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KamnanT

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Posts posted by KamnanT

  1. I find all the domestic airlines in Thailand are being incredibly cryptic about their policies on vaccinations and PCR tests.  AirAsia, for example, has an entire page on "Flying Safe with AirAsia" which does not mention vaccinations or pre-departure tests at all.  "For Malaysians, please ensure that you are eligible to travel".  What does that mean? What about everyone else? Are unvaccinated travellers accepted? With or without a PCR test?  Nok Air doesn't seem to have anything on it's website other than the arrival requirements in each Thai province they fly to: nothing on requirements to check-in and board.

  2. 3 hours ago, CrunchWrapSupreme said:

    Why can't the manufacturing be done here?

    It is being done here: the AstraZeneca vaccine is being manufactured locally by Siam Biosciences. A few hiccups getting started but it would appear that the vast majority of local vaccinations are now Sinovac and AstraZeneca. I got my first jab 2 weeks ago and the notation "AstraZeneca SBS" on the confirmation slip leads me to believe it was the locally manufactured variety.  Would it be good if there was more of everything? Of course it would.

  3. 23 hours ago, blackcab said:

    The government reduced the rates payable in some months so that working people had a little bit of extra cash when they were paid.

     

    I'm guessing you benefited from the same reduction.

     

    I'm in full-time employment and my contribution changed starting in April 2020.  Normally 750 baht, it dropped to 150 for a couple of months, then back up to 750, then down to 300, then back up to 750, then 200, then 75 and then I stopped checking.  It's a time-tested populist tactic used by governments around the world: bribe them with their own money.  Reducing contributions to the SSO leaves a few extra baht in your pocket but means the SSO fund has less money to pay for medical and retirement benefits in the future.

    • Like 1
  4. On 5/6/2021 at 11:30 PM, QPRFC said:

    I cannot understand why you would not want to be an Australian Resident for tax purposes as you will be entitled to the tax-free threshold. If not, then you will have tax deducted at source at foreign investor rates.

    Thailand won't give you any threshold.

     

     

    Principal reason to avoid tax residency in Australia is because Australia taxes tax residents on their worldwide income, so anything you earn in other countries would be subject to Australian tax as well (with some narrow exceptions).  For example, if you have investments generating income outside Australia, these will not be subject to Australian income tax if you are non-resident for tax, but will be if you are resident.

  5. 1 hour ago, pegman said:

    One would think this would bring down foreign quota condo selling prices. 

     

    I've never really understood why there is much of a "foreign quota" premium, if any at all.  The Condominium Act allows up to 49% of a condo building's private (excluding common area) floor space to be sold freehold to foreigners.  It doesn't require that individual units be designated as "Thai quota" or "foreign quota".  If you are a foreigner, you can purchase any condominium in Thailand as long as your purchase would not result in more than 49% of the total floor area being owned by foreigners.

     

    Example: 49% of a building is owned by foreigners, but then the foreign owner of unit #1 sells his unit (which represents 15% of the total floor area) to a Thai.  A month later, the Thai owner of unit #2 puts his unit (which represents 10% of the total floor area) on the market.  Result: anyone, foreign or Thai, can buy it, as only 34% of the floor area is owned by foreigners.  All the Land Titles Office requires is a certificate from the juristic person attesting that the purchase would not result in more than 49% of the floor area being owned by foreigners.  Well plus all of the other guff, of course, like FET forms, etc.

     

    One could argue that, as the the foreign owner of condominium, one would never sell to a Thai because your "foreign quota" unit is worth more to a foreigner.  In reality, one sells to the first willing buyer who offers a price you can accept.

    • Like 1
  6. 6 minutes ago, sonjai said:

    Thanks to everyone who has responded to my post.  I will certainly attempt to get a Thai TIN and provide it to my bank.  What I find most annoying is that Australian banks are not uniform in their requirements in relation to this TIN issue. If they follow the same tax regulations and CRS guidelines one would assume that they all should ask their clients for the same in that regard. This is not the case in Australia. And if they do introduce their own additional requirements shouldn't they let customers know in advance about this and let them sort things out without rush and undue pressure before enforcing these new requirements? Where all the fairness in banking customer service has gone?

     

    It's an excellent point and in a perfect world, all of these requests for information would be standardized.  The reality is that pretty well every global bank and certainly every Australian bank has been burnt by the waves of additional regulation in the 21st century.  HSBC, Lloyds, Citi, Santander, Commonwealth, Wells Fargo....the list goes on and on.  Hardly a month goes by without a major bank being prosecuted for knowingly dealing with criminals, tax evaders and corrupt politicians.  They are bankers and just can't help themselves: the smell of money is just too intoxicating.  But as the penalties become more severe, their shareholders are starting to demand that they clean up their acts and billions are spent every year on compliance departments inside the banks, chasing down TIN numbers for every Tom, Dick, Harry and Susan who has $23.54 in a savings account.  IMHO, the name of the game isn't really to stop doing business with criminals (it's VERY profitable business), it's to avoid fines for non-compliance.  So you get hassled 3 times a year to provide more personal information while Credit Suisse sends private bankers with briefcases full of cash to visit their clients who are known tax evaders.

     

    As a computer technologist, it also worries me that these reams of personal information are being collected by institutions that often fail to protect it from disclosure via IT security breaches.  The more information they collect about me, the more information inevitably becomes available to organized crime to steal my identity and pilfer my assets.

    • Like 1
  7. Two separate issues being discussed on this thread: residency for tax purposes (which has been an issue for decades) and the more recent requirement for banks to report the earnings of non-resident taxpayers to their country of tax residency via the Common Reporting Standard (CRS).

     

    Every country has its own rules that determine who is tax resident and who is not.  Some rules are more straightforward than others.  Thailand uses the quite simple ">180 days in Thailand in a calendar year" rule.  Australia, the US, the UK and most Western jurisdictions have more complex sets of rules intended to "catch" people who they believe are gaming the system to establish non-resident status.  In most jurisdictions, tax residents are taxed on their world-wide income whereas non-residents are taxed only on their locally-sourced income, so it can be advantageous to become a non-resident of a high tax regime like Australia.

     

    Your Australian bank needs to know whether or not you are a tax resident of Australia because that determines the level of tax they will withhold from your earnings (e.g. interest on your accounts).  If you are a tax resident and have provided them with an ATO tax file number, they don't withhold.  If you are tax resident and have not provided a tax file number, they will withhold at the highest marginal rate of personal income tax + Medicare levy.  If you are non-resident, they will withhold at the rate specified in the dual taxation agreement with the country where you are resident (for Thailand, that's 15%).  This has been the case for decades and all the Australian banks I have dealt with (including Citibank) have always accepted a simple letter stating "I don't live in Australia anymore, I live in ________, please start withholding non-resident tax at the rate appropriate for that country."

     

    Then along came CRS.  Governments (mostly ones in the OECD with high levels of personal income taxation) became increasingly concerned with tax evasion and offshore tax havens.  One could, for example, live in Australia and keep one's fortune in another country and not declare the earnings to the ATO.  As long as you didn't make it obvious (e.g. by sending large telegraphic transfers from Jersey to your account at Westpac), it was unlikely that the ATO would stumble across your hidden earnings.  Very illegal, quite unethical but millions of people around the world did it.  With the introduction of the CRS, member countries agree to supply information about the earnings of non-resident account holders back to their countries of tax residency.  They do that by mandating that banks collect tax residency and tax identification information from all of their non-resident account holders.  And that's why we have all been swamped with forms from our banks around the world asking for this information.

     

    In my experience, the big difference has been that in the first case (tax residency), banks have been happy to accept my word that I am not residing in Australia and have never asked for any proof other than an overseas address for the account.  The latter case (CRS) has been a bit more intimidating: give us this information, give us some proof and if you don't, we will close your account.  Understandable, I suppose, given that banks can be heavily fined for not complying with the CRS rules.  But as others have stated, it is well within the realm of possibility that you can be a tax resident somewhere but not have any tax liability in that country (you legitimately have no taxable income) and therefore not have a Taxpayer Identification Number.  No doubt Citibank was wrong when they told the OP they he must have a TIN in Thailand if he lives here but that won't stop them from restricting/closing his account if he doesn't satisfy their incorrect interpretation of the rules.  AFAIK, there is no avenue of appeal outside the bank other than the Federal Ombudsman and that will take years.  As others have suggested, the OP should visit local tax offices until he finds one that will give him a TIN.

     

    My most recent interaction with Citibank Australia has been on a third issue: anti-money laundering/anti-terrorism compliance.  Despite having provided multiple forms of government-issued photo ID when I opened the account 28 years ago, Citibank now wanted me to prove once again who I was.  A confusing requirement with "copies of two or more documents from Table A" or "copies of one document from Table A and two from Table B".  Most documents in Table B were the type that are normally only held by Australian residents (Oz driver's license, Medicare card, etc.).  And, of course, the copies had to be certified by someone deemed suitable to Citibank: notary public, Australian (not foreign) lawyer, Australian judge, etc. etc. etc.  About the only option for me in Thailand was to have the copies certified at the Australian Embassy.  A$150 for two pages.  All of this or Citibank would "restrict my account" (that means freeze all transactions).  To add insult to injury, a week after I sent all the paperwork back to Citibank, they announced that the bulk of their Asia-Pacific retail banking network, including both Citibank Thailand and Citigroup Australia, is up for sale.  No doubt whomever acquires their Australian operations will write to me to demand all of this information all over again.

     

    To-date, Thailand has not signed up to the CRS and Thai banks don't need to collect this information about their non-resident account holders.

     

    • Thanks 1
  8. Unless the deliveries are urgent, registered air mail at Thailand Post can be addressed to P.O. boxes and has always been very reliable for me (I can't say the same for unregistered).  U.S.A. and Canada deliveries typically within two calendar weeks, sometimes faster depending on destination (Central LA gets it a few days faster than Vancouver Island, for example).  On the other hand, an Xmas card sent unregistered air mail to my daughter in Australia was posted on December 10th and arrived on January 14th.  But hey, it's the thought that counts.

  9. 36 minutes ago, MikeN said:

    If you used your passport as ID then after 20 years it would be a different one, with a different number presumably. Or perhaps you used a passport before but now have a pink card ? Either way they would have changed the number on your DL to match your ID.

     

    My national ID number (from blue book) is also on the card and has been for 15 years, but for some reason they decided to change the 8-digit driver's license number.

  10. My driver's license expired in August 2020.  I walked-in to the DLT at Phra Khanong and was given an appointment slip for November 11th: apparently a COVID social distancing measure.  When I asked what I should tell the police if I was stopped in the meantime, I was told not to worry, lots of people driving on expired licenses these days.  I noted that all applicants (Thai and foreign) were being given appointments, but the appointments for foreigners were three months out while those for Thais were one month out.

     

    November 11th came and it was pretty much the standard drill: forms, photocopies, video, photo, payment.  They did, however, change my driver's license number for the first time in 20 years.  No idea why.

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