The Thai Government is weighing up whether to introduce a tax on share sales by individual investors on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). This would mean an end to the tax waiver, which has been in effect since 1991 on securities sales on the SET. The purpose of the tax would be to generate additional revenue.
The suggested change would see a tax of 0.11% on equities sales applied to investors with a volume of more than one million baht per month.
The new transaction tax would form a part of the government’s tax reform agenda to generate more revenue. However, there is no concrete plan for the introduction of this tax, and the government seems to be in the initial stages of weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of introducing such measures. As such, the government has made no official comment on the matter, and there is currently no time frame for when this tax might be introduced.
Currently, only local and foreign institutions are subject to capital gains tax in Thailand, with individual traders exempt from these tax obligations. There are fears that the introduction of such a tax will deter investors from entering the Thai market. In saying that, this is not the first time that the Thai government has considered introducing a capital gains tax on individual investors.
The news comes from sources in touch with Reuters. MPG contacted the SET last week and again earlier this week to fact-check this information; the SET did neither confirm nor deny the news.