The Thai Revenue Department (“TRD”) has announced the Emergency Decree on Top-up Tax, B.E. 2567 (2024) (“Top-up Tax Law”), which will be effective from January 1, 2025. Below is a summary of the key aspects of this law.
Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes
The amendment is intended to adapt to current technology, reduce unnecessary procedures, increase business flexibility, and enhance the country’s competitiveness.
Tax audit is the process of verification and inspection of the tax return(s) and taxpayers' books to ensure that their tax computation complies with tax law.
Early this year, Thailand has signed and deposited its instrument of ratification of the MLI which now covers over 1800 bilateral tax treaties. This is a strong commitment to prevent the abuse of tax treaties and base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) by MNEs. The convention will enter into force from 1 July 2022.
As businesses adjust to new realities during the COVID-19 pandemic, changes in transfer pricing and other areas will have significant tax planning implications, which we outline here.
With Thai businesses and citizens tightening their belts amid the COVID-19 economics crisis, we examine whether the Thai government's current tax reduction will provide sufficient help.
To alleviate the economic hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Thai government will implement several fiscal and tax policies.
With the economic outlook in Thailand less bright than in years past, we look at how the country can find a new way forward for future business success.
As we have seen, Thailand plans to spend money attracting new businesses and tourists, all while lowering personal income taxes. Given such an array of new expenses, the treasury arm of the Thai government would ordinarily come under pressure to balance the budget. Indeed, we have already seen the Ministry of Finance struggling to locate new sources of revenue. Thailand’s Revenue Department has considered plans for imposing taxes on capital gains, casting the tax net wide enough to include on-line operators. Banks will be required to report account holders with high-volume cash transactions in an effort to seal off tax evasion. Plans are in place to increase the tax base – with a target of adding 200,000 new taxpayers per annum.
As the world’s economic engine slows, countries are moving to stimulate their economies by increasing government spending and cutting taxes to inject cash into the domestic economy. Such actions are intended to boost the economy, and prevent it from stalling.
Now that the political climate in Thailand has stabilised, the government is looking to speed up its Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations with key trading partners. Plans include resuming negotiations with the EU and UK post Brexit, as well as talks to join major multilateral FTAs. To be successful in these negotiations, Thailand needs to keep in mind the consequences that non-tariff barriers will have on improving trade as a whole.
On 28 February, the National Legislative Assembly approved the Personal Data Protection Act (“PDPA”). The Act is aimed at regulating the lawful collection, use, or disclosure of personal data that can directly or indirectly identify a natural person – but does not apply to the data of a deceased person. This Act also provides a framework how to process the personal data. The PDPA, which in many ways resembles a similar initiative in Europe (the General Data Protection Regulation, known as GDPR), requires a data controller (a natural person or a legal person), who has the authority to decide to collect, use, or disclose the personal data, to follow guidelines in an effort to protect each data owner.
On 26 March 2019, the Cabinet approved draft Royal Decrees revoking all tax benefits granted by the Thai Revenue Department (“TRD”) to the following Board of Investment (“BoI”) regimes: 1. Regional Operating Headquarter (ROH); 2. International Headquarter (IHQ); and 3. International Trading Center (“ITC”)
In this article, we explain how taxpayers could leverage on Advance Pricing Agreements (“APAs”) to guard against the uncertainties of tax compliance in an era of increasingly complex tax rules.
In an ever-increasing integrated global economy, businesses have been establishing their footprints in various locations across the continents. These so-called “multi-national corporations” or “MNCs” have sophisticated supply chains and business platforms comprising of dozens, if not, hundreds of entities, all of which are directly or indirectly related to one another. Under this corporate umbrella, the affiliates would trade and transact with one another.