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Tax Implications of Thai Condo Ownership?
Transcript of the above video:
As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing tax implications of Thai Condo ownership. I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment on our channel, quoting directly: "Hi Ben, please advise how many condos can foreigners own and if there is any tax associated with owning more than one condo?"
So it is possible to own more than one condo. Foreign nationals can own more than one condo. As noted in previous videos, foreign nationals are restricted from ownership of certain real estate here in Thailand most notably land; foreign nationals cannot own land in Thailand in any meaningful sense. There are certain very, very limited exceptions. It is my understanding those exceptions have only applied eight times in the past 23 years so it is not something that is really going to apply to most folks. But, it is possible for foreign nationals to own condos under the Thai Condominium Act; it is possible to have freehold title or what we call in America, Fee Simple Absolute Title over a condominium unit here in Thailand so you own it outright, you own it, the foreign national owns it. That is definitely a possibility. Now there are certain restrictions on that insofar as there is kind of a quota where the overall units within a complex, the foreign quota cannot exceed 49% so if there are a hundred units in a complex foreign nationals can only own 49% of those units and 51% have to be owned by Thais.
Now tax implications, wow that is a complex question. It is going to be highly circumstantially dependent. It is also going to be dependent on whether or not the condos are utilized primarily for residential purposes or if they are being utilized for any type of commercial purposes; that will substantially change the analysis on whether or not there are tax implications. Long story short, yeah eventually, again residential, it is a little bit of a gray area. Maybe one or two condos, different places and they are used residentially, there may not be a great deal of tax implication associated with that. However, again utilization for commercial purposes, that changes things and then when you are getting out there where you are saying you are talking about multiple condos, like three or more, yeah you are probably getting into the area where there may be issues associated with tax implications, also maybe issues associated with transfer taxes associated with sale etc.
So the thing to take away from this video is yes the more condos you would presumably have, the possibility of increasing levels of tax liability rises but again it is going to be very dependent on the facts in that case again and whether or not they are being used commercially or residentially. I would need a factual scenario to be able to provide any further information there. The long story short is factual scenarios are going to vary. Everybody's case is almost like a snow flake so it's going to be dependent on the situation.