Money, tax & banking
Tax residence, foreign income, opening accounts, moving money legally.
Tax residence in Thailand: the 180-day rule and what it actually triggers
Thailand decides tax residence by counting days and nothing else. Under Section 41 paragraph 3 of the Revenue Code, anyone present in Thailand for a period or periods aggregating 180 days or more in a tax year (the calendar year, 1 January to 31 December) is a tax resident for that year. The days need not be consecutive, and nationality, visa type and immigration status are all irrelevant. The Revenue Department's own worked examples make the edges clear: 184 scattered days makes you resident, 179 days spread across the year does not, and 250 consecutive days split 100 in one calendar year and 150 in the next makes you resident in neither year, because the test runs per calendar year. What residence triggers: residents are taxable on income from sources in Thailand however and wherever it is paid, plus foreign-sourced income under the remittance rules in force since 2024. Non-residents are taxed only on Thai-source income. Residence in a given year is also what lets you claim relief under Thailand's tax treaties as a Thai resident, including foreign tax credits. Two pieces of forum folklore worth correcting: crossing 180 days does not by itself mean you owe tax or must file — that depends on having assessable income above the filing thresholds — and staying under 180 days does not shield Thai-source income, which is taxable regardless of residence.
Foreign-sourced income remitted to Thailand: Por 161/162 and the rule as it stands
Since 1 January 2024 Thailand taxes foreign-sourced income on a remit-when-resident basis. Revenue Department Order Por 161/2566 (issued 15 September 2023), as amended by Por 162/2566, re-reads Section 41 paragraph 2 of the Revenue Code so that two conditions trigger tax: the income arose from 1 January 2024 onward in a calendar year in which you were a Thai tax resident (180 days or more), and it is brought into Thailand in any year — that year or any later one. It is then taxed in the year of remittance. The old folklore trick of parking income offshore for a year and remitting it tax-free is dead. The Revenue Department's official Q&A confirms the important limits. Income that arose before 1 January 2024 can be remitted any time without Thai tax. Income earned in a year you were not resident is never caught, even if you remit it in a year you are. Only the income element is assessable: bringing back your own capital or savings is not income, unrealised gains are nothing until sold, and a foreign stock gain is measured as sale price minus cost. Remitted amounts convert at the exchange rate on the date the money enters Thailand, and 'bringing in' covers bank transfers, online transfers and carrying cash. As of 11 July 2026 the drafted remittance-window exemption has not been enacted; Por 161/162 remain the operative rules. A separate proposal to tax worldwide income (not just remittances) was reported in 2024 but was never published in the Royal Gazette and is not law.
Thai personal income tax: rates, TIN, and the PND90/91 filing routine
Thai personal income tax is progressive on net income after deductions and allowances: the first 150,000 baht is exempt, then 5% to 300,000, 10% to 500,000, 15% to 750,000, 20% to 1,000,000, 25% to 2,000,000, 30% to 5,000,000 and 35% above that (the 35% band was raised from 4 to 5 million baht for the 2017 tax year by Revenue Code Amendment Act No. 44). The tax year is the calendar year and the annual return is due by the last day of March of the following year — PND91 if you have only employment income, PND90 otherwise. People with rental, professional or business income also file a half-year return (PND94) by 30 September. Tax withheld at source during the year is credited against the final bill, and spouses may file jointly or separately. The main current allowances: employment income carries a standard expense deduction of 50% capped at 100,000 baht, plus a personal allowance of 60,000 baht, 60,000 for a spouse and 30,000 per child (doubled to 60,000 for the second and each subsequent child born in or after 2018). Be warned that the Revenue Department's own English summary pages still display the pre-2017 figures (a 30,000 personal allowance and a 35% band starting at 4 rather than 5 million baht) — a common source of confusion. A taxpayer identification number is required under Section 3 Undecim of the Revenue Code, applied for within 60 days of first deriving assessable income. Thais simply use their 13-digit national ID; foreigners apply at an area revenue office with their passport and receive a 13-digit TIN. (TINs have been 13-digit since 2012 — the Revenue Department's English TIN page still describes the old 10-digit format.)
Opening a Thai bank account as a foreigner: why every branch tells you something different
No single national checklist governs this — the government's own portal presents account opening as each bank's own requirements decision. Account opening is each bank's own know-your-customer decision, which is why the answer genuinely differs between banks — and between two branches of the same bank. The government's official portal confirms this openly, listing each major bank's requirements separately and noting that 'each bank has different requirements for opening an account.' The official baseline documents: passport, work permit and proof of address for those working here. Without a work permit, banks want the passport plus at least one further anchor document — the portal's examples include a certificate from your embassy or an international organisation, a foreign government pension certificate, documentation of your account with an overseas bank, a letter of recommendation from a person the bank trusts, or an employer's letter for someone whose work permit is in process. Individual banks add their own items, such as a salary certificate. Street-level practice in 2025–2026 is tighter than the written lists: major banks generally expect a long-stay reason for being in Thailand (a non-immigrant, LTR or similar visa), a Thai mobile number, a small opening deposit of roughly 500–2,000 baht, and a residence certificate from Immigration is the most reliably accepted address proof. A refusal at one branch does not bind another — trying a different branch, or a branch used to foreigners, is a legitimate and common fix. Avoid paid 'agents' offering to open accounts on tourist entries.
Moving money in and out: exchange control, purpose declarations and the FET form
Thailand's exchange-control regime dates from the Exchange Control Act B.E. 2485 (1942); the Ministry of Finance has entrusted its administration to the Bank of Thailand, which works through 'authorized banks' — every commercial bank you deal with. That structure explains the everyday experience: any purchase, sale, exchange or transfer of foreign currency must go through a person licensed by the Minister of Finance — for most people an authorized bank, but also licensed money changers and transfer agents, and the bank must record the purpose of each transaction for the BOT. Your bank asking 'what is this transfer for?' is a legal requirement, not nosiness. Bringing money in is free of limit. Going the other way, outward transfers are allowed through authorized banks for permitted purposes with the matching paperwork; retail investors may move up to USD 5 million per person per calendar year into foreign portfolio investment. For any foreign-exchange transaction of USD 200,000 or more the bank must collect supporting documents unless it has already done a know-your-business review of you. Physical cash has its own rules: Thai baht banknotes may be taken out up to 50,000 baht generally, or 2 million baht to bordering countries, Vietnam and China's Yunnan province, and foreign currency banknotes over USD 15,000 must be declared to customs. Property buyers: the Condominium Act requires a foreign purchaser to show the money came from abroad in foreign currency, so ask the receiving bank for a Foreign Exchange Transaction form or credit advice for every transfer — the Land Department will want it, and it also smooths repatriating the proceeds when you sell.
Double-tax agreements: how treaties interact with Thailand's remittance tax
Thailand has built a wide network of bilateral double tax agreements since its first with Sweden in 1963; the Revenue Department publishes each treaty text on its site. They cover income taxes only — personal income tax, corporate income tax and petroleum income tax — never VAT or specific business tax. Each treaty allocates taxing rights between Thailand and the partner state and eliminates double taxation by one of two methods: exemption (the residence country stands back from income taxed at source) or, for individuals remitting foreign income, credit (the residence country taxes the income but deducts the foreign tax already paid). The credit method is exactly how treaties mesh with the post-2024 remittance rules. The Revenue Department's official Q&A on Por 161/162 confirms there is no double taxation: a Thai tax resident who remits foreign income that was already taxed abroad may credit that foreign tax against the Thai tax due in the year of remittance, under the treaty with the country concerned. Thailand's treaties use the ordinary-credit mechanism, which in each treaty's elimination-of-double-taxation article generally limits the credit to the Thai tax attributable to that income — check the article in your own treaty. The folklore correction: a DTA does not make foreign income invisible to Thailand. 'It was already taxed at home' usually means a credit, not an exemption — you generally still declare the remitted income. Whether a pension escapes Thai tax entirely depends on the specific article of your country's treaty (treaty pension articles differ: many follow the OECD pattern — government-service pensions taxable only by the paying state, private pensions in the residence state — but some, notably the 1981 UK/Thailand Convention, contain no private-pension article at all), so read your own treaty rather than extrapolating from another nationality's forum post.
Everyday money: PromptPay, QR codes, cash and foreign-card ATM fees
PromptPay is the Bank of Thailand-backed instant payment infrastructure, live since 2016. It links a bank account to a proxy — a citizen ID number, a mobile phone number, a corporate registration number or other identifiers — so anyone can pay you without knowing your account number, and QR codes built on it are accepted from street stalls to hospitals. The official fee schedule caps transfers cheaply (free below 5,000 baht, no more than 2 baht up to 30,000, 5 baht up to 100,000, 10 baht above), and in practice most banks dropped digital transfer fees entirely from 2018. Thailand has also linked PromptPay QR to several other countries' systems — among them Singapore (PayNow), Malaysia (DuitNow), Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and others for cross-border payments. For foreigners the practical route is registering your Thai mobile number as the proxy through your bank's app, since the citizen-ID proxy requires a Thai national ID; banks handle foreign customers slightly differently, so expect some variation. Do not let QR ubiquity fool you into going cashless: markets, songthaews, small restaurants and much of life outside the cities still run on cash, and foreign cards often cannot pay via Thai QR. On ATMs: Thai banks levy a flat per-withdrawal surcharge on foreign cards on top of whatever your home bank charges, so fewer, larger withdrawals are cheaper. When any ATM or card terminal offers to charge you in your home currency, decline it — dynamic currency conversion rates are consistently worse than paying in baht.
General information, not legal advice. Laws and practice change; for a decision that matters, confirm with the authority named in the sources or a licensed professional.