Thai Treasury Department requests delay of new land appraisals

The move aims to reduce the burden of landowners struggling to cope with the impact of COVID-19 

According to Bangkok Post, it is anticipated of the Treasury Department to ask the land appraisal committee to postpone adopting new appraisal prices by another year.  

The official appraised land price is the base for tallying land and building tax, which Thais pay to the state every April.  

Yuttana Yimgarund, department director-general, said the move hopes to reduce the burden of landowners that are struggling during this hard-hit pandemic.  

The request will be sent in during November, and if approved by the committee, new land appraisal prices will begin on January 1, 2023, a delay from the original date of January 1, 2020.  

The department appraises the land price every four years, and the current land price has been used since 2016.  

Yuttana added that the use of the current land price, for the time being, will help ease the burden of taxpayers.  

Last year, the cabinet managed to reduce the 2021 land and building tax by 90 percent, which helped ease the burden of people impacted by the pandemic.  

However, local administrative organisations in charge of collecting the tax lost THB41.4 billion (USD1.2 billion) in tax revenue this year. The reduction expires at the end of 2021.  

More: Thailand’s housing demand this year expects to drop 10% from 2020

The land and building tax started in March 2019, with tax collection slated to take effect in January 2020, though there was an exemption for the first three years.  

As stated by the law, individual owners of farmland with an appraised value of under THB50 million are tax-exempt for the first three years.