Revenue Dept wants to tax tutorial schools

TUTORIAL SCHOOLS may be taxed by the end of the year after the Revenue Department proposed the move for Finance Ministry consideration.
Revenue Department director general Prasong Poontaneat said that ultimately the Cabinet would have to green light the proposal.
He said tutorial schools were defined as Education Ministry-registered institutions.
Private schools with classes from Prathom 1 to Mathayom 6 that also had tutorial classes would be exempt from the tax, he said, adding: “[But] if they are schools that open tutorial classes commercially, they will have to be taxed.” The department’s data showed that some 100 tutorial schools would be taxed.
He said if the tax comes into effect – later this year – it would help boost tax revenue by between Bt1 billion and Bt2 billion a year.
However, he said the tax rate for each school would depend on their base taxable income.
He said that if a school was not a registered company, it would be taxed like an individual person at a rate ranging from 5-35 per cent annually.
If a school was registered as a company with an annual income of no more than Bt30 million, a 15 per cent rate would be applied.
If its annual income exceeded Bt30 million, it would be subject to a 20 per cent rate.
Prasong said the department also planned to educate taxpayers about the tax system in the same way it did operators in the e-commerce sector. The department would help individuals struggling under the system.
“The department does not intend to make any business trouble,” he said, adding that it had recently brought 261 e-commerce operators into the taxation fold.
A source at the Finance Ministry said the tax on tutorial schools would be in line with a request by the National Anti-Corruption Commission.
Some were found to be making too much profit, the source said, adding that the sector was worth more than Bt10 billion in total annually.