Eneukman

elef, please don't make matters even more confusing than they are already. I don't think Thailand has an equivalent to Capital Gains Tax - says he hopefully. Alan

Not sure whether such an investment vehicle exists in the UK. If it does, I somehow think that the government will have ensured that any gains made will be liable to tax! Alan

If I'm reading this correctly, Bob that means that the shares I bought in October 2005 (2 months after I left the UK) will be wholly exempt from CGT so long as I don't return to the UK to live. That will reduce my potential gain if Alliance & Leicester are taken over to somewhere between £3,000 & £4,000, which is covered by my annual exemption. I did sell some shares in the last tax year after I left the UK but that was to reduce my holding in a company in which I have far too many shares. It also used up last year's annual exemption. I am more aware than most people here of the complexities of domicile. I did once successfully claim American domicile for someone who still owned a house in the west of Scotland. I argued that it had been in the family for many years and that the deceased wanted the house to pass to his children. Everything else pointed to American domicile (his 2nd wife was Californian) and the Capital Taxes Office accepted the position. Alan

Not sure what a PUT option is. In the UK, there is an annual exmption (currently, I think £8,800). Capital Gains Tax is payable on your TOTAL net gains for any one tax year. Therefore to calculate my liability, which naturally I am anxious to avoid, I need to total all the gains made in a tax year and then deduct any losses made. After that, if I still have a gain, I can then deduct the annual allowance. What is left is then added to your total gross income and then taxed at either 20% or if the gain takes you into the higher rate bracket at 40%. In addition, I think I can carry forward from previous years any losses that have not been offset against gains in any year. I need to check this as I may have a loss from the previous tax year that would be helpful to me. However, if you are deemed to be non-resident you are exempt from Capital Gains Tax with the poviso that stocks held BEFORE you left the UK will continue to be liable for a certain period of time after leaving the UK. I am trying to ascertain whether investments I bought after leaving the UK but within a 4 or 5 year time scale are exempt or still liable to this tax. Bazle seems to be suggesting that I'm not going to be liable on any gains made on the investments purchased after I left the UK, which is good news to me. Alan

Thanks for that, Bazle. I'm sure I'd seen a reference to 4 years but I'll check the Revenue's web-site again in the next couple of days. I did sell a number of investments but a large part of the proceeds from these were remitted to my Bangkok Bank account so the purchases were new acquisitions. The shares I bought were also totally different from those that I sold. If the shares I bought after leaving the UK are exempt from CGT, that will make some investment decisions a lot easier Being a true Scot, I hate paying tax when I don't have to. I take my advice from Investors Chronicle magazine. A subscription to the magazine allows me access to the subscribers' section of their web-site. I'll be happy to meet up for a few beers at some point. I'll be in Catz on Thursday from about 9.30 or so to meet up with jambo and to try and forget that I'll be another year older. Alan

The same principle works in the UK. My problem is that if I am liable to Capital Gains Tax on investments I bought AFTER leaving the UK and a certain company is taken over I will have a gain well in excess of £17,000 (and probably closer to £19,000) on that holding alone. I've also seen a reccomendation to sell a holding in another company which is presently showing a gain of £6,000. I can offset that by selling one holding at a loss of £8,000 giving a net gain, after allowing for my annual Capital Gains allowance of some £8,000/£9,000. On the other hand, if I am not liable for Capital Gains Tax on investments bought after I left the UK, my potential gain wlll be somewhere in the order of £3,000/£4,000, which I can cope with. Alan

elef, I understand the point you make, but under UK law, it is possible to be domiciled in one country and resident in another. I am resident in Thailand (for income tax purposes) but am still domiciled in Scotland for Inheritance Tax purposes. There is also a not-resident but domiciled option for income tax purposes, which I don't think applies to me as none of the interest I earn outwith the UK is remitted there. Acquing a new domicile is very difficult and I need to absent from the UK for at least 3 full tax years. I must also not own a property in the UK in which I can live on visits back to visit family etc. (not 100% correct as I managed to prove US domicile for a Scot who still owned a home in his native Helensburgh). The most important factor in deciding domicile is intention. Therefore you will NEVER see me stating publicly that I really want to go back to Scotland. Quite the opposite, I will always state publicly that I have no regrets whatsoever about having moved to Thailand to live, which is the absolute truth. Alan

Question for all you tax experts:D I left the UK in August of last year, told the Revenue and completed the appropriate form to say I now wanted to be treated as being non-resident. I have a number of stock exchange investments and am aware that I remain liable for any Capital Gains Tax that may arise from the sale of those I held BEFORE I left the UK until 4 complete tax years have elapsed. There is a further proviso that would come into effect if I returned to the UK but as I have no intention of doing that, I can ignore that. My question is - What is the Capital Gains Tax position regarding the investments I bought AFTER I left the UK but in the same tax year. Are they fully exempt from Capital Gains Tax (assuming I don't return to the UK)? Or do I need to be away from the UK for 4 full tax years? Alan

My landlord has just installed a phone line and broadband in my condo (View Talay 2A) (I paid for the modem). It is MEANT to be a 512/256 connection but that is a joke. The best speed I've been able to get is about 213 kbs and a few moments ago it was 19 (NINETEEN) kbs. The average seems to be about 150 to 200. Alan

If you qualify for a retirement visa - i.e. age, money in the bank etc you can now convert a tourist visa to a retirement visa. As I understand the position, you have first to convert the tourist visa to a non-immigrant O visa. That can then be extended for 1 year (from the date you last entered Thailand). Alan

I make the time difference 6 hours 50 minutes. Maybe Pete can have a look at this once he has dealt with the priorities of getting the rest of the board back up and running. Alan

I've just been in to see the agent for my landlord to tell him that I want to renew my lease for another year. I have a number of reasons for continuing to rent rather than buying, the main one being that I don't know for definite where I want to settle down in the long term. It may be Pattaya but it could equally be Korat, Buriram, Surin, Udon Thani, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai or any number of places in between. Renting also gives me the advantage that when something goes wrong - which it does a bit too often for my liking - all I need do is phone the agent and they send someone out to carry out the necessary repairs. For example, the electric shower has failed 3 times forcing me to shower in cold water! If I owned the condo, I would have to organise someone to come and carry out the repairs and pay for them myself. The downside is that once I've signed the lease, I'm stuck there for the duration that would only become a problem if I decided I wanted to go and live elsewhere in Thailand half way through the lease. Alan

For a standard 1 hour oil massage, I invariably give a 100 baht tip. Alan

I think if you're planning to retire anywhere you should make some attempt at learning to speak the language. I can assure you that Thai is not easy- with the strange alphabet and all the different tones. The most important point is to not to get into the habit of going to bars every night. Alan

Can't say I've ever seen that particularly bug. What I do get plagued with from time to time are what I think are newly hatched ants or something similar. The "egg" (if that is what it is) appears from nowhere - and the next thing I know is that there are a million of the little buggers crawling all over the floor. If I see them, I sweep them all up and evcit them over my balcony. : One day was particularly bad as I came across 4 sets of the newly hatched vermin. Alan

Agree with Gabor. I spend about an hour several days a week in the pool at View Talay 2A. It can get a bit busy at times though not so much in the low season. I'm not sure about the length but reckon it has to be 30m to 35m or thereby. Alan

Checked the forex rate a few minutes ago and it's now 71.35 to the £. Alan

I can't comment on the position with the US but if you're from the UK, it is possible to be domiciled there (strictly speaking you're domiciled in either, England & Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland but that only becomes a major issue after you die) but resident elsewhere. For example, for income tax and capital gains tax purposes, I am resident in Thailand but am still domiciled in Scotland. There are actually different types of non-residency for income tax but I don't know enough about the differences to even begin to discuss them here. Domicile from a UK point of view is a very complex subject. You acquire a domicile of origin (generally from your father) when you are born, which you retain until you make a conscious decision to obtain a domicile of choice elsewhere. It also takes some considerable time to acquire a domicile of choice and it is quite possible never to lose your domicile of origin, even after 40 years of having lived elsewhere. Alan

I've been here 10 months and have been keeping, from time to time detailed tracks of my expenditure. First, Nelly - £2,000 per month after tax will be more than sufficient to allow you a comfortable life style. I try to keep my "routine" expenditure to an average of 80,000 baht per month and so far I'm slightly inside that. Of this, my rent is by far the largest single item at 20,000 baht per month. You could pay a lot less or you could easily end up paying a lot more. This does NOT include side trips to Vietnam, escaping from Pattaya for the duration of SOngkran, one-off purchases such as an MP3 player or an external hard drive to serve as a back up to my personal data and all the music I've downloaded off the internet etc. These have pushed my total average monthly costs up to nearer 100,000 baht, though that should come down slightly over the next few months as the cost of my visits to Vietnam and Malaysia get spread over a longer period of time. My aim is to bar fine girls on averge once every 3 days though it doesn't always wok out that way. Your costs here will depend on whether you take girls from a beer bar or from go-gos. I'm a drinker and that (including lady drinks) takes up a fair bit of my budget. I just have a sandwich and a yoghurt for lunch (and a can of coke ), which averages out at a tad over 40 baht per day. At night, I eat mainly Thai food though I do go for the Western option once a week. A small bottle of beer accompanies the meal. Nelly says he has omitted health insurance from his budget but I would look into the various options available here. At the start of the year, I had an eye infection, which ended up costing me 5,500 baht. My own health insurance only covers in-patient treatment so I wasn't covered for this. Despite that, I'm still ahead though only just and if I were to need any more out-patient treatment, it would then have been cheaper for me to have paid for the extra cover. One point that doesn't come up often is travel insurance. I took some out with AA Insurance, who have an office in View Talay 2A before I went to Vietnam and it came out at about 6,000 baht for a year. This does not cover me for Europe or the USA though they can be included for about 1,000 baht extra. Whlst the building should be covered by the owners, your personal effects are going to be your responsibilty to cover. When I was taking out travel insurance, I also took out some contents cover. My laptop, digital camera and video camera had to be listed seperately but again this came out at around 6,000 baht per annum. Hope this helps, Alan

I've just given 60 days notice to transfer funds to my Thai bank account so I'm hoping the rate keeps going towards 73 to the £. Of course, knowing my luck, it will start moving in the opposite direction a few daus before my transfer goes ahead! Alan

It's getting better. Latest rate I've seen is 69.9 - £. Alan

UK law allows the Inland Revenue to go back a maximum of 6 years where someone has died and has not been declaring all sources of income. However, they are permitted to ASK the benefciaries of an estate to make a contribution to unpaid taxes for previous years though the beneficiaries are under no obligation t make any such payment. I am certain that in 100% of cases that the answer would be a not so polite refusal. It's not the taxman who takes the unpaid tax from the money in the bank but rather your executor. Your executor's responsibilities include ensuring that all assets are dealt with and that ALL liabilities are settled. It is also in the estate's best interest that the executor co-perates fully with the Inland Reenue as the penalties levied can be reduced based on the level of co-operation received etc etc. Alan

Own, Trusts can be set up in the UK as well but there are Inheritance Tax (Estate Duty) implications that need to be taken into account, especially if you are going to be drawing an income from the trust. This value of this type of trust will almost certainly have to be aggregated with the value of your estate to calculate the total tax liability. Gifts made more than 7 years before the date of death are exempt from Inheritance Tax but may have to be taken into consideration if a Discretionary Trust (a special kind of trust) was set up within 7 years of death. Expert legal advice is an absolute necessity before going down this road as there are enormous Inheritance Tax implications if you get the sequence of events wrong. Alan

I would pass on any correspondence you receive to the solicitor handling the estate. As the DSS have made a claim, the sum overpaid has to be reimbursed though they are aware that this won't happen until after Probate has been granted. You certainly won't be expected to repay them from your own funds until such time as Probate has been granted. If the DSS are pressing you, the bank into which the money was paid MAY be willing to repay the money direct to the DSS on your behalf, but this does tend to be at the manager's discretion and there's no guarantee that agreement will be forthcoming. One point to bear in mind is that if the estate is liable to Inheritance Tax, interest starts accruing from 6 months after the date of death. Also, if the tax due on the personal estate isn't paid within 12 months, the Revenue have the right to issue penalties on top of the interest for late payment. The executor is PERSONALLY resposible for any penalties issued. Alan