The Thai company tax calendar: what you file, and when

Why see it as a calendar

Most owners know there are taxes to file. Far fewer have ever seen how many separate filings a year contains, or where they fall. Without that picture, the first reminder tends to be a penalty notice. So here is the whole year on one page.

Every month

• PND.1 - withholding tax on salaries, by the 7th of the following month.
• PND.3 - withholding tax on payments to individuals such as freelancers or rent, by the 7th of the following month.
• PND.53 - withholding tax on payments to companies, such as service fees, by the 7th of the following month.
• PP.30 - VAT, for registered businesses, by the 15th of the following month.
• Social security contributions - by the 15th of the following month.

Filing through the Revenue Department's e-Filing system extends these deadlines by a further period, which is worth having in reserve.

Mid-year

• PND.51 - half-year corporate income tax, within two months of the end of the first six months of the accounting period. For a calendar-year company that falls at the end of August.

Note that PND.51 is based on an estimate of the full year's profit. Under-estimating by more than the margin the law allows triggers a surcharge, so it is not a figure to guess at.

Year-end and after

• Close the accounts and have a licensed auditor examine and sign them.
• Hold the shareholders' meeting to approve the accounts, generally within four months of the period end.
• File BOJ.5, the shareholder list, within fourteen days of that meeting.
• File the financial statements with the DBD within one month of the approval.
• File PND.50, the annual corporate income tax return, within 150 days of the period end.

For a company on a calendar accounting year, PND.50 falls due around the end of May the following year.

The ones people forget

• Withholding tax certificates. These must be issued to the payee each time tax is withheld; filing the return is not the end of it.
• Notifying social security when staff join or leave. There is a deadline for each; it is not a year-end batch job.
• Nil returns. A month with no withholding or no sales still requires a return - a nil one, not none.

In short

A VAT-registered company with employees files something like fifty-plus times a year once the year-end work is counted. Mistakes almost never come from not knowing the law. They come from nobody holding this calendar. Having someone run the monthly cycle costs less than the penalties in nearly every case we see.