Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the issue of taxes associated with Thai condominiums. It's interesting to me, people bring this up in a lot of different contexts and I often times end up having to get on the phone with them and figure out exactly why they are asking because different people have different concerns.

Yes, there is a Transfer Tax in Thailand. There is something akin to the Western notion of a Property Tax in Thailand although it is wildly different and quite honestly, quite a bit lower than what anybody in the West is used to dealing with but there is a rather substantial Transfer Tax that will occur as a percentage of the overall appraised value of the property; that will occur at the time of transfer, that tax. Meanwhile, there is what is also described as the Specific Business Tax which you could argue is kind of like a "hot money" tax or a "house flipper" tax, "condo flipper" tax if you want to call it that, wherein if you buy and sell, in this case real estate in the form of a condo, but buy and sell real estate within a given period of time, generally speaking it is about 2 years from the buy date to the sell date, then you get another percentage tacked on. Again it's kind of factually driven, factually dependent but you get another tax tacked on top of that.

So Thailand deals with Property Tax in a very different way than many Western jurisdictions most notably the primary method of collecting taxes associated with Thai real estate is via what is called a Transfer Tax at the time of the conveyancing of the property. So again, bit of a different system. Generally speaking for example when we or specifically I should say, the Thai Attorneys here in the firm are assisting clients with things like due diligence and conveyancing, they generally will go ahead and assist in dealing with the Transfer Tax at the time of the conveyancing as well.