Krit

I wonder if the yellow tabien baan can help to avoid Specific Business Tax when selling a condo.

I own a condo in BKK where I live myself, bought new from the developer. I have the chanote and also the blue book (tabien baan) which is empty. I haven't applied for the yellow tabien baan for foreigners (Tor Ror 13) because I didn't think there would be any benefit doing that.

Now I have understood that if I want to sell my condo before owning it for 60 months (5 years) I have to pay 3.0% Specific Business Tax (SBT) + local tax on top of that, totaling 3.3%. However, this tax is supposedly waived if the condo has been used as principal residence for at least one year (in which case there is a 0.5% stamp duty though).

How does this apply to foreigners? Would getting the yellow tabien baan for 1 year help avoid the 3.3% SBT and save 2.8% of the total price, if I sell within five years of buying? That's a lot of money.

I would suggest that you get a fixed deposit account. Your money is going to work while it's in the bank, the difference is just whether it works for the bankers or you (or the charity you mention). The bankers are probably rich enough.


Bangkok Bank offers 2.625% for 4-month fixed deposit (starting from 200 000 baht) until 21 March, if you keep the money there for longer than 4 months it will change to 3 month rate after that (now 2.00%). This is not a very good offer, but anyway it's better than a savings account. As you probably know by know, you CAN withdraw your money early, if you need it for an emergency. If you withdraw very quickly, you will lose all interest, but if after some time (before maturity), you will get the same interest rate as for a savings account.

If you do not withdraw early but after one year, you would get - let's see if I can calculate this correctly - for half million you would get something like 4375 baht in the first four months and after that 6724 baht during the rest of the year. That's 11099 baht altogether. So by keeping the money in a normal savings account (0.75%) you would lose 7349 baht compared to this.

I recently opened a fixed account with SCB, as they had a very good promotion (3.40%). The teller whom I know thanked me with an extra wai for opening the account and seemed rather happy to handle it, hopefully she gets a small commission as well. SCB mostly offers slightly better rates than Bangkok Bank, but I could not find the exact rates right now.

Smaller and lesser known banks offer even higher interest, because they have more difficulty getting money from the market than big and stable banks. If you want the highest rates you should go to some unheard-of bank like the Kiatnakin Bank (although it looks like they don't offer fixed deposits for non-residents). However make sure that your deposits are covered by the deposit protection agency ( http://www.dpa.or.th...name=index___EN ). Deposits will only be covered up to 1 million from August 2012 onwards, so if you keep more than that in one bank, you bear the risk yourself. I personally would not keep more than one million in any one Thai bank after that. Also note that many types of investments are not covered at all.

Thank you very much, this of course is exactly what I was hoping for!  

folium, on 2011-09-24 15:41:54, said:

Swastikas have been used for thousands of years. It was a popular symbol of luck throughout the West in the early 20th century, and the Finnish air force has used them since 1918. There was obviously no Nazi connection.

Although my home town in Finland was burnt by German Nazis during the war, I do not think that the Finnish Air Force lacked any respect or historical good sense returning some traditional swastikas to limited use in 1958, after a period of not using them in order not to create confusion with the Nazi swastika. They simply believed that all educated people would well understand the historical context of this symbol.