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Thai "Revenue Department Expects Draft Legislation To Collect Taxes"?
Transcript of the above video:
As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Tax Policy here in Thailand and the possibility is that in the relatively near future, we are going to see some sort of new legislation regarding tax here in Thailand.
I thought of making this video after I was reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Draft Law aims to curtail profit shifting. Quoting directly: "The Revenue Department expects draft legislation to collect taxes from multinational enterprises (MNEs) to prevent the shifting of profit to subsidiaries located in countries with a lower tax base to be implemented in 2025, which estimates suggest with boost tax revenue by 12 billion Baht per year. According to Director-General Kulaya Tantitemit, the draft legislation includes the Top-up Tax Act, which aligns with the Pillar 2 principles of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) members, and secondary legislation (subordinate laws)."
So as we have discussed in another video - and I am a little bit ambivalent about Thailand joining the OECD - but it does appear to be undergoing the process of doing that. And as part of that they are going through a sort of harmonization process with other nations that are part of OECD. Effectively OECD it is like, I kind of look like, almost like a tax union in the sense that like if you go back to like the Imperial Germany under Bismarck when he came up with a Customs Union that sort of pulled in all the Old Holy Roman Empire and other places that were pulled into this Customs Union and it resulted in some benefits to Germany, but it also greatly changed that old system; it was a watershed moment if you will. I think looking back, if Thailand ultimately does join OECD, we will probably look back on the joining of OECD or the harmonization, so roughly the beginning of this year Jan 1, 2024, which coincidentally or not, coincides with the change in the rules regarding bringing money into Thailand and tax assessability associated therewith.
So again, this is a major change with regard to Thailand's Tax Policies. I think when we see this legislation, I think it is going to probably provide a great deal of clarity for folks. As noted in that article what people need to bear in mind this includes like retirees and a lot of the expat community out here is very worried about the tax situation, is remember this is primarily being directed at MNEs, those multinational enterprises that they were talking about in that article.
Again there could be ramifications on an individual level for certain people with regard to taxes but again as we discussed in many other videos, each individual tax situation has to be assessed on each individual fact pattern pertaining thereto.