🇹🇭Thailand · Taxes
Thailand — Taxes
Thailand tax 2026 for expats: foreign income taxed when remitted since 2024, the LTR exemption, PIT up to 35%, VAT at 7% until 2027 and 61 tax treaties.
Thailand taxes what you bring in, not what you earn. Since January 2024 that sentence has a sting in it: money earned abroad can follow you across a border years later and land on a Thai tax return. So what happens to your foreign savings once you cross 180 days in a calendar year?
Who is a Thai tax resident: 180 days, counted by calendar year
The test is a count of days and nothing else. Revenue Code section 41 paragraph 3 deems anyone present in Thailand for 180 days or more in a tax year a resident, and the tax year is the calendar year. The days need not run together. Three long stays and a scatter of weekend returns add up exactly as one unbroken stretch does.
Not 183. That figure travels with people out of other systems and is wrong here by three days that can decide a whole tax year. The Revenue Department’s own English page errs in the other direction, defining a resident as someone staying “more than 180 days”, which would quietly release the person sitting on exactly 180. The Thai text of the Code governs, and it says 180 or more.
The visa in your passport changes none of this. A holder, a retiree on a and a member who each spend seven months in Chiang Mai are all Thai tax residents; the holder who spends five months is not.
Stay under the line and Thailand taxes you on Thai-source income only. Non-residents also lose most of the family reliefs: spouse, child and parent allowances are available to them only for family actually living in Thailand. Crossing the line switches on something bigger than a rate: the rule that decides what happens to money you move in from abroad.
Foreign income since 2024: taxed in the year it reaches Thailand
Section 41 paragraph 2 of the Revenue Code has said the same thing for decades: a resident who derived income abroad pays Thai tax upon bringing that income into Thailand. It was not amended in 2023 or 2024. Thailand still runs on a , which is neither territorial nor worldwide. Money that stays offshore stays outside the Thai net.
What changed is the reading. , signed in September 2023, is a departmental order telling Revenue Department officials how to interpret that paragraph. Clause 1: foreign income earned in a tax year in which the person was resident, and brought into Thailand in any tax year whatsoever, goes into the ordinary section 48 calculation for the year it arrives. Clause 2 cancels the practice it replaced. The order bites on money brought in from January 2024 onward.
Two details carry the weight. Residence is tested in the year the income was earned, not the year it lands, so a year of Thai residence attaches itself to that money and travels with it. And nothing expires. A 2024 consulting fee parked in Singapore is still taxable when it is wired to Bangkok in 2031, which is the end of the old habit of letting income season for a year before moving it.
Por. 162/2566, from November 2023, drew a line backwards. It adds a single sentence to the earlier order: clause 1 does not apply to arising before 1 January 2024. Savings built up to the end of 2023 can be brought in untaxed, however long they sit first.
The order says nothing about how you prove when the money arose. Separate accounts, and a dated statement showing what each held at the end of 2023, are the obvious defence. That is editorial prudence, not a requirement written into Por. 162/2566.
- Residence test (calendar year)Revenue Code s.41 para 3; any visa
- 180 daysverif. · 2026-09-15
- Order Por. 161/2566 signedinterpretive order; the Code was not amended
- September 2023verif. · 2026-09-15
- Taxed when brought in, in any later year, fromincome earned in a year of residence
- January 2024verif. · 2026-09-15
- Order Por. 162/2566: pre-2024 income excludedno proof method specified in the order
- November 2023verif. · 2026-09-15
- Proposed same-year / next-year relief: not enacted as ofRD registers of decrees, regulations and orders
- September 2026verif. · 2026-09-15
The relief you have read about is not law. A proposed exemption for foreign income remitted in the year it was earned, or the year after, has circulated widely enough that whole forum threads treat it as settled. As of September 2026 the Revenue Department’s registers of royal decrees, ministerial regulations and departmental orders carried no such instrument, and its public-hearing pages carried no hearing on one. Articles announcing that the remittance tax was scrapped are describing a draft.
The confusion has a respectable source. Two PwC Thailand pages, both stamped as last reviewed in August 2026, answer the question differently. The personal income tax page matches the order. The income determination page still says foreign investment income is taxable only if remitted in the year of receipt, which is pre-2024 wording nobody edited. Read the orders for the rule, not the summaries.
One question the sources read here leave open: whether work performed physically in Thailand for a foreign employer is Thai-source income under section 41 paragraph 1, taxable whether or not it is ever remitted. Every remote worker on a DTV needs that answer; this page cannot honestly give it.
What it costs is the ordinary scale, and the scale is not punitive. THB 1,000,000 of net taxable income, whatever its origin, carries THB 115,000 of tax. No individual controlled-foreign-company rule appeared in any source read for this chapter, so profits left inside a company abroad are a separate question this page does not answer. The scale that produced that figure deserves a walk-through, not least because one official page still prints it wrong.
The income tax scale, and an official page still showing 2014
The scale runs on net income, after deductions and allowances, and it starts at nothing. The first THB 150,000 is exempt. Then 5 % to THB 300,000, 10 % to THB 500,000, 15 % to THB 750,000, 20 % to THB 1,000,000, 25 % to THB 2,000,000, 30 % to THB 5,000,000, and 35 % on everything above that.
The reality check is the cumulative column. Tax on exactly THB 5,000,000 of net income comes to THB 1,265,000 before the top rate touches a single baht. The scale has not moved since tax year 2017; the instructions for tax year 2026 are not published yet, and no change has been announced.
- 0% up to
- THB 150,000verif. · 2026-09-15
- 5% up to
- THB 300,000verif. · 2026-09-15
- 10% up to
- THB 500,000verif. · 2026-09-15
- 15% up to
- THB 750,000verif. · 2026-09-15
- 20% up to
- THB 1,000,000verif. · 2026-09-15
- 25% up to
- THB 2,000,000verif. · 2026-09-15
- 30% up tothe RD English page wrongly shows 4,000,000
- THB 5,000,000verif. · 2026-09-15
- Top rate above that
- 35 %verif. · 2026-09-15
Now the trap. The Revenue Department publishes an English personal income tax page, last updated in March 2024, which starts the top rate at THB 4,000,000 and labels its own table as applying to the 2013 and 2014 tax years. The same page prints a personal allowance of THB 30,000. Both numbers are dead. The Thai-language pages and the current filing instructions are the live ones, and the gap between the two is a decade wide.
Gross is not net, and the distance between them is where Thai tax turns friendly. Employment income carries a standard deduction of 50 %, capped at THB 100,000. On top come the allowances: THB 60,000 for the taxpayer, THB 60,000 for a spouse without income of their own, THB 30,000 per child.
One line matters disproportionately to retirees. A Thai tax resident aged 65 or over has up to THB 190,000 of assessable income exempt outright, and a married couple who both qualify each get their own. Against a foreign pension remitted in modest tranches, that exemption can absorb most of a year’s income before the scale starts at all.
A quieter clause catches freelancers and landlords. Under section 48(2), once assessable income other than salary reaches THB 120,000, the tax due cannot fall below 0.5 % of that non-salary assessable income, whatever the deductions would otherwise produce; if that calculation comes to THB 5,000 or less it is disregarded. Salaried employees never meet it. A consultant invoicing from a Chiang Mai kitchen table can. And for foreign income, the law offers exactly one way out.
The LTR exemption: three categories out of four, and the price of entry
, published in the in May 2022, is the only statutory exit from the remittance rule. Section 5 exempts foreign income from previous tax years brought into Thailand for three LTR categories, named one by one: Wealthy Global Citizens, Wealthy Pensioners and Work-from-Thailand Professionals.
Highly-Skilled Professionals are not in section 5. What sections 3 and 4 give them instead is a withholding rate of 17 % on employment income paid by a company in a target industry, and only where the progressive scale would otherwise bite harder. It is an election with a price attached: to treat the withholding as final they must claim no refund or credit of the tax withheld, and they must still report that income on the annual return. Their foreign income is exempt from nothing.
No other visa appears anywhere in the decree. Not the DTV, not the retirement visas, not Thailand Privilege. Section 7 adds a risk: if the conditions stop being met in a given tax year, the exemption lapses for that year, and the conditions themselves are set by a Director-General notification this chapter did not read.
Then the price of entry, from the Board of Investment’s own criteria as read in September 2026. A Wealthy Global Citizen needs $ 1,000,000 in assets, of which $ 500,000 must be invested in Thailand, in Thai government bonds, Thai companies or property, with no income test at all. The other categories run on income: $ 80,000 a year, or $ 40,000 with further conditions attached. Everything non-tax, from insurance floors to the endorsement process, sits in the visa chapter.
- Royal Decree 743 published
- May 2022verif. · 2026-09-15
- Wealthy Global Citizen — foreign income exempt; assets
- $ 1,000,000verif. · 2026-09-15
- Wealthy Global Citizen — invested in Thailandgovernment bonds, Thai companies or property; part of the assets; no income test
- $ 500,000verif. · 2026-09-15
- Wealthy Pensioner / Work-from-Thailand — foreign income exempt; income test per yearlower tier with extra conditions
- $ 80,000verif. · 2026-09-15
- Highly-Skilled Professional — NO foreign-income exemption; withholding optiontarget-industry employer; no refund or credit
- 17 %verif. · 2026-09-15
Hold those two sets of figures side by side. Somebody remitting a moderate amount each year is weighing a bill computed on the scale above against locking $ 500,000 into Thailand, or documenting $ 80,000 of annual income to a government agency. The exemption pays for itself when foreign income is large, regular and headed for a Thai bank account. Below that, the entry test usually costs more than the tax it removes. Dividends, crypto and gifts follow their own rules either way.
Crypto, dividends, capital gains, gifts and inheritance
“Thailand doesn’t tax crypto” is true in one narrow lane and false everywhere else. Ministerial Regulation No. 399 exempts the gain on transfers of cryptocurrency and digital tokens received from January 2025 to December 2029, but only where the transfer happens on a licensed Thai digital-asset exchange, through a licensed broker, or to a licensed dealer. Sell on a foreign venue or peer to peer and you are outside the exemption. If that gain is foreign-source, it queues up behind the remittance rule instead.
For gains that stay taxable, PwC reports withholding at 15 % on crypto and digital-token transfers. Treat it as second-hand: the figure sits on the same PwC page that still carries the pre-2024 remittance sentence.
Thai investment income is more settled. Dividends from Thai companies are withheld at 10 % and interest on deposits, bonds and debentures at 15 %, either of which a resident may elect to treat as final rather than fold into the return. The section 47 bis dividend credit runs the other way: it is available only if you do include the dividend. Capital gains are ordinary income, with one exception PwC reports rather than the Code: gains on SET-listed shares sold on the exchange, and on mutual-fund units, are exempt, with no offset for capital losses.
Gifts have a wide ceiling and a flat rate above it. An elective 5 % applies to the part above THB 20,000,000 a year received from ascendants, descendants or a spouse, and above THB 10,000,000 for customary or ceremonial gifts from anyone else. Inheritance lives in a separate Act this chapter did not open: PwC gives THB 100,000,000 exempt per testator and 10 % above it, with spouses exempt. PwC also reports no net wealth tax of any kind.
Selling property triggers a different set of taxes entirely, among them, with rates that belong beside the rest of the purchase and sale costs in the property chapter. The tax every resident meets weekly is the one printed at the bottom of a 7-Eleven receipt.
VAT: one rate at the till, another in law, and company tax
Thailand has two VAT rates, and the one in the Code is not the one you pay. The statutory rate is 10 % according to PwC, the only source this chapter has for that figure: Revenue Code section 80 itself was not opened, and Royal Decree No. 807 confirms the mechanism by reducing “the rate under section 80” without printing it. What reaches the till is 7 %, built from a national rate of 6.3 % plus local tax on top.
Decree 807 was published in the Royal Gazette in August 2026, takes effect from October 2026, and carries the reduced rate through September 2027. The decree it amends stopped at September 2026, so any guide still quoting that end date was written before the Gazette caught up. The reduction is renewed decree by decree, each one a separate instrument with its own expiry rather than a settled rate.
Company tax is tidier. The headline corporate rate is 20 %, again per PwC. The Revenue Department’s own SME infographic sets out the tiers that decide what a small Thai company actually pays: the first THB 300,000 of net profit exempt, 15 % up to THB 3,000,000, and the headline rate above that, for companies with paid-up capital no higher than THB 5,000,000 and revenue from goods and services no higher than THB 30,000,000 in the period.
Who may own that company, and in what proportion, is a question this chapter does not answer. The filing calendar, though, is shared by everyone who owes anything at all.
61 tax treaties, the gaps in the list, and notes by passport
The Revenue Department’s treaty register, last updated in July 2026, lists 61 comprehensive double tax agreements in force. None is suspended; the register carries no such status at all. A large share of them were rewritten in place by the MLI, effective from July 2022, so the PDF you download is rarely the whole instrument.
The gaps matter more than the count. Brazil, Mexico, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Portugal and Greece are absent from the register entirely, and Saudi Arabia appears only with an air-transport agreement. PwC reports that Thailand grants no credit for foreign tax unless a treaty permits it, which under a remittance system is the sentence to read twice: bring in income already taxed where you earned it, with no treaty in between, and there is nothing to set against the Thai bill. Entitlement follows tax residence, never the passport.
If you hold a US passport
The US treaty has been in force since December 1997 and is not among those the MLI modified. What US citizenship does to your own filing obligations, and what FATCA asks of a Thai bank, was not sourced for this chapter and is not stated here.
If you hold a UK passport
In force since November 1981 and MLI-modified. The treaty text and the MLI positions have to be read together; the 1981 document alone does not show the treaty as it applies today.
If you hold a Russian, Ukrainian or Belarusian passport
On the Thai side the Russia treaty is alive: signed in September 1999, in force since January 2009, MLI-modified, and still listed as in force when the register was last updated. Russia’s own position under Decree 585 was not checked against a Russian primary source for this chapter, so the Thai register is evidence of the Thai side only. Ukraine has been in force since November 2004, Belarus since September 2006. Kazakhstan and Georgia have no treaty with Thailand at all, which is the line that bites hardest for readers holding those passports.
If Thailand survives the tax arithmetic, the next step is the practical one: what to open, register and file in the first month on the ground. That is the Thailand checklist, and the rest of the country sits on the Thailand hub.
Sources: Revenue Code ss. 41, 47, 48, 50; RD Orders Por. 161/2566 and Por. 162/2566; Royal Decrees 743 and 807 (Royal Gazette); Ministerial Regulation 399; RD PND 90 instructions, tax year 2568; the RD treaty register, updated July 2026; BOI LTR criteria; and, where named above, PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries Thailand, reviewed August 2026. Decree, regulation and order registers checked September 2026.
Frequently asked
Does Thailand tax foreign income in 2026?
Yes, if you are a tax resident and you bring the money in. 180 days or more in the calendar year makes you resident, and under Por. 161/2566, signed in September 2023, foreign income earned from January 2024 in a year of residence is taxed in whichever year it reaches Thailand, at the ordinary progressive scale. Income that stays abroad is not taxed. Thailand did not adopt worldwide taxation.
Is money I saved before 2024 taxable if I bring it to Thailand?
No. Por. 162/2566, from November 2023, puts assessable income arising before 1 January 2024 outside the rule, so pre-2024 savings can be remitted without Thai tax however long they sit abroad first. The order says nothing about how you prove when the money arose. Keeping those savings in a separate account with a dated end-of-2023 statement is prudence rather than a requirement of the order.
Has Thailand exempted foreign income brought in the year it is earned or the next year?
No. The proposal was reported widely enough to be treated as settled, but it is not law. As of September 2026 the Revenue Department’s registers of royal decrees, ministerial regulations and departmental orders contained no such instrument, and its public-hearing pages showed no hearing on one. Anything announcing that the remittance tax has been scrapped is describing a draft, not an enacted exemption.
How many days do you need to be a tax resident in Thailand?
180 days or more in a calendar year, aggregated across every trip rather than counted in one stretch. Not 183, and not a rolling twelve months. The tax year is the calendar year, so the count restarts on 1 January. Your visa has no bearing on the test: a repeat visitor on visa exemption crosses the line the same way an LTR holder does.
Do LTR visa holders pay tax on foreign income in Thailand?
Three of the four categories do not. Royal Decree 743, published in May 2022, exempts Wealthy Global Citizens, Wealthy Pensioners and Work-from-Thailand Professionals on foreign income from previous tax years brought into Thailand. Highly-Skilled Professionals are not named in that section: they get a 17 % withholding option on qualifying Thai employment income, conditional on claiming no refund or credit, and no foreign-income exemption at all.
What are the personal income tax rates in Thailand?
Progressive, on net income after deductions and allowances. The first THB 150,000 is exempt, the rates then step through 5 %, 10 %, 15 %, 20 %, 25 % and 30 %, and 35 % applies above THB 5,000,000. The scale has been unchanged since tax year 2017. Ignore the Revenue Department’s English page: it still starts the top band at THB 4,000,000 and labels the table for 2013 and 2014.
Is crypto taxed in Thailand?
Partly. Gains received from January 2025 to December 2029 are exempt under Ministerial Regulation No. 399, but only on a licensed Thai digital-asset exchange, through a licensed broker or to a licensed dealer. Gains made on foreign exchanges or peer to peer stay taxable, and where they are foreign-source they fall under the remittance rule when the proceeds arrive. PwC reports withholding at 15 % on transfers.
Is VAT in Thailand 7% or 10%?
Both, in a sense. The rate in the Revenue Code is 10 % according to PwC, while the rate collected is 7 %, made up of a 6.3 % national rate plus local tax. Royal Decree No. 807 holds the reduced rate through September 2027. Each extension is a separate decree with its own expiry, so the 7 % you pay is renewed rather than permanent.
Verified · 2026-09-15