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ResourcesCorporate and Tax AdvisoryThailand Tax LawThailand Corporate Tax Compliance: E-Filing Mandatory

Thailand Corporate Tax Compliance: E-Filing Mandatory

Transcript of the above video:

In this video, I'm going to briefly discuss the mandatory nature of e-filing, various tax filings for companies registered here in Thailand. In the past and anybody that's done business in Thailand or has ever dealt with immigration that are dealt with the Thai government at all, most folks can tell you this is definitely a government which loves people. Paperwork seems to be ubiquitous and there seems to be a mountain of paperwork for virtually any endeavor one wishes to undertake with respect to getting things done here Thailand.

Now recently in 2016 basically, e-filing of certain tax documentation such as audited financial statements became mandatory and it has resulted in some overall changes with respect to how corporate service providers such as our division deals with these things. It has decreased the amount of paperwork that needs to be done. As is mentioned in another channel or in another video on this channel, the apparatus here, there is a requirement that corporate taxes, corporate tax filings, a lot of them be maintained on a monthly basis. Certain tax filings have to be dealt with on a yearly basis, most notably corporate income tax usually has to be dealt with on a year to-year basis and with respect to audited financial statements, those have to be by law filed once a year with respect to a company and failure to do so can result in a criminal warrant being issued. It's not something to mess around with respect to these compliance issues although I will and I must say that this latest move to sort of move everything more into an e-filing platform in my opinion, on one level that's going to be a very good thing because it's going to reduce the amount of paperwork. Just you know paper and paper everywhere you know constantly dealing with a barrage of paper.

But the other side of the coin is there is an issue with respect to e-filing I think down the road with respect to compliance because things that were once sort of well, for lack of a better term, viewed is not worth the time to deal with you know little nitpicking things with respect to one’s once filing. Now that these things are going to be filed I think overall it's going to result in a much tighter system with respect to the overall revenue and tax regime here in Thailand. So in a sense the way in which immigration about 18 months, two years ago from the time of this filming the way immigration sort of fundamentally went through an overhaul on the in the way in which the immigration visa applications are scrutinized, individuals are scrutinized here or here in Thailand etc when coming through port of entry where Thailand essentially within about 18 months sort of went from a fairly, I won't say antiquated but a system that operated much more in the paradigm of 25 to 30 years ago almost overnight seem to make a leap into the 21st century.

I think this is probably going to happen with respect to tax filings and compliance as well and I think that this e-filing is just sort of the first step, the first glimpse of what we're going to see down the road. So keep in mind, corporate services and corporate service providers are extremely important with respect to maintaining compliance as it would appear to me that the enforcement apparatus with respect to Revenue Department and Department Business Development that enforcement apparatus I think is going to get a lot more scrutinizing and I think that scrutiny is going to be facilitated by the fact that these filings are becoming mandatory.