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Tax Residence in Thailand

Transcript of the above video:

We are discussing Tax Residence in Thailand and strictly speaking this is the amount of time, most people look at this on a clock, we are talking about "How long do you have to spend in Thailand to become Tax Resident?" 

There are two ways of looking at this. Most folks that are on a Non-Immigrant Visa that spend a whole calendar year in Thailand, you are going to end up finding yourselves in Tax Residence. Your specific situation, you are going to need to contact a legal professional to deal with the specific facts of your case. I am not going to provide a lot of generality with respect to "well I have been here for this number of days in the aggregate or this number of days total etc.”, I am not going to go into that in this video. 

Long story short, the specific number of days you have been here may dictate whether or not you are considered Tax Resident in Thailand. It is a good idea to contact a legal professional to ascertain that but if you have been here a calendar year, it is pretty safe to presume you are going to be considered Tax Resident in Thailand. Again it is going to depend on circumstances the kind of Visa you were in etc., and when the days fell with respect to 1 calendar year or another calendar year. That is Tax Residence from the standpoint of whether or not Thailand has jurisdiction over you with respect to taxation purposes. I am making another video contemporaneously with this one. We really get into that with respect to capital gains especially associated with offshore assets; assets not in Thailand but capital gains or income derived offshore and coming into Thailand associated with Tax Residency.

Also, another aspect of Tax Residence, and we see this a lot in a lot of the common law countries that use a territorial tax system, is we see a lot of folks that want to be in Tax Residence in Thailand because they are trying to extricate themselves from another jurisdiction's tax regime. Again not to get too deep into this that is not the purpose of these videos, but that is an analysis of a different sort because you are looking at what that other country thinks as far as Tax Residence abroad and so you have to look at it through their lens and then analyze Thai Law with respect to Tax Residence. Again I am not a Thai Attorney. We have Thai Attorneys here in this office that deal with Thai taxes. We also have a number of accountants in the office that deal with a lot of Thai Tax matters on a very regular basis especially in the context of a foreigner.

The thing to take away from this video, your specific facts of your specific case is what is ultimately going to dictate what the legal practicalities and the legal situation is. It is probably a good idea to contact a legal tax professional in order to gain some insight and guidance into how best to understand your overall situation.