Excise Department chief defends high tax ceilings in amended Act
What is considered rather high tax ceilings have been set in the amended Excise Tax Act – but the Excise Department chief maintains the changes are designed to boost the department's efficiency in tax collecting and ensure transparency, fairness and international standards.
The details of the amended Act were published in the Royal Gazette on Monday. It will come into effect 180 days from that date.
Following the law’s enactment, the department will issue 80 accompanying organic laws and set the actual amount of excise tax as a percentage to be collected as the amendments only set the ceiling rates to be applied over the next 20 years.
"We will have to look up details to determine the real excise tax-collecting rate to use, which would be in accordance with the Cabinet’s resolution that the real rate must not create an additional tax burden on the people," Excise Department chief Somchai Pulsawat said.
The ceiling rate for cigarettes is Bt5, Bt3,000 for a litre of beer and it is Bt1,000 for one service at a massage parlour, Bt3,000 for a square metre at a nightclub, Bt20 for a litre of sugar-laced pop soda and Bt20 for a litre of diesel petrol.