Thailand income tax calculator
The Revenue Department publishes two versions of its own rate table. The English one ends the 30% band at ฿4,000,000; the Thai one, which is current, ends it at ฿5,000,000.
฿75,000 in tax — 9.4% of ฿800,000, or ฿60,417 a month.
- Exempt bandThe first ฿150,000 of net taxable income
- ฿150,000
- Income taxEight bands, 0% to 35%
- ฿75,000
- Marginal rateOn your next baht
- 20.0%
- Effective rateOver your whole net taxable income
- 9.4%
This takes net taxable income: the expense deduction and all allowances come off before the scale, and both are substantial.
What this does not model. The input is net taxable income — assessable income less the expense deduction and less allowances. Employment income gets a standard expense deduction of a percentage of income up to a cap, and the personal allowance and allowances for a spouse, children, parents, insurance and provident fund all come off after that. Social security contributions are deducted from pay and are not modelled.
The Revenue Department publishes two different versions of its own scale
Thailand's Revenue Department maintains its rate table in Thai and in English, and the two do not agree.
The English page ends the 30% band at ฿4,000,000 and starts 35% above it. The Thai page — headed for tax year 2560 in the Buddhist calendar, 2017, and applying from then onwards — ends the 30% band at ฿5,000,000.
The Thai page is the current one, and it is what this calculator uses. The English page also carries a footnote saying the table is "to be implemented for the 2013 and 2014 tax years", which is a fair signal of how long ago it was last revised.
The difference is a million baht of income taxed at 30% rather than 35% — ฿50,000 of tax for anyone earning above ฿5,000,000.
This is the third time the same problem has turned up while building this site: the Philippine BIR publishes an expired schedule on its summary page, and Malaysia's portal rebuild left the old rate URLs dead. An official page is not automatically a current one.
Eight bands, and a published cumulative column
The scale runs 0% to ฿150,000, then 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30% and 35% above ฿5,000,000.
The Thai page publishes a cumulative tax column alongside it — ฿7,500 at ฿300,000, ฿27,500 at ฿500,000, ฿65,000 at ฿750,000, ฿115,000 at ฿1,000,000, ฿365,000 at ฿2,000,000 and ฿1,265,000 at ฿5,000,000.
Those six numbers are the verification anchor, and this engine reproduces all of them. A scale with one shifted threshold still produces plausible rates; it does not reproduce ฿1,265,000.
The first band is technically 5% with an exemption laid over it by royal decree rather than a 0% rate, which is why the published table has a footnote where a rate should be. The effect is the same and the drafting is not.
On ฿800,000 of net taxable income the tax is ฿75,000 — an effective rate of 9.4% against a marginal band of 20%.
Net taxable income, and how far it is from a salary
Thai tax runs on net taxable income, which is assessable income less an expense deduction and less allowances. Both stages are substantial and both happen before this page's figure.
The expense deduction for employment income is a percentage of income up to a cap — a notional allowance for the cost of earning, in the same family as France's forfait and Japan's employment income deduction.
Allowances then come off: a personal allowance, one for a spouse without income, ones for children and for parents, and reliefs for life insurance premiums, provident fund contributions, health insurance and approved investment funds.
Thailand's allowance system is unusually rich in investment-linked reliefs, and it is used deliberately as a savings incentive. For a professional taxpayer the gap between gross salary and net taxable income can be very wide indeed.
The Revenue Department's English page lists allowance amounts that predate the 2017 reform, so this page does not restate them. Enter net taxable income, which is the figure on a Thai return.
180 days, and what a resident is taxed on
Anyone in Thailand for 180 days or more in a calendar year is resident for tax. Below that, non-resident.
A non-resident is taxed on Thai-source income only. A resident is taxed on Thai-source income and on foreign income brought into Thailand — a remittance basis rather than a worldwide one.
The remittance rule is the part that has moved recently and the part that matters most to foreign residents. Its interpretation has been revised, and the timing of when foreign income was earned relative to when it is remitted has become consequential in a way it was not before.
That makes Thailand one of the few countries on this site where the answer for a long-term foreign resident depends on the movement of money rather than only on the earning of it.
None of that is modelled here. This page applies the resident scale to a stated net taxable income, which is the ordinary case for someone employed in Thailand.
The scale at four incomes
Net taxable income, after the expense deduction and allowances.
On ฿300,000: ฿7,500 of tax, an effective rate of 2.5% with a marginal rate of 5%.
On ฿800,000: ฿75,000 of tax, an effective rate of 9.4% with a marginal rate of 20%.
On ฿1,500,000: ฿240,000 of tax, an effective rate of 16% with a marginal rate of 25%.
On ฿6,000,000: ฿1,615,000 of tax, an effective rate of 26.9% with a marginal rate of 35%.
The effective rate rises slowly because the bands at the bottom are narrow and the rates low. Only above ฿2,000,000 does the scale start to bite in the way the 35% headline suggests.
How Thailand compares with the rest of this site
Against Malaysia and Singapore, the regional neighbours, Thailand sits between them: eight bands to Malaysia's ten and Singapore's twelve, a top rate of 35% against Malaysia's 30% and Singapore's 24%.
Against the Philippines, the exempt bands are comparable in local terms and the shapes differ: the Philippines jumps from nothing to 15%, Thailand eases in at 5%.
Against Japan, the expense deduction for employment income works the same way — a notional percentage with a cap, standing in for expenses an employee cannot itemise.
Against the United Kingdom, the remittance basis is the echo, though the UK's has been narrowed repeatedly and Thailand's applies to ordinary residents rather than to a special category.
What Thailand shares with the Philippines, and with nothing else here, is a tax authority publishing two versions of its own rate table in two languages. It is the reason both pages say which one they used.
Four ways a Thai estimate goes wrong
Using the English rate page. It ends the 30% band at ฿4,000,000; the Thai page, which is current, ends it at ฿5,000,000.
Feeding the scale gross salary. The expense deduction and the allowances come off first, and together they are large.
Using the pre-2017 allowance amounts. The English page still lists them, and the personal allowance in particular has changed.
Assuming residence follows a visa. It follows 180 days of presence in the calendar year, and it changes both the rate basis and what foreign income is caught.
An allowance system built as a savings policy
Thailand's allowances go well beyond the personal and family amounts most systems stop at, and a large share of them are tied to saving or investing rather than to circumstance.
Contributions to a provident fund, to the Government Pension Fund, to a retirement mutual fund and to a Thai ESG fund all attract relief within their own caps and a combined overall cap. Life insurance and health insurance premiums do too.
The design intent is explicit: the relief is the incentive. It is why Thai personal finance conversation is unusually focused on the December deadline for buying into qualifying funds, and why the gap between gross salary and net taxable income is so wide for professionals.
Alongside those sit the ordinary allowances — personal, spouse, children, parents — and periodic consumption-stimulus reliefs for spending in defined categories during defined windows.
None of them is applied here, and the Revenue Department's English page lists amounts that predate the 2017 reform, so this page does not restate figures it could not verify. Enter net taxable income, which is what the return arrives at.
Filing, and the withholding that precedes it
Thai employers withhold monthly under a computation that annualises the month's pay and applies the scale and the allowances an employee has declared.
The annual return follows, filed between January and March for the previous calendar year, with an extension for electronic filing. Most employees file, because most have allowances the employer's computation did not fully capture.
Filing is also how a refund arrives, and refunds are common precisely because the allowance system rewards decisions made late in the year that the withholding could not anticipate.
A married couple may file jointly or separately, and the choice is worth computing both ways: separate assessment is often better because the scale is applied twice from the bottom.
The alternative computation for non-employment income — 0.5% of gross assessable income above ฿60,000 a year, where the taxpayer pays the higher of that and the progressive result — catches high-turnover, low-margin activity and is not modelled here.
What Thailand does not tax
There is no separate capital gains tax on the sale of listed shares through the Stock Exchange of Thailand for an individual — such gains are exempt, which is a substantial carve-out.
There is no inheritance tax in the form most countries use, though an estate tax applies above a high threshold, and there is a gift tax with its own exemptions.
Dividends from Thai companies carry a withholding tax which the recipient can either treat as final or bring into the progressive computation with a credit for the underlying corporate tax — an imputation arrangement that has disappeared from most of Europe.
Interest is withheld at a flat rate and can likewise be treated as final. That optionality means two people with identical income can face different tax depending on elections they make on the return.
As with Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand, the base matters as much as the rate: a 35% top rate on a base that excludes listed share gains is a different tax from 35% on a comprehensive one.
Foreign workers, and the rule that changed
Thailand has a large population of foreign professionals and retirees, and for decades the practical position was straightforward: foreign income brought into Thailand in a later calendar year than it was earned fell outside the charge.
That reading was revised, and income remitted into Thailand by a resident is now capable of being taxed regardless of when it was earned. The change was administrative in form and substantial in effect.
For a retiree living on a foreign pension, or a remote worker paid abroad, it turns a settled arrangement into a live question about timing, source and treaty relief. Double taxation agreements matter more than they did.
The 180-day residence test is unchanged and is what triggers all of it. Someone in Thailand for less than that in a calendar year is taxed only on Thai-source income and the remittance question does not arise.
None of this is modelled. It is stated because a Thai income tax page that ignored it would be answering a narrower question than most of the people searching for one are asking.
Reading a Thai figure correctly
Which table. The Thai-language page and the English page disagree above ฿4,000,000. The Thai one governs and is what this page uses.
Which base. Net taxable income sits well below salary, after an expense deduction and a rich set of allowances that reward saving.
Which residence. 180 days in the calendar year decides whether foreign income is in scope at all, and the remittance rule has moved recently.
Which elections. Dividends and interest can be taken as final withholding or brought into the progressive computation, and the choice changes the answer.
The scale itself is stable — unchanged since 2017 — and well documented, with a published cumulative column that makes it checkable. The uncertainty in a Thai figure is almost never in the rates.
Eight categories of assessable income, each with its own deduction
Thai tax law does not treat income as one thing. It sorts assessable income into eight categories, and the expense deduction differs by category — which is unusual and has real consequences.
Employment income and income from posts or services rendered get a percentage deduction up to a cap. Copyright income gets the same treatment. Rental income gets a percentage that varies by what is let: buildings, agricultural land, other land, vehicles, and anything else each have their own figure.
Liberal professions get 30%, except medicine, which gets 60%. Contract work where the contractor supplies materials gets actual expenses or 70%. Business, commerce, agriculture, industry and transport get actual expenses or a percentage between 65% and 85% depending on the activity.
The effect is that two people with identical gross receipts can arrive at very different net taxable income purely from how their activity is categorised, before any allowance is claimed.
This page applies the scale to a stated net taxable income, which is where all of that has already been resolved.
Thailand against its neighbours
Thailand's 35% top rate sits in the middle of the region. Singapore tops out at 24%, Hong Kong effectively at 16%, Malaysia at 30%, the Philippines and Pakistan also at 35%, and Japan at 45% plus its surtax.
Where Thailand differs is where the top rate begins. ฿5,000,000 is a very high income in Thai terms — far higher, relative to local salaries, than the point at which Malaysia reaches 30% or the Philippines reaches 35%.
The exempt band works the same way: ฿150,000 is a meaningful shelter locally, and the 5% and 10% bands above it stretch a long way before the scale starts to bite.
Add the expense deduction and the allowance system on top and the effective rate on a Thai professional salary is low by regional standards, which is a deliberate feature of a policy that competes for regional headquarters and skilled migration.
The counterweight is that Thailand raises a smaller share of revenue from personal income tax than most of its neighbours, and correspondingly more from VAT and from corporate tax.
Where to go next
Questions
- How much tax do I pay on ฿800,000 in Thailand?
- ฿75,000 on net taxable income of ฿800,000 — an effective rate of 9.4% with a marginal rate of 20%. That is after the expense deduction and allowances, which come off before the scale.
- What are the Thai income tax rates?
- Eight bands on net taxable income: nothing up to ฿150,000, 5% to ฿300,000, 10% to ฿500,000, 15% to ฿750,000, 20% to ฿1,000,000, 25% to ฿2,000,000, 30% to ฿5,000,000 and 35% above.
- Does the 35% band start at 4 or 5 million baht?
- Five million. The Revenue Department's English page says four, and its Thai page — headed for tax year 2560 onwards, which is 2017, and current — says five. The Thai page is the one that applies, and it is what this calculator uses. The difference is ฿50,000 of tax for anyone above ฿5,000,000.
- What counts as net taxable income in Thailand?
- Assessable income less the expense deduction and less allowances. Employment income gets a standard expense deduction of a percentage up to a cap, and then the personal allowance, spouse, child and parent allowances, insurance premiums, provident fund contributions and approved investment funds all come off.
- When am I a Thai tax resident?
- When you are in Thailand for 180 days or more in a calendar year. A resident is taxed on Thai-source income and on foreign income brought into Thailand; a non-resident only on Thai-source income.
- Is foreign income taxed in Thailand?
- For a resident, only to the extent it is brought into Thailand — a remittance basis rather than a worldwide one. The interpretation of that rule has been revised recently and the timing of remittance has become consequential, so anyone with substantial foreign income should treat it as a live question rather than a settled one.
- Is the first 150,000 baht really a 0% band?
- In effect yes, in drafting no. The published table shows 5% against that band with an exemption laid over it by royal decree, which is why there is a footnote where a rate should be. The tax is the same either way.