Five kinds of wealth

Thailand has an inheritance tax. It has had one since 1 February 2016.

Most people are surprised by this, and the reason is in the numbers. In the Revenue Department’s own accounts, the tax raised ฿65 million in its first full fiscal year, 2017. It took until 2024 to pass a billion baht — ฿1,536 million that year, then ฿1,186 million in fiscal 2025, out of ฿2.34 trillion in tax the department collected.

About one twentieth of one per cent.

The usual explanation is the threshold, and the threshold is certainly high. But the threshold is not the interesting part. Section 14 is.

What the Act actually taxes

The Act applies to the recipient, not the estate. Each person who receives from a given deceased person pays on the total they receive from that person — in one transfer or several — only on the part exceeding ฿100 million. Value means everything received, less the liabilities that came with it.

The rate is 10 per cent, or 5 per cent if the recipient is an ascendant or a descendant.

A spouse pays nothing at all. Not a lower rate, not a larger allowance — section 3 says the Act does not apply to what a spouse receives from the deceased. The tax simply does not exist for them.

And then section 14 sets out what counts. The taxable inheritance is:

Immovable property. Securities under the securities law. Deposits, or similar claims, against financial institutions. Vehicles with registration records. And whatever financial assets a royal decree adds.

That is the entire list.

Read the list again

Land and buildings are on a title register at the Land Department. The Act even wires that register in: section 10 requires the land official who registers an inherited property to notify the Revenue Department.

Securities have holders of record. On the Revenue Department’s own valuation rules the class reaches listed shares, shares in unlisted companies and partnerships, and treasury bills, bonds and debentures — every one of them an entry against a name.

A deposit is an entry in a regulated institution’s books, under its owner’s name.

A vehicle “with registration records” is on the register by definition — the Act says so in the words it uses.

Four classes of asset, and each is a form of wealth already written down — in a land office, a vehicle register, a list of holders, a bank’s ledger — somewhere an official can ask.

The fifth is the honest one. Whatever else is to be taxed must be added by royal decree — which is to say, whatever else is to be taxed must first be identified, named and written down.

So the base of this tax is not wealth. It is the record.

Which means the obvious things are outside it

Gold is not on the list.

Article 80 Money you can wear found that Thais hold wealth in gold for good reasons that have nothing to do with tax: 96.5 per cent purity is a published standard, the price is quoted nationally through the day, and a chain is liquid at any shop in the country. It is also, as a matter of the Act’s drafting, not an asset this tax reaches.

Neither is cash. Neither is jewellery, or art, or anything else held in a form that has no registry behind it.

This article is not saying anybody does this to avoid the tax and has no evidence that anybody does. The point is narrower and it is about drafting: a tax that lists its assets can only list the assets somebody can enumerate, and the enumerable forms of Thai wealth are the registered ones.

This site has now found the same shape four times. Article 30 Thirteen digits: what a Thai ID number actually tells you found a national identity number that encodes what the state recorded about you. Article 32 The yellow book: Thailand’s house registration, explained found a house registration that determines what you can do. Article 136 Two hundred plants per rai found landowners planting banana trees to move a plot into the agricultural band of the land tax — a rule reaching what a valuer can see in a field. And article 89 The wrong way round found Thai protections attaching to categories drawn around the people the administration can already identify.

The inheritance tax is the same mechanism pointed at the other end of the income distribution, and it behaves the same way.

What the Act said it was for

The explanatory note attached to the Act is unusually direct, and it is worth quoting because it sets the test the tax should be judged against.

Transfers by inheritance, it says, were exempt from tax however large the property, and this caused unfairness in society. It was therefore appropriate to tax inheritances of large value in order to develop the country and raise the standard of living of the poor, while not affecting those receiving an inheritance appropriate for their livelihood.

That is a redistributive purpose, stated plainly, by the drafters.

Set that against ฿1,186 million in fiscal 2025 — one twentieth of one per cent of what the Revenue Department collected — and the gap between the purpose and the yield is the article. The yield has grown, and it is still a rounding error.

Three other features worth knowing

The threshold is per recipient, per deceased person. An estate divided among more people produces less tax than the same estate going to one, because each recipient has their own ฿100 million. That is the structure of the section, not a loophole in it — the Act taxes receiving, and it was designed that way.

There is a review clause that is easy to miss. Section 12 requires the ฿100 million figure to be reviewed every five years, with reference to the change in the consumer price index, and reset by royal decree. The Act came into force in February 2016, so reviews fell due around 2021 and again around this year. Every current description of the tax still gives ฿100 million. Whether a review took place and concluded that no change was needed, or did not take place, is not something this article established.

And the enforcement machinery is real even if the yield is not. Filing is due within 150 days of receiving the inheritance. Assessment can be made for ten years. Failure to file without reasonable cause carries a fine of up to ฿500,000; deliberate evasion up to a year’s imprisonment, ฿200,000, or both. The surcharge for not filing is one times the tax, and interest runs at 1.5 per cent a month, capped at the tax itself. Payment can be spread over five years.

None of that is a weak tax. It is a well-drafted tax with a narrow base.

What would change the number

Not the rate, and probably not the threshold.

A tax that reaches four registers will collect what those four registers hold. Raising 5 per cent to 15 would raise more from the same base; it would not touch anything outside it. The only change that alters the character of the tax is section 14(5) — adding classes of asset by royal decree — and that requires the state to name a form of wealth it can locate.

The Finance Ministry appears to have reached the same place. In July 2026 it was reported to be studying which newer kinds of asset to bring into the base, and not to be aiming at a much higher rate. That is this article’s argument, arrived at from the inside — and it runs into the same difficulty.

Which is the difficulty this whole archive keeps arriving at. Article 80’s finding was that gold serves Thais well precisely because it is standard, liquid and needs no institution to vouch for it. Those same properties are what put it outside a register. The features that make an asset useful to a person without access to institutions are the features that make it invisible to a state.

The inheritance tax did not fail to anticipate that. It was written on the other side of it.

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Common misconceptions

“Thailand has no inheritance tax.” It has had one since 1 February 2016.

“It applies to the estate.” It applies to each recipient, on what they receive from a given deceased person, above ฿100 million.

“Spouses get an allowance.” Spouses are outside the Act entirely. Section 3 disapplies it to what a spouse receives.

“The rate is 10 per cent.” It is 10 per cent, or 5 per cent where the recipient is an ascendant or descendant, and only on the amount above the threshold.

“Everything you inherit is taxed.” Five classes are: immovable property, securities, deposits and similar claims, registered vehicles, and financial assets added by royal decree.

“The tax raises serious money.” Its best year, fiscal 2024, raised ฿1,536 million. In fiscal 2025 it raised ฿1,186 million, about one twentieth of one per cent of the Revenue Department’s tax revenue.