Bringing household goods into Thailand

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ThaiMike
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Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by ThaiMike »

After reading the thai customs page and looking in the forum here i am still confused what the current rules are for bringing in personal belongings. We , wife and myself, will be coming on the retirement O visa and are wondering if we can bring our personal belongings without paying tax.

It would be the usual, clothes, books, small furniture, desktop pc, printer, audio equipment, instruments

I am aware that bringing a car has no use and large electronic items are taxed (?) and guess that bringing the laptop, phones and tablets can be done on the flight in the hand luggage

So would there be a tax problem with bringing that sort of stuff ? Thanks !
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Dannie Boy
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by Dannie Boy »

Just for clarity as it certainly makes it easier if you have a Thai wife, is your wife Thai or are you both farangs?
Edit. Just re-read and saw that you said you are both coming on O visas so both farang. I still believe that you should be able to bring in items without paying tax, but I'm sure somebody with direct knowledge will answer soon.
ThaiMike
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by ThaiMike »

Aha sorry, my wife is Dutch like myself so we would be both "Farang" :D
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by robcar »

I shipped 2 x 30kg boxes of personal stuff which included a printer and other electrical bits along with clothing and teabags. I did it with a UK firm and filled out all the required paperwork. My boxes were not even inspected. I came from UK.
Hope this helps.
ThaiMike
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by ThaiMike »

Thanks Rob, looks like you got lucky :) Want to be sure before i pack half a container full of stuff that i don't face import costs that are more than the value of the contents.
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Siani
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by Siani »

We shipped a container in and out of Thailand with personal effects. I am not joking when I say this :? We had "hell" with the customs until we gave them a fat tip! :wink: They wanted a fortune when unloading the items, then we came to a solution :idea: and suddenly about 10 men arrived, then unloaded into the house! :cheers: :D
Last edited by Siani on Fri Mar 25, 2016 6:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.
MLS
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by MLS »

Hi ThaiMike and Mrs ThaiMike,

I hope this might be helpful...

When I was recently doing my research on moving to Thailand I was given to understand from official (and anecdotal) sources that I would have to pay duty on my best option: coming in on an 0-A retirement visa. I arrived on the O-A late last December, with my shipment following (intact!) at my house here two weeks later.

These next four lines are cut and pasted from an initial email from my shipper:

Personal computer: 7% of CIF (cost of goods + insurance + freight cost) value
Stereo, Camera, sport equipment: 17.7%
Pictures/paintings, TV, CDs, DVDs, desk, chair, book case: 28.40%
Kitchenware, glassware, clothes, linens, mattress: 39.1%

For info, I personally brought in some audio equipment by 'plane over a couple of trips but ended up shipping 87 boxes of personal effects and household items, including furniture, a fridge, a treadmill, 2 x TVs, 2 x PCs, burglar alarm, dehumidifier, full toolboxes, ornaments, statues, wall art, lots of kitchen stuff including gadgets such as bread-making machine, coffee machine etc., lots of books, hundreds of DVDs and CDs, plus clothes, shoes, linen and many other things I can’t remember now.

I was up-front and declared/insured everything. The container wasn’t inspected. Sorry I can’t recall the overall declared/insured value right now (without digging through one of the above boxes!) but I know I paid c. USD2,000 in duty. To be honest I couldn't and still can't be bothered to work out how this was calculated but I'd been expecting to pay more, especially as there were quite a few high value individual items, and when I think that I have moved my whole life over here I think that was pretty reasonable.

By the way, I moved from Hong Kong using an international shipping company, incidentally comprising mostly Dutch staff, who very efficiently spoon-fed me through the entire process. If you want to/can PM me and would like more info I’d be happy to help if I can.
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by ThaiMike »

Thanks MLS, Siani for the very clear answers.

So it's a bit the luck of the draw if and how much you have to pay on goods that are imported.
Considering the price list of MLS, ill ship the desktop computers, printers and audio equipment, will put all movies on harddisk and forget about paintings, furniture and the linens / kitchen stuff and buy that new in Thailand.

Plus locally buy the toughest biggest bright red pickup truck that i can find for private transport..
Been to thailand now 4x a month and the traffic and dogs are my biggest worry, the rest will be ok i am sure.

Again thanks for the help, this is a wonderful forum to read through and find such helpful people :)
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by Siani »

images (1).jpg
images (1).jpg (3.76 KiB) Viewed 6779 times
Good luck with it all :)
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by TunnelRats »

Hi ThaiMike


In mid 2013 we moved fm Germany to Hua Hin, closing the fence behind us,
Retirement-O- was the magic word!
All our goods - and i mean ALL- were stowed in a 20"-Container and shipped to BKK.
Electric tools, Electronic spare parts, TV's, Laptop's, Desktop's, a lot of multimedia, Furniture, white goods and whiteware and so on...

OK, let me cut my spiel,
when the box was discharged at Lat Krabang abt three month later, our Thai moving company send me the following request:

QUOTE
Frankly, you have to pay Estimate Import Duty & Tax for your goods:

A) The import duty costs the amount of 20,471.00THB
B) The customs fee costs the amount of 200.00THB.
UNQUOTE

Needless to say, our box arrived with seal untouched.

Hope that helps

take care and best wishes
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ThaiMike
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by ThaiMike »

Thanks for the info Tunnelrats, so fingers crossed if i ship all the stuff that it will be tea money ;)

Just for reading pleasure, we both are still in the early stages but this is of somewhat of an early concern when you have a large house full of 30 years of buying all kinds of items. Plus an attic the size of a parking lot with god knows what. And by the way, we come from Germany too.

Shipping most of it with such a small amount of cash to pay will be tempting.
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Dannie Boy
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by Dannie Boy »

One thing I would recommend is to use a well known shipping company - when I moved here I used Allied Pickfords and I'm sure the big companies get less hassle from the authorities than the small companies - our shipment arrived with the seals intact so nobody from Customs had inspected it.
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by dennism53 »

I'm planning on shipping a 20 ft container in about 6-8 weeks. Going thru the process of developing a shipping bill now, labeling each box and detailing weight, contents and value of each.
My plan was to ship the container in my Thai wife's name. It is my understanding that a Thai National returning home is entitled to bring household contents with no import duty, can anyone comment on a situation such as this they are aware of!
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by Big Boy »

dennism53 wrote:My plan was to ship the container in my Thai wife's name. It is my understanding that a Thai National returning home is entitled to bring household contents with no import duty, can anyone comment on a situation such as this they are aware of!
That is what we did 4 years ago, and had absolutely no problem.
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Re: Bringing household goods into Thailand

Post by Bluesky »

dennism53 wrote:I'm planning on shipping a 20 ft container in about 6-8 weeks. Going thru the process of developing a shipping bill now, labeling each box and detailing weight, contents and value of each.
My plan was to ship the container in my Thai wife's name. It is my understanding that a Thai National returning home is entitled to bring household contents with no import duty, can anyone comment on a situation such as this they are aware of!
If you were seeking a current opinion it may be worthwhile contacting Asian Tigers Transpo who have been organizing everything from diplomatic/UN shipments to personal shipments into Thailand and the region for many years. They have quite a few expats on staff from UK. I have found their advice quite helpful in the past. I have attached a link that will give you an overview and contact details.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/com ... ional-ltd-
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