Thai Income Tax for Foreigners (2026)

Last verified: August 2026

Yes — if you're a Thai tax resident, you pay Thai personal income tax on your Thailand-sourced income the same way a Thai national does, and since 2024, on certain foreign income too. Whether that applies to you comes down to one number: how many days you spend in the country.

Do foreigners pay income tax in Thailand?

You become a Thai tax resident once you spend 180 days or more in Thailand in a calendar year — regardless of visa type, nationality, or where your employer is based. It doesn't need to be one continuous stretch; Immigration and the Revenue Department both count cumulative days.

Residency changes what income is in scope. A non-resident (under 180 days) is only taxed on Thailand-sourced income. A resident is taxed on Thailand-sourced income and, since a 2024 rule change, on foreign-sourced income you remit into Thailand — money you earned abroad and transferred into a Thai bank account. Before 2024, there was a well-known workaround: bring the money in the year after you earned it, and it wasn't taxable. That loophole is closed. If you're a tax resident moving foreign income into Thailand, assume it's assessable unless you've confirmed otherwise.

This area continues to evolve — treatment of specific income types and transition rules has shifted more than once in recent years. If foreign income is a meaningful part of your finances, check current Revenue Department guidance (or a Thai tax advisor) rather than relying on general summaries, including this one. Our Thai Personal Income Tax Calculator covers the domestic side — salary earned and taxed in Thailand — which is the more straightforward case for most foreign employees.

The 2026 tax brackets

Thailand taxes income progressively, meaning each bracket of income is taxed at its own rate — not your whole income at one flat rate. For the 2026 tax year, taxable income (THB) is taxed as:

• 0 – 150,000: 0%
• 150,001 – 300,000: 5%
• 300,001 – 500,000: 10%
• 500,001 – 750,000: 15%
• 750,001 – 1,000,000: 20%
• 1,000,001 – 2,000,000: 25%
• 2,000,001 – 5,000,000: 30%
• Over 5,000,000: 35%

The rate next to your income level is your marginal rate — what you pay on your next baht of income, not on all of it. Your effective rate is your total tax divided by your total income, and it's always lower than your marginal rate, because the lower brackets are taxed at their lower rates regardless of how much you eventually earn. Someone with ฿1,029,500 of taxable income pays 25% only on the slice above ฿1,000,000 — the worked example below shows exactly how that adds up.

Looking for just the bracket table and quick salary lookups, without the residency and deduction mechanics below? See Thailand Income Tax Brackets 2026 for a faster reference.

What you can deduct

Before any bracket applies, your income goes through two rounds of reduction — in the order the calculator applies them:

1. Expense deduction. A standard deduction for employment income: 50% of your income, capped at ฿100,000 a year. Most salaried employees hit the cap well before the 50% figure would matter.
2. Personal allowances. ฿60,000 for yourself. If you have a spouse with no income of their own, another ฿60,000. For children: ฿30,000 for the first child, and ฿60,000 each for a second child and any further children born in 2018 or later.

On top of these, several optional deductions can reduce it further:

• Life and health insurance premiums — up to a combined ฿100,000 a year; health insurance specifically is capped at ฿25,000 of that total.
• RMF (Retirement Mutual Fund) contributions — up to 30% of income, capped at ฿500,000 a year.
• Pension life insurance (annuity-type) — up to 15% of income, capped at ฿200,000 a year.
• Thai ESG fund purchases — up to 30% of income, capped at ฿300,000 a year, for purchases made through 31 December 2026 with a 5-year holding period.
• Home loan interest — up to ฿100,000 a year.

RMF and pension life insurance share one combined ฿500,000 retirement-savings ceiling (alongside provident fund, GPF, and NSF contributions) — the Thai ESG cap is separate from that ceiling, not part of it.

The SSF (Super Savings Fund) doesn't appear in this list: the purchase window for new tax-deductible SSF contributions closed at the end of 2024, so there's no new SSF deduction for the 2026 tax year.

Our Thai Personal Income Tax Calculator applies all of these caps automatically.

A worked example: ฿100,000 a month

Here's the full calculation for a single filer earning ฿100,000 a month, with no spouse allowance, no children, and none of the optional deductions — the simplest real case.

1. Annual income. ฿100,000 × 12 = ฿1,200,000.

2. Expense deduction. 50% of ฿1,200,000 would be ฿600,000, but it's capped at ฿100,000 — so the deduction is ฿100,000.

3. Personal allowance. ฿60,000, since there's no spouse or children to add.

4. Social security deduction. 5% of wages, capped at a ฿17,500 monthly wage base — ฿875 a month, or ฿10,500 for the year (more on this below).

5. Net taxable income. ฿1,200,000 − ฿100,000 − ฿60,000 − ฿10,500 = ฿1,029,500.

6. Apply the brackets. Working through the brackets above on ฿1,029,500:

• ฿0–150,000 at 0% = ฿0
• ฿150,000–300,000 at 5% = ฿7,500
• ฿300,000–500,000 at 10% = ฿20,000
• ฿500,000–750,000 at 15% = ฿37,500
• ฿750,000–1,000,000 at 20% = ฿50,000
• ฿1,000,000–1,029,500 at 25% = ฿7,375

Total annual tax: ฿122,375.

7. The rates. Effective rate: ฿122,375 ÷ ฿1,200,000 ≈ 10.2%. Marginal rate: 25% — the rate on that last ฿29,500 slice, not on the whole income.

8. Monthly take-home. ฿100,000 − ฿875 (social security) − ฿10,198 (tax, i.e. ฿122,375 ÷ 12) ≈ ฿88,927 a month.

Change any input — a spouse, children, a different salary — and the same steps apply, just with different numbers. Rather than redo this by hand, run your own numbers through the Thai Income Tax Calculator, or check take-home pay in isolation with the Net Salary Calculator.

Social security: a payroll deduction, not income tax

The ฿875 above is Thailand's Social Security Fund contribution, not income tax — it's worth keeping the two separate, since they're deducted from the same paycheck but governed by entirely different rules. Every employee at a Thai-registered employer contributes 5% of monthly wage, but the wage used in that calculation is capped at ฿17,500 (raised from ฿15,000 effective 1 January 2026, per a Royal Gazette notice published 12 December 2025), so the contribution itself tops out at ฿875 a month no matter how much more you earn above that.

This is phase one of a scheduled multi-phase increase to the wage base — later phases raise it further on a set future schedule. We'll update this guide as each phase takes effect — don't assume ฿17,500 is the final ceiling.

It funds a separate set of benefits — medical care, sickness and injury pay, maternity/paternity leave, unemployment benefits, and an old-age payout — administered by the Social Security Office, not the Revenue Department. It happens to also reduce your taxable income (as shown in the worked example), but it isn't itself a tax bracket or a tax bill.

Filing your return

If you have employment income, you file using form PND 91 — the standard return for salary and wage earners. For income earned during 2026, the paper filing deadline is 31 March 2027; e-filing gets a short extension into early April (confirm the exact date for the year you're actually filing, since it moves slightly year to year).

To file, you generally need a Thai Tax Identification Number, separate from your passport or work permit number. If your employer handles this as part of onboarding, you may already have one — check your payslip before assuming you need to register yourself. E-filing exists and is commonly used, but whether it's the right fit depends on your situation (a straightforward single-employer salary case is usually simpler than one with multiple income sources or foreign remittances).

Special situations

LTR visa holders. Thailand's Long-Term Resident (LTR) visa program includes tax benefits for qualifying categories. The details depend heavily on which LTR category you hold, so we're not stating specific rates or conditions here — check current official guidance before assuming a benefit applies to you. If you're evaluating a long-stay visa more broadly rather than the LTR specifically, our Retirement Visa Financial Requirement Checker covers the more common Non-Immigrant O/O-A route.

DTV holders. The Destination Thailand Visa (DTV) is a newer long-stay category with its own residency and tax implications, which we'll cover in a future guide. The same 180-day residency rule above still determines your tax status regardless of visa type — check current official guidance for anything DTV-specific.

Double-tax treaties. Thailand has double-taxation agreements with a large number of countries, which can affect how foreign income or pension income is treated for a tax resident. The specifics depend entirely on your home country's treaty with Thailand, so there's no general rate or rule to state here — check current official guidance for the treaty that applies to you.

Frequently asked questions

Do tourists pay income tax in Thailand? No. Tourists staying under 180 days in a calendar year aren't Thai tax residents, and typically have no Thailand-sourced income to begin with.

What happens at exactly 180 days? Once your cumulative days in Thailand for the calendar year reach 180, you become a tax resident for that entire year — it's a threshold, not a gradual phase-in.

Is foreign pension income taxed? If you're a Thai tax resident and you remit that pension income into Thailand, it's generally assessable under the current remittance rule described above. Treatment can vary by your home country's double-tax treaty with Thailand — check current guidance for your specific situation.

Can I file jointly with my spouse? Thailand generally taxes each spouse's income separately. If your spouse has no income of their own, you can claim the ฿60,000 spouse allowance shown above — check current Revenue Department guidance for any combined-filing options that might apply to your situation.

What if my employer already withholds tax? Your employer withholds an estimate of your tax throughout the year and remits it on your behalf. Your annual PND 91 filing reconciles that estimate against your actual liability — you may get a refund if too much was withheld, or owe the difference if too little was.

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This guide is informational and not tax advice. Rules described here reflect the 2026 tax year as understood at the time of writing — always confirm current requirements with the Revenue Department's official English-language site or a licensed Thai tax advisor before filing. For the domestic salary case, our tax calculator applies these exact rules to your own numbers.