The Revenue Department expects the number of individual taxpayers who receive tax refunds for the 2017 tax year will be 25% higher than 2016 at 4 million, thanks to the larger number of standard deductions and allowances and the widened income band of the 30% tax bracket and the top rate.
The department estimated 11-12 million individual taxpayers will file tax returns for the 2017 tax year, up from 10 million a year earlier, said Siriwan Kaewmulniem, deputy director-general. The department paid tax refunds worth 40 billion baht to 3.2 million taxpayers who filed returns for 2016.
The tax filing season for the 2017 tax year runs through the end of March for paper filing and the deadline for electronic filing is April 9.
She said the higher projection of tax deductions and allowances could be attributed to the larger number of people who expect tax refunds.
The new personal income tax structure, which came into force last year, gives each taxpayer a 60,000-baht tax allowance, doubled from 30,000 a year, while the cap on income deductions has been raised to 50%, but only for up to 100,000 baht. The previous cap was 40% for up to 60,000 baht.
With the larger tax deductions, individual taxpayers who earn below 26,000 baht a month are tax exempt, up from around 20,000 a month in the past.
Taxpayers can claim a deduction of up to 15,000 baht for premiums paid to health insurance provided by both life and non-life insurers, but insurance premiums of up to 100,000 baht can be claimed when premiums paid to life protection products with at least 10-year terms are combined.
Parents are permitted to claim a child allowance of 30,000 baht each without any limit on the number of biological children, and for up to three adopted children. Previously, individual taxpayers could claim a 15,000-baht allowance per child and an additional 2,000 per child for education, for up to three children.
The income range for the 30% bracket has been raised to 2-5 million baht from 2-4 million, and the range for the top rate of 35% starts from 5 million.
Mrs Siriwan said the number of people who filed tax returns in the initial stage remains small as many are waiting for insurance companies to provide the documents to verify payments for health insurance premiums, as the cabinet approved the tax deductible item fairly recently.
To facilitate tax payment and make the country less cash dependent, the country's largest tax-collecting agency is working with Krungthai Bank and Kasikornbank to offer tax payments through electronic data capture (EDC) terminals.
The Revenue Department aims to install 3,000 card-swiping terminals at the department's 1,000 offices nationwide by March. Only 82 EDC devices are currently available on the department's premises.
The department pulled in 370 billion baht income during the three months to December, exceeding the target by 3.77 billion. Tax revenue fell short of the target by 74 billion baht or 3.96%, reaching 1.79 trillion in the 2017 fiscal year.