Thai Economic proposes 'Single' tax

[Pleng]

A proposal to impose additional taxes on unmarried and/or childless people!!
Thai News article

According to my girlfriend this is all over Facebook and Twitter at the moment, sending the nation crazy. I think it's gotten out of hand because she believed [and so I guess most of the twitterbook posters also believed] that the government had made this proposal, though it seems like it's just a proposal from a university professor at some seminar.

[ridgeydidge.au]

so lets save money by forcing people to make an economic choice and marry for the sake of reducing taxes and have children the don't want and can't support. Who picks up the bill for the fallout?
what was this guy thinking?

[STEVE G]

Where I work here in Luxembourg you get reduced tax for both getting married and having children, I think it increases for the first four. It's considered quite normal and I think many other Western countries are similar.

[nanyang]

Where I work here in Luxembourg you get reduced tax for both getting married and having children, I think it increases for the first four. It's considered quite normal and I think many other Western countries are similar.

It's because, I'm sure you're aware, of falling birth rates - the replenishment ratio.

Not quite the same scenario in Thailand.

[Frank Hovis]

It's because, I'm sure you're aware, of falling birth rates - the replenishment ratio.

Not quite the same scenario in Thailand.

Children per couple in Luxembourg is about 1.8, slightly more than the article suggests for Thailand.
Less than 2 children per couple is not enough to 'replenish' the population.

Luxembourg reduces taxation on those with more children, the proposal is to increase taxation on those with no children. Which ends up being much the same thing. Childless people pay more direct tax than those with children.

What's "Not quite the same scenario" ?

[Takiap]

Where I work here in Luxembourg you get reduced tax for both getting married and having children, I think it increases for the first four. It's considered quite normal and I think many other Western countries are similar.

Yes, I think this is the case in most western countries, and was the case in South Africa when I was still living there.

It's not really a matter of increasing tax for single people. Just increase tax for everyone, and then reduce tax for married couples and parents.

[buksida]

I get an income tax deduction in Thailand for being married and having kids of school age, it works out to be quite a bit too so the system is already partially in operation.

[Pleng]

It's pretty normal to have tax relief for having kids but, even though it's essentially the same thing, proposing an additional tax for being single just sounds horrible which I guess is why the nation is in a bit of a tiz over it

[Winkie]

Well that's clear enough!

[bigideas]

I also received a tax reduction for being married with children, for a number of years while working in Thailand. However, if the idea is to increase taxes generally and then to sustain the tax reduction for families, I would feel sorry for the already cash strapped younger workers of whom the majority earn less than 10,000bt per month. One day, I did the maths. After paying 1500bt a month to commute (50bt per day for many Bangkok workers) to work and another 1500bt per month for lunch. 3000bt for rent and another 3,000bt per month for dinners, that leaves 1,000bt for bills. There's nothing left for the taxman.

[Spitfire]

Most Thais are too poor...or too rich, to pay tax. I think I read a few days ago in the Bangkok Post that there is something like 38 million adult workers here and only 3 million pay tax.....which a staggeringly small amount.

I too get tax reductions for being married and having a kid etc. I think it [tax level] can go down even further if you claim to be taking care of parents or old folk in the family too. Many Thais have to do this anyhow and claim for it as I'm pretty sure you can claim further reductions on the merit of this.

With such low levels of tax income from the working population I sometimes wonder where they get all their spending money from apart from VAT and taxing luxury items.

[Bristolian]

Most Thais are too poor...or too rich, to pay tax. I think I read a few days ago in the Bangkok Post that there is something like 38 million adult workers here and only 3 million pay tax.....which a staggeringly small amount.

I too get tax reductions for being married and having a kid etc. I think it [tax level] can go down even further if you claim to be taking care of parents or old folk in the family too. Many Thais have to do this anyhow and claim for it as I'm pretty sure you can claim further reductions on the merit of this.

With such low levels of tax income from the working population I sometimes wonder where they get all their spending money from apart from VAT and taxing luxury items.

I read the same Bangkok Post report but unfortunately they did not provide detailed figures.

However, from a report in the Bangkok Post in 2010, there were then only 2.3m Thais paying income tax so your figure of 3m today sounds about right

Incredibly, only 9 million people file personal income tax returns in 2010, the majority being exempt from tax liability as they earned less than 20,000 baht per month.

A closer look at the tax figures offered an even bleaker picture of the gap between rich and poor. Only 60,000 were paying taxes at the highest bracket of 37%, which applied at that time, for annual income of more than 4 million baht per year.

The 60,000 taxpayers accounted for as much as 50% of total personal income tax collected that year. And a full one-third of income tax collected is paid by just 2,400 people in the country earning over 10 million baht per year.

Something is obviously wrong if these figures were correct

[Nereus]

Here is an article by a lady that should be the PM:
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http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opin ... -tax-tweak

Personal income taxes are soon to be altered to leave a bit more cash in taxpayers' pockets. The cabinet has approved the proposed tax tweak, and the bill is now pending parliament's go-ahead. Coming............................
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Sutapa Amornvivat, PhD, is chief economist and executive vice-president at Economic Intelligence Center, Siam Commercial Bank. She has international work experience at IMF, ING Group and Booz, Allen, Hamilton. She received a BA from Harvard and a PhD from MIT. eic@scb.co.th EIC Online: www.scbeic.com

[Spitfire]

When you think about it with the tax info/comment from above and the article from Nereus then you'd think that the swift creation and expansion of a proper middle class section of the population would be a top priority for the government. Having a sizable middle class in any country swells the tax coffers hugely as it [tax] is easy to collect from work source and basically it's the middle classes that pretty much fund a large proportion of government spending in most modern countries.


..............or would that screw with the culture pyramid status quo too much and prohibit many of the 'old ways' of running/doing things or even not allow the country to exist in a form that resembles what it does so now. Perhaps a certain section of the society doesn't like the idea of a middle class that is too big with a disposable income, which in turn would allow them [the newly middle class] to make their own choices and decisions on many things that are at the moment out of reach or prohibited.