How to Submit Income Taxes in Thailand for Expats

[00:00:00] Oh, and welcome to made it in Thailand. today I’m going to be talking about something that I know we’re all super excited about, which is taxes in Thailand. So let’s say that you are new to Thailand. Maybe this is your first year where you have to file your own taxes might seem a little bit daunting.

[00:00:16] I’m here to tell you it’s not so bad. You can definitely do it. And in this video I’m just going to walk you through the process of filing income taxes here in Thailand. So again, the topic is. Thailand income taxes. Now the focus is really on individuals who are filing taxes. While the made it in Thailand channel, I focused a lot on business entrepreneurship, things like this, this particular video is from the perspective of an employee.

[00:00:38] So someone who is actually employed by a Thai company or a company that’s based in Thailand, and maybe they were given a form and they were told, Hey, you got to do your taxes. And so this video is for you. If you are either doing this for the first time, or maybe you forgot how to do it because after all, we just do this maybe one time per year, so.

[00:00:55] Let’s jump right into it and, uh, let me just first explain who I am. So my name is Scott Pressman. I’m actually a fractional CMO. So I am a chief marketing officer that works on a part time basis for multiple companies here in Thailand at the same time. And so that’s why a fractional is a common term for that fractional CMO.

[00:01:13] Now, what does this have to do with Thai taxes? Well, it has absolutely nothing to do with Thai taxes. I am not a tax professional. I do not sell tax services. I have nothing to sell you today at all. I’m just going through this process because I’ve been confused by it in the past and I thought others might find it useful just to Bring some of the mystery out of this Thai tax process.

[00:01:33] And I’m here to tell you again, it’s not so bad. So my disclaimer here, it please read what’s on the screen. But the idea here is that I’m not selling information. I am not, um, you know, taking any jobs away from anyone here in Thailand. I highly recommend you actually work with a professional if you have complex.

[00:01:49] Um, income tax requirements and deductions and other things that you have to figure out. I’m here just to give the basic explanation for entertainment purposes only. So, um, you know, just, just understand that, uh, this is just educational and, uh. look elsewhere if you need more detailed recommendations and advice.

[00:02:06] So the topics that I’m covering again are going to be the Thai tax basics. If you are from another country and you are not familiar with how taxes work, I’ve actually talked to some individuals that have come from Dubai or UAE or something, and maybe they don’t have any income taxes at all. And they’re not even used to how you even do this.

[00:02:22] I am here to take the mystery out of it and just explain the basics of the Thai tax system. I’m also going to go through an example scenario. Of what it would look like if you made a certain amount of income and you got a tax form in a certain way. Um, how would you actually go about doing your taxes?

[00:02:35] So I’m going to use that example scenario to calculate the taxes and then walk through how to actually submit them online. Because the Thai Revenue Service website for submitting taxes online has gotten better and better over the years. It’s really quite easy to use, but I’m going to walk you through that process so you know exactly what to expect from that.

[00:02:52] So the first thing to understand about the Thai tax system is that it is a progressive tax system. Um, Put simply, the more you earn, the higher percentage you pay. So you can see here from HSBC expat, we have the rates, uh, at which you, uh, you pay the national income tax rates by income. So for the first 150, 000 baht of income for an entire year, you pay 0 percent 150 K to 300 K you’re paying 5 percent and so on and so forth.

[00:03:20] So as you can see, the number goes up, which is why it’s progressive tax rate. Very basic thing to understand here is that let’s say that you were doing quite well and you were earning five million baht per year. Well, that does not mean that you were taxed at 35%. Uh, it’s only the amount beyond five million baht that you’re taxed at 35%.

[00:03:38] Anything below that is taxed at the rates that are lower. So you can see it’s kind of ends up being a blended rate. depending on how much you earn. The second thing to understand is that there are tax deductions and exemptions. This is really important. Anyone who’s doing your taxes would be aware of these, but in order to reduce your tax burden, then you want to deduct amount from your income.

[00:03:58] So let’s say that you earned, uh, I don’t know, 2 million bot and you had some deductions, like you’re taking care of people or your, uh, spending money on insurance or some other things. These other things that you’re doing throughout the year that maybe the government is incentivizing allows you to reduce your tax burden by reducing your taxable income.

[00:04:16] So if you earned, let’s say 2 million bought for the year or 1 million bought for the year and you had some deductions taken out of that income, you can get that, let’s say 1 million bought, reduced to 900, 000 bought in taxable income due to your Deductions, so if you’re new to doing taxes in Thailand, I think you might be thinking well, let me just submit my taxes I’m gonna enter a couple numbers and be good I’d highly encourage you to Think about your deductions and exemptions because they can have a very impact on the amount that you owe or a potential refund that you might get The other thing, the third thing to understand about taxes is that taxes may be withheld by your employer.

[00:04:53] So let’s say that you’re getting a paycheck each month. Let’s pretend that it’s a hundred thousand baht. Then your employer might actually have a line item on your paycheck that says. Tax withholdings. So they are withholding 10, 000 baht each month. And so your paycheck and the money that actually gets deposited into your account is 90, 000 baht.

[00:05:10] A really important thing to understand here is that that is not your actual, actual tax rate. That is not exactly what you owe to the government. That is a guess or an estimate of how much your employer thinks you’d owe. And they’re deducting that from your paycheck because they don’t want you to have a big tax bill due at the end of the year that you weren’t anticipating.

[00:05:27] They’re saying, Hey, let’s estimate how much is owed. Let’s take it out of the paycheck for now. And then let’s then determine, you can determine at the end of the year, whether or not you overpaid or underpaid based off those withholdings. So tax withholdings are an estimate. They are not the actual exact amount that you owe.

[00:05:43] So now we’re going to run through an example. Let’s pretend that you are a full time employee. You have no additional income, meaning that you are not getting freelance money. You are not, uh, getting rental income money, nothing like this. You just have a full time job with a hundred thousand bahts per month salary.

[00:05:59] Let’s also assume that you have a bonus at the end of the year, maybe in December, your employer pays out, um, The same amount as your base income. So 100, 000 baht annual bonus, this is often referred to as the 13 month bonus here. And so you get paid really 13 months of salary rather than those 12 months because you’re, uh, you have two, you have double the income there in December due to the bonus.

[00:06:21] Let’s also say that you have your social security, uh, deducted from each paycheck as that’s a requirement under tie a labor law, or I’m not sure exactly, but, but I think that that is, uh, that’s always going to be deducted for your paycheck, um, from, from as far as I understand. And then you have your provident fund, uh, as well.

[00:06:37] So some employers will give you benefits where they say, Hey, if you contribute to a retirement fund, it’s a tax advantaged retirement fund. You’re able to contribute five, 10 or 15%. into that retirement fund and maybe they’ll match it or maybe they won’t match it. But the idea is that this is just an additional unique thing about this particular situation is this individual is in fact having 5 percent deducted from their paycheck each month to go into this sort of investment retirement fund.

[00:07:03] Let’s also assume this individual has a state home spouse that is dependent on them. So this individual is not making an income. And then this individual also has two young children that are also dependents, meaning that they’re not filing separately. They are not earning an income. They are young children.

[00:07:18] So given all this, what I want to go through is look through what this looks like. So the withholding tax certificate, this is what the employer is providing. And usually just imagine a tax year being the tax year. Of 2024, then at the start of 2025 in January, the employer is saying, well, here is your withholding tax certificate.

[00:07:35] This is going to give you all the details you need in order to do your own taxes. And so this employer provided this details in this case, this is an English version. I do think some employers might give this as a tie form because that’s the typical format, of course, in Thailand that you get. But in any case, we have a translated version here and I’ve just filled in some details where your company idea and your taxpayer ID for your individual and for your employer all here.

[00:08:00] And then in this case, remember we talked about how this individual is earning a hundred thousand baht a month times 12 months, which would be, um, you know, 1. 2 million baht, right? And then they also got that bonus. So it’s making it 1. 3 million baht in total in, um, Income. And then the tax withholdings, this employer made an estimate and each month they withheld some taxes.

[00:08:21] But at the end of the year on this form, it’s telling you the exact amount that was withheld, which in this case is 132, 000 baht. If I scroll down further, there’s a couple other key pieces of information on this form. And we have, uh, down here, the social security contributions, which was 750 baht per month, making that 9, 000 baht for the year.

[00:08:41] And then remember, we talked about the Provident Fund. This could be something else. It could be titled something differently. But in this case, it’s the AIA Provident Fund. This tax advantaged retirement fund account. And this individual had, remember, 5 percent of their base income contributed into that, making a total of the year of 60, 000 bought.

[00:09:00] So this is all information that ideally your employer would provide is a form similar to this. Now, I have a template here. Or an Excel sheet that we’re going to go through to talk through how we can calculate what our, uh, taxable income is going to be. So you can see here in this scenario, remember, I’m going to take that same amount, uh, 1.

[00:09:19] 3 million bot. And we’re going to put that here as our salary or income. And then we have our tax withholdings. So that was the amount that was withheld from our paycheck by our employer. And then we have the withholding tax percentage. So basically that means that the employer, since they took 132 out of the 1.

[00:09:35] 3 million, they assumed that this individual’s tax burden would be about 10%. That’s how much they withheld. Now let’s go run this through this 1. 3 million in through this. Progressive tax system. And let’s see how much would be owed. And we can see here that when this is broken down, we see that 190, 000 bought would be how much we expect we’d owe in taxes, which is 14 percent plus, right?

[00:10:01] Why would the employer? Only deduct 10 percent when the actual tax, actual tax burden would be around 14, almost 15%. Well, the reason why is because the employer does know information. They know how much was contributed to social security, the provident fund in this case. Um, and they also know of other typical exemptions and tax burden reductions that every employee would submit with their taxes.

[00:10:26] And so they have this information and down here is where we enter in that information. So you can see here at the top, I’ll get to this in a moment, but you can see that the employment expenses I believe can be maxed at 100, 000 baht. So that is entered here. Um, we also have the tax deduction for the income earner.

[00:10:43] So the individual who’s, who’s filing, that is a regular standard deduction. And then we also have. The provident fund. Now you can see here that this 10, 000 bought and this up here, 50, 000 bought, that makes up the 60, 000 bought that we saw in that form. So 60, 000 bought was contributed to this retirement fund.

[00:10:59] In this case, the first 10, 000 bought is considered a deduction and the remaining amount. Above the 10, 000 bot is considered exempted income. So that’s split, just a random thing to be aware of. That’s how it’s calculated under the tax system. So just be aware of that. So that’s why it’s split this way.

[00:11:18] But then there’s also the social security contributions, which remember was on that same form we were just on. And then the last thing that we have up here is going to be our, um, remaining deductions. So remember I said that the employer knows a lot of this information when they’re calculating the tax withholdings.

[00:11:37] But why does the number not match? Well, it’s because they did not know that this individual has a dependent spouse that doesn’t earn income. Uh, in this case, it would be a Thai spouse and they also have Thai children who are dependents. And so this was another deduction that the employer is not aware of in this case.

[00:12:00] And that’s why I have these highlighted. So any of these white cells is where we can enter information, but I’ve populated it based off the scenario that I just went through. And if I scroll down further, what I’m going to see is the totals. And I’m going to see that the income earned for the year was 1.

[00:12:14] 3 million bot, the exemptions, 50, 000 bot, the expenses max out at a hundred thousand bot, and the deductions were 229, 000 bot. So the total. amount that should be taxed is actually 921, 000 bot. And so if I scroll down here, we can take that same 921, 000 bot and run it through this same tax system. All these calculations are gray.

[00:12:36] So you can see they’re calculated automatically and we can see the actual text tax bill for this individual will be 99, 000 bot. So if I see this tax calculation here, we can see that the. 99, 000 baht is how much is owed by this individual, but the employer took out 132, 000 baht. So luckily in this case, this individual overpaid, meaning that they will get a refund check from the government when they submit their taxes.

[00:13:05] And we can see that their actual or effective tax rate spread after all the deductions and everything is compensated for, for their full income, they’re being taxed 7. 6 percent in this scenario. So, um, this. I did this example because I have this template and you are able to copy this template, this spreadsheet and enter in your own details in all of the yellow cells and you can figure out how much your tax burden would be.

[00:13:30] Now, you would have to read through and make sure that you’re probably including your employment expenses. You’re including any other deductions. If you do not have a dependent tie spouse, then you probably will not have something filled in there. If you have Children who are dependents and you probably would have them filled in here.

[00:13:43] Um, now one thing to know about the. Dependence here is that if you hover over here, you’ll see that there was a particular government incentive that said, we want more children. Therefore, if you have a child after the year 2018 and it’s your second child or later, then they actually get a larger tax deduction than they otherwise would have.

[00:14:04] So I’m gonna jump back to our example case. And again, if we scroll down, what we’ll see is. The first child this individual has got a deduction of 30, 000 baht, but then the second child, since they were born after the year 2018, the government has an additional incentive, meaning that there’s a 60, 000 baht deduction for the second child.

[00:14:24] So, that is why this individual has a 90, 000 baht deduction in this case. Now, if I took these out, and I scroll down to the bottom again, what we’d see is That would mean that the employer took out the exact right amount for this employee. So, the amount that was withheld was exactly how much was owed.

[00:14:44] You still have to submit your taxes, but you’d find out, sure enough, you don’t own any money and you don’t get any money. But, if I put those numbers back in and populate them with what the employer wasn’t aware of, then you can see here that, sure enough, We are going to get a 33, 000 bought refund. All right, so now let’s jump in and see what this looks like to actually submit these taxes because this spreadsheet is just here to give you an idea of likely how much you are going to get in a refund or if you owe any money.

[00:15:11] It’s just a way to kind of DIY yourself and Um, the instructions are here. We have the calculator here. We have the example scenario and another tab. And on this fourth tab, we have some useful resources that you might want to check out, including a link to the, uh, e filing to e file. So we’re going to go jump through that e filing right now and see what that looks like.

[00:15:30] The e file first thing we’re going to do is go to the tie revenue website and we are going to click on this green button to begin filling out our taxes and we’re going to be presented with this login screen. Now, please note if you’re using like the Chrome browser or I’m sure Safari or other browsers, there’s probably translations built in so you can have this translated to English in the past.

[00:15:51] This would actually break the tie website. But I’ve noticed that now. The tie revenue website, uh, does allow translations to be used and it doesn’t break the submission process at all. Therefore I’d highly recommend you leverage, uh, the translation built into your web browser, but I need to enter in my login details.

[00:16:09] This would be stuff that would be, um. Provided by your employer, uh, as well as your password, if you have already created that. And then you’re going to get this message, which is going to say how, you know, we need to validate that this is you and what’s your phone number. And once you have your phone number submitted there, you’re going to get one of those OTP codes that is going to verify that you are who you say you are and the phone number is yours.

[00:16:30] And then you are now logged in. And what we’re going to want to fill out now is the 90 slash 91, which is going to be our income tax filing for the year. And then we are presented with this screen, which is going to populate our data. So you’re going to see your name, your birth date, your ID number, all that fun stuff is going to be showing up here.

[00:16:46] And the first thing we have to fill in is how we’re filing. Are we filing as an individual? Are we filing along or do we actually have a, sorry, are we single? Do we have a spouse? Um, were we divorced during this year? You know, did our spouse unfortunately pass away during the year? This is what this is all about.

[00:17:02] And so in this scenario, remember, we’re going to say that this is an individual who is married and has been married for the entire year. So they’re going to select that option. And then once we have that option selected, what we’re going to see here is our spouse’s information is going to just pop in right here and we’re going to see their information or we’re going to add their information.

[00:17:23] And then we have to then select. This spouse, are they a dependent? Are they earning income? Are they filing separately? You have to enter this and in this case, I’m going to select the option that’s going to say My spouse is a dependent that makes no income and so once I select that option now I’m going to be able to claim them as a dependent I’m going to get a tax deduction based off that dependency.

[00:17:44] So we select that option and we click the green button to go next We’re in step two now, now we have to enter our income. So I’m going to click on this first button of the income and we’re going to populate that and this new page shows up and this is where we enter our income. So if I look and populate that in, sure enough, we have our 1.

[00:18:03] 3 million bot. We just type that in. We type in the one 32, seven 50, which is the amount of withholdings. And then we type in, this is the semi tricky part, but it’s, you’re not going to type in your own. Uh, identification number. You’re going to type in the identification number of the employer who did the withholding.

[00:18:17] And so that’s going to be populated there and then we can go, uh, submit that and go back. So we’re going to save it and then we’re going to go to back to the original page. And just remember before I show that I’m just showing this is where the company ID number would be, would be right here. And so when we want to populate this number, which is a grayed out.

[00:18:37] We’re going to put that in there and all we’re doing remember is just using this, um, withholding tax certificate form to fill in these details. And you can see when I’m back on the main page again, still in step two, but back to the main page, you can see that the information I entered is now populated.

[00:18:52] So we’re looking good. And there’s more information on here. So we have to fill in the rest of these things before we move on. But in this case, I am going to move on because remember, this individual does not have any other income in this scenario. Now, if you had other income where you, uh, were freelance, getting freelance work, or you had income related to rental properties, this is where all that stuff would be filled in as other forms of income.

[00:19:15] But in this simple scenario, we’re ready to move to the next step because we have no other income. So in step three, this is where we are going to add our deductions and these deductions, you can see that they actually automatically populate. I did not enter these in, but what we’re seeing here is we are seeing the, uh, a deduction for the taxpayer.

[00:19:32] So this is just going to say, Hey, you’re an individual, you’re a taxpayer, you’re filing, right? So therefore you get a 60, 000 bought deductions for being the taxpayer. Okay. And in this case we also had the spouse who has no income and therefore that automatically populated to say that they have no income, 60, 000 bought.

[00:19:48] That’s our second deduction. So we’re looking good. We’re already getting some deductions. And now what we have to enter here is this third box, which is going to be children, um, as well who are dependents. So when we click on the green button here to enter our children, this box pops up and we can enter the details of child one and child two.

[00:20:07] And once we enter those details again, it’s going to, we’re going to have a place to put the identification number and the birth date or birth year, uh, of the first child and then the birth year of the second child. Now, since the first child in this case was, um, it’s just going to get the regular deduction, but then second child onward, if they were born after 2018, they get this bigger deduction.

[00:20:28] So a 60, 000 bot deduction. So we have our 30, 000 bot deduction for the first child and our 60, 000 bot deduction for the second child. And once we save that and we make sure that we take these. Buttons here. Then we are back and we see this 90, 000 bot deduction has now showed up. So now we have our 60 for ourself, our 60 for our spouse that doesn’t earn an income and our 90 for our children.

[00:20:49] Now I also have to enter in a couple other pieces of details here, which would be, um, the amount that we contributed to our retirement fund. And in this case, it was 60, 000 bot. And we also have to enter in our social security. Now there’s more deductions here. There’s remember places to enter deductions for health insurance premiums for, um, life insurance premiums for various other things are deductions here.

[00:21:12] And remember, you’d have to translate this to know exactly what each of these deductions are. But, uh, in this simple scenario, I’m just using these Basic details. And I’m ready to move on to the next page. And just remember that those additional pieces of details, I got that 9, 000 bot and that 60, 000 bot, they are going in and matching up, right?

[00:21:30] 60, 000 bot was the prominent fund. 9, 000 bot was the social security. And both of those were. Captured right here in our certificate. That’s where we got those from. All right. And now we’re on to the almost final step, which is the step of making sure this all looks correct. So we can see here, we’re going to see whether or not this all looks correct.

[00:21:53] And we can see that the system has calculated that we should get a refund of 33, 000 bots, 33, five 50. And let’s go back to our spreadsheet and see if this matches up. So in our spreadsheet. I copied this to make it look exactly the same. We can see the income, 1. 3 million, the exemptions, the expenses, and the deductions, meaning the taxable income was this minus these equals 921.

[00:22:16] And if you look here, that’s exactly what this is. So it matches perfectly. And if we go back here, Remember, we ran it through this so you can see the work. You can see exactly how it was calculated. And then we can see that the taxable income here, how much should not the taxable income, the tax debt, that how much it should be owed for the year was 99, 000 baht.

[00:22:35] And we paid from withholdings. We’ve already paid one 32. Therefore the difference between those two means that we get a refund. Let’s see if that matches. Sure enough, 99 to 132750, meaning a refund of 33, 000 baht, and we have to select that we do in fact want to get this refund. We want them to pay us this money.

[00:22:53] We don’t want to donate it. We want to get it back in this case, or maybe you do want to give it to the government, but um, in this, you know, option, I’m going to go ahead and click that and we are done. So that is the end of the process, but actually, sorry, once I click save and I move on to the next step, the step five is going to be submitting all your documents.

[00:23:10] So that’s going to be a copy of your passport, pdf, um, copy of your spouse’s I. D. Card. If you have the spouse or if you have your Children, I think it’s birth certificates. If you had other deductions, like you had things like, um, insurance premiums and things like this, these reforms that you have to get from the companies that are doing these providing the services to you and those have to be Attached into the system so that the individual reviewing everything can validate that you should get the deductions that you said you should be getting.

[00:23:39] So that fifth step is strictly just to submit those support documents. I believe you can do that at a later date. I believe you can kind of log back in and then submit them later. They might actually email you and say, Hey, you forgot to attach this document. Um, are you going to text message or something?

[00:23:53] That’s going to say that you have to log back in and then provide those documents. I’d highly encourage you to add as many documents in that fifth step as you can to avoid any back and forth or delays. If you, for instance, get a refund, you certainly want that refund to get in the mail as quickly as possible.

[00:24:06] So definitely do that. So. That is, um, it for the, um, video today. I hope you found this valuable. Again, this is very different than the typical videos I do here on, um, this channel. However, since it’s tax season and I know that I was personally stressed about this in the past, I’ve been here now for over 10 years, so this is no longer a stressful process for me, but I just wanted to hopefully, uh, help you if this was new to you.

[00:24:27] So, Final notes here is, uh, make sure again to submit all your support documents. Now the documents have to be in your name. So just remember if you have insurance premiums or you have life insurance premiums or other things or mortgage, other stuff that could be, uh, increase, reducing your tax liability, right?

[00:24:43] They have to be in your name. So if your mortgage is in your wife’s name or something like that, that would not count. If your insurance is in your wife’s name, but you’re not the primary policy holder, I don’t think that counts. So again, talk to a tax professional, but just understand that a lot of times you will not get credit for deductions if these policies or these documents are not in your name.

[00:25:03] They do not match the person submitting taxes. Third point here is to hire a tax professional. So definitely, uh, I’m not a tax professional. I am here strictly to give you some basic information for entertainment purposes or whatever. Um, but please hire a Thai tax professional who knows what they’re doing.

[00:25:18] If, especially if you have any, uh, complex issues or you have, uh, other ways that you can reduce your tax burden, maybe you’re paying taxes in your home country as well. There’s plenty of reasons that you should hire a tax professional links to all the things like the Excel sheet are in the description.

[00:25:31] Just ask one thing. If you found this at all valuable, I went, talked over for about 20 minutes here, right? If you found this valuable, please, uh, just like, share, subscribe to my channel, small channel here. I’m just trying to pay it forward a little bit and help individuals out. So I hope that you find that valuable, especially if you are into business and entrepreneurship and professionals that are living and working in Thailand, this is the channel for you.

[00:25:52] So please do like, share and subscribe. Thank you so much. And I will catch you on the next video.