Expats in Thailand: the eerie silence about cash transfers and income tax
Many expats believe they can ignore a tricky subject.
Since the end of March 2025, the cascade of opinions has abruptly stopped. No more news reports, no anguished debates on Thai social media and no experts offering advice at packed expat meetings. Pattaya Mail, in an unscientific survey, last week randomly asked 75 expat tax residents (living here 180 days plus in the calendar year 2024) what they actually did, if anything, about contacting the Thai Revenue Department (TRD) about income transfers from abroad. There was a huge variety of responses.
Never heard of it. This was a common response, especially from expats whose first language is not English, perhaps reflecting the fact that most analysis and commentary last year was targeted at English speakers. For example, two Russian and Chinese nationals with longstay visas said nobody they knew had ever mentioned paying Thai income tax for any reason whatsoever.
Not on your life. Another popular response, especially from retiree expats, was to say that they lived here on income previously taxed in the home country and, in any case, were protected by a double taxation treaty. They had absolutely no intention of sharing cash with TRD. This group also threatened to live elsewhere rather than register with TRD.
Doesn’t apply to me. This group stressed that they were living on historic savings, transmitted to Thailand before 1 January 2024, or (in the case of Americans) that it would be illegal for TRD to tax them on their payments. One respondent said he was sending cash to his Thai wife as this was “tax free” and another claimed exemption as he was a longterm visa holder.
Tax office said “Go Away”. Several respondents said they had indeed visited their local TRD office and apparently been told to ignore the whole thing. Others said that individual tax offices were operating as they saw fit and that there was no standard practice. However, none of this group was able to substantiate the TRD response with evidence.
Gestapo tactics. Several respondents who had indeed paid personal income tax on overseas transfers during 2024 said they feared a knock on the door in the middle of the night, prosecution, deportation etc. Mostly, they had paid their dues via a law agency which had arranged all documentation on their behalf without necessitating a personal visit to the local TRD office.
I’m a good boy. Expats with a work permit already had a tax identification number and were familiar with TRD regulations. There were also one or two retired expats who said they had registered after discovering that the sums involved were not large. One expat said he paid personal income tax on 800,000 transferred baht which cost him only 15,000 baht (plus agency fee) after his built-in personal allowances from TRD were taken into account.
The Pattaya Mail “research” was designed simply to find out how some expats had responded, not to assess their specific answers. However, it is obvious that many expats are “waiting to see what happens next”. There is no reason to doubt the findings of an earlier piece of research by the Thai Examiner which said that most (58%) expats would neither seek a tax number nor submit a form this time around. The fact that TRD offices up and down the country have acted individually has complicated the picture.
The whole debate will presumably reheat as 2025 draws to a close and the reporting and payment time slot (January – March 2026) kicks in. Unless there is a commentary from the Thai government by then, which is far from assured, there is likely to be a jumble of expat responses in 2026 as in 2025 ranging from Ignorance Is Bliss to Your Time Is Running Out. As Benjamin Franklin pointed out 200 years ago, “People who complain about taxes can be divided into two groups: men and women!”
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