Re: "Ministry weighs tax on share selling capital gains", (BP, Sept 12). I can understand the Finance Ministry's argument that the exemption from capital gains tax for shares traded on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) that was first introduced in 1975, in order to help develop the new market, is no longer needed. However, removing the exemption would create a two-tier tax structure whereby Thai investors paid tax on capital gains and foreign investors did not.
Although foreign institutions have never been exempted from Thai capital gains tax under Thai law, Thailand has bilateral double taxation treaties with many countries that specifically prohibit Thai authorities from charging capital gains on shares traded on the SET by investors from those countries.
Even investors from countries that don't have a double taxation treaty with Thailand can easily avoid Thai capital gains tax by putting their shares with a custodian bank in a country that does have a double taxation treaty.
These double taxation treaties, which take precedence over Thai statutory law, take years to negotiate, or renegotiate, and cannot be amended unilaterally.
Thus, most foreigners would continue to enjoy exemption from capital gains on the SET for many years, if Thailand decided to cancel the exemption for Thai investors.
George Morgan
Lesson well learnt
Re: "Stuck in progress", (PostBag, Sept 12). Mr Gilead's heartwarming letter suggesting that retired English teachers be allowed to ease Thailand's English proficiency crisis was very well-intentioned. Alas, we know that this idea is doomed to fail because it was tried already.
Thailand has used retired teachers and backpacking teachers to try to resolve its English crisis for several decades.
Yet, the result was mainly bad headlines and failed tests, not success. Thus, the Immigration Department largely stopped issuing those visas about three years ago.
While it may sound nice to bring back retired TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) teachers, schools actually had a lot of problems with them that retirees would rather not talk about. Frankly, when the going got tough, they often just quit because they had other sources of income.
They were also much more prone to getting sick, were not in tune with modern teaching techniques, and very frequently appointed themselves as boss of the TESOL department even though they were not generallysuccessful in their own time.
Jason A Jellison
Taking a different tack
Re: "Suu Kyi defends her nation", (PostBag, Sept 10). Aung Maung's letter is indeed a refreshing reflection on The Lady's duty to her country.
To best understand the true Rohingya issue, you all -- Dear Bangkok Post readers -- owe it to yourselves to learn this history before you read anything more about the Rohingya: Type these key words in your computer: rickheizman truth_arakan.
You will find, in fact, since the end of World War II, the Muslim precursors to the Rohingya have been persecuting and "ethnic-cleaning" the indigenous Arakan Buddhist culture in Rakhine state and continue to do so.
Tom Banker
Rohingya not terrorists
Aung San Suu Kyi tries to justify the atrocities of her government by referring to an attack against police posts by "extremists".
For decades the Rohingya -- whom the UN refer to as "the most persecuted minority in the world" -- had been non-violent. Only in the past year have some of them turned to armed resistance because they have no other way of defending themselves. And then they are called "terrorists".
The word terrorist is only used to describe Muslims -- even when they're fighting in self-defence.
Eric Bahrt
Correction
In the Sept 13 edition of the Bangkok Post on page 8, the cartoon mistakenly labelled the year that the World Trade Center attacks in the United States took place as 2011. The correct year was of course 2001. We regret the error.
