Pattaya Property backtax starting to be collected

[scotinsiam]

I was wondering if anyone has any experience of this? I have been told that Pattaya City are starting to implement a property tax which has been on the books for years but never collected before. They are going back 10 years to try to claim the tax back apparently.

see the quote below.

 

https://thailand-247.com/index.php?/topic/2074-experiences-with-pattaya-city-property-tax/&tab=comments#comment-63811

 

"This seems to be an annual tax on your property, similar to Council Tax in the UK. I first heard about this kind of annual property tax a few years ago from people living out of town, but I’d never heard of anybody in Pattaya having to pay it so I didn’t worry. It seems that the city has always had the power to levy the tax, but for whatever reason they never did so (probably so that a certain family would continue to get voted into office and run the place). When the civilian administration lapsed a couple of year back and the military put their own people in to run the city they must have felt short of money as they started – slowly – rolling the tax out.

 

 

Slowly seems to be the operative word here, I only know of around half a dozen people personally who have had ‘The Letter’ from City Hall telling you to turn up with the papers to your house or condo and be told how much tax you owe, and what penalties there are for not paying it. I don’t think anybody would object too strongly to having to pay a reasonable annual amount, but the fly in the ointment is that they are back-dating the tax you owe by ten years so it becomes a fairly hefty amount, even on a modest property. I owe around 70K Baht, while a friend who lives nearby owes well over 100K baht.

 

 

I received ‘The Letter’ two weeks ago, the GF tells me there’s no avoiding the tax (I think it’s called the schools and property tax), sooner or later I’ll have to cough up, though as I deplore the decade of back-dating my reaction is to wait and see what happens. If they want to sue me for the money then fine, I’ll pay up, but until then I think I’d prefer to take my time.

 

 

The amount apparently varies depending on whether you’re living in your property or renting it out. The live-in tax seems to be around 8K to 10K Baht per annum, though small condos might be less I guess, and a giant house might be more. I read that if the property is rented out they want one month’s rent per annum, but that seems like a lot to me.

 

 

They only seem to have half a dozen people working on this at City Hall so it’s going to be decades before they cover all the properties in the city. Indeed, with the rate at which new condos are still going up the tax collection may actually be going backwards. I’ve no idea why I was one of the chosen few to be in the vanguard of this assault on property owners, I always complain at not winning the lottery but it seems my number came up in this one! Renters shouldn’t be feeling too smug either, as I suspect the owners will simply increase the rent to cover the tax.

 

 

That’s about the sum of what I’ve found out so far, has anybody else received ‘The Letter’ and what did you do about it? Does anybody know anything more?"

[AlexCanada]

Every condo I have rented always gets invoices for unpaid property tax.  I figured no one in Pattaya pays for property tax.

[dabhand]

Been a number of topics on this subject. Here's a recent one.

 

https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1098472-pattaya-city-property-tax/

[champers]

If it transpires that the 6 people working on this are paying for themselves and them some, 6 could turn into 60.