGE Thai wage is 7700 Baht/month.

Min daily wages as you correctly say vary from province to province and the absolute legal minimum is about half the quoted average.

As always, most of the folks commenting on the economic realities of Thais' everyday life have absolutely no clue...

I have just read a thread where an idiot was quoted proposing tripling Pattaya bahtbus fares to help the "poor" drivers making a living

P.S. Just a reminder, let's all always keep these figures well in mind also when discussing about immi laws, visa regs, "quality tourists" etc

[Mosha]

People will always find money for fags and booze. (Fags as in the UK meaning). I remember the post budget interviews with "members of the public", and what do you think of the budget? Response, it's the kids who will suffer . Meaning our cig addiction comes first.

[pascharay]

People will always find money for fags and booze. (Fags as in the UK meaning). I remember the post budget interviews with "members of the public", and what do you think of the budget? Response, it's the kids who will suffer . Meaning our cig addiction comes first.

Cigs are a poor man's cocaine

[pascharay]

plus one reason sales goes down is that cigarettes are smuggled from other coutnries

In the UK it's online and in the USA it's from Indian reservations

[hammered]

These are not huge tax increases.

100 Baht a pack would be a reasonable price at this stage for a pack of cigarettes.

purely out of idle curiosity ,

Do You Have Any Idea What the Minimum Daily Wage is ???

question is for the poster quoted , I'm well aware of the answer thanxs

Cho0nburi - 160 baht per day......or 30 cigs!

CORRECT , where the rest of the rubbish quote by others eg : ( 11k ???? ) comes from is anys guess ,

ps , robsamui min wages ARE Gazetted by province .

You dont find too many Thai people in Chonburi working for minimum wage. That will mostly only get Burmese, Khmer or Lao workers.

[Mid]

immaterial ...................

[Siripon]

I'm not a smoker (but I'm not vehemently anti-smoking either) and I'm a light social drinker, so neither will affect me greatly, but what really annoys me is that this measure, and many others, are being put in place by an INTERIM and NON-ELECTED government!

Thailand is littered with laws (sorry, military decrees) made by previous non-elected governments, and some of them are the worst ones! Doesn't the whole 49% company ownership thing have its origins in a previous post-coup military government?

Is it really the role of an interim government to be doing this sort of thing?

G

Absolutely is because no elected Thai government would dare raise alcohol taxes substantially being beholden to the contributions made to their parties by the liquor barons.

The reason lao khao, white whisky is taxed so little is because the tax is based on the price as opposed to the alcohol content. Owned by Sia Charern, owner of Chang and countless assets ( including Panthip Paza) he's a generous donor to party funds.

[Tony Clifton]

If the past is any indicator, those who were fine with the coup, rampant corruption in public contracts, the southern insurrection, etc, will now join in loud protest

I cheered!

Made my daily visit to the corner mom & pop shop for my morning tobacco fix, LM kheow, and did not get any baht coins back from a 50.

$10.00 a pack in some countries and about $1.75 or way less here. Anyone foreigner complaining doesn't deserve to be a smoker.

I also happened to buy a pouch of tobacco this week. 5 baht INCLUDING including papers.

[onethailand]

A 2 baht hike on local cigarettes and a 3 baht hike on foreign ones isn't going to change a thing. That works out to a price increase of roughly 5% on a pack of Marlboros.

If they really want to stop people smoking they have to think about at least a 50% increase in the retail cost. They can't go much further than that because:

1. They'll spur a huge increase in black market purchases - which means they get no tax at all

2. In some cases this can spur inflation across the board, meaning prices of everything go up

Now why would something like this spur inflation across the board?

As silly as it seems, back in 1991 in Hong Kong, Financial Secretary Sir Piers Jacobs introduced a 200% increase on cigarette taxes in March. 3 months later he had to halve that to 100%.

This link gives the "official" reason why the tax was suddenly cut in half.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1301...t-smoking-.html

But the real reason is because the citizens, unwilling to give up their cigarettes, simply raised the price of all their goods in order to keep their smoking habit alive.

Inflation hit a 10-year high in April 1991 - 13.9%

http://www.iht.com/articles/1991/11/07/kong_0.php

Trouble is, it was actually much worse than that.

Months later, Piers Jacobs resigned, and the new Financial Secretary declared that inflation had dropped back to 11.5% in September - a couple of months after the tax was halved.

Why did inflation slow?

Because, although the cigarette tax was halved, the citizens did NOT reduce the price of their goods in response - and subsequently could not realistically raise their prices for a while either.

Before that time, Hong Kong was a relatively cheap place to visit. Now Hong Kong is one of the most expensive places on the planet. I wish I could find the stats to show this, but I'm quite confident the change is substantial. Maybe I should go search for the "cost of living" indexes in various cities I've seen bandied about from time to time.

Anyhow, that's a bit of a diversion - but 3 baht isn't going to change anything here.

[ThaiAdventure]

These are not huge tax increases.

100 Baht a pack would be a reasonable price at this stage for a pack of cigarettes.

purely out of idle curiosity ,

Do You Have Any Idea What the Minimum Daily Wage is ???

question is for the poster quoted , I'm well aware of the answer thanxs

OOO HOOO - huge bag of fish, here!

The minimum

In Bangkok?

In Yala or Surin?

Across what range - registered workers or not?

BKK Post quoted 11,000 baht a few months ago, but I know of many (thousands?) of workers who are on 100 baht a day.

Out of BKK, a building worker gets 3-4000 a month - if someone can speak English and work in a hotel, maybe 8-9.

10 years ago the Prime Minister's official salary was 124,000 a year - and I was earning more than this as a teacher!

Simple answer - nobody has the faintest idea!

R

It's actually very clearly defined.

Minimum Wage

(Note: these are baht per day!)

Makes you think when the tuk,tuk driver demands nearly a days wages to take you back to your hotel

Edited August 30, 2007 by ThaiAdventure

[bomber]

If the past is any indicator, those who were fine with the coup, rampant corruption in public contracts, the southern insurrection, etc, will now join in loud protest

I cheered!

Made my daily visit to the corner mom & pop shop for my morning tobacco fix, LM kheow, and did not get any baht coins back from a 50.

$10.00 a pack in some countries and about $1.75 or way less here. Anyone foreigner complaining doesn't deserve to be a smoker.

I also happened to buy a pouch of tobacco this week. 5 baht INCLUDING including papers.

5 baht for bacci,what weight in gramms is this,and is it any good.

[CORVETTELOVER]

Well I am a smoker and a drinker more of a smoker when i drink. cosidering the prices in our home countries for booze and ciggies thailand is cheap for both.

The thai on the other hand will suffer which will lead to dramas right through the communities.

The so called interim gov can pass what they like and raise what ever taxes they like.

And spend most of their time rooting out corruption and finger pointing at past leaders and pollies.

Instead of doing what is required setting up policies to enhance thai future.

In the mean time pull your pants down lay on the ground and accept the bike parked between the cheeks of your blurter.

As much as this country need leadership and honesty it wont happen just hope the bikes being parked in our nether regions dont have wide wheels.

TITS

[camo007]

Recently I have been looking to purchase a reputable nightclub in Bangkok. The first item of my agenda was to ban smoking inside completely. This is the case in Australia and many other places in the world and I cant wait till it happens in Thailand.

Would be interesting if Thailand had the guts to put a ban on smoking all together. They ban other self harm so why not this? Then you will see some of the air clear up.

But wait... Can we get the Tuk Tuk's also to switch to Electric in exchange for free 5 year tax and registrations? I believe half of the poluition comes from thease little mafia run bikes! (I know now i have gone too far...)

[Suszzy]

1-3 baht a pack...

that's nothing compare to uk.

£5.32 a pack for some brands.

[kurtgruen]

In Principle, I agree with tax hikes on smokes and liqour, if the taxes get used for treatment, healing and medicare.

In this country, we have a lot more freedom than in a lot of other places around the world and I like that. If I have to pay a few more cents for my beer, so be it.

Not only does it create more tax revenue for the government (which are needed), it also stimulates the economy a bit...

For example, if the increase is sizable, restaurant owners like myself will have to change the liquor menus, which benefits the guy down the road who does the printing and photo copying.

Common, it's a lot better here than where most of us came from. In Canada for example, the average small beer is about $5 dollars (160 Baht) a bottle of whiskey about $40. Cigarettes about $7 per pack (220 Baht).

Yes, the difference will affect poor Thais a lot more, but do they ever stop to think that maybe a lot of them are poor, because they spend every last cent on booze, smoking, gambling and caffeine drinks?

Like someone already mentioned, there is always local moonshine, which has no tax and is the favorite drink of a lot of people anyways.

The part I hate is, when bars and restaurants use a modest tax hike as an excuse to gouch their customers with big price increases afterwards. Good thing there is lots of competition, so one can always find a good, cheap place to drink somewhere

Cheers