Bangkok Apartment | Bangkok Serviced Apartments | Bangkok Condos

Bangkok Post June 12, 2009

A draft bill on land and property tax will be presented to the cabinet for consideration in August, Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij said on Friday.

If approved it would go to the parliament. The govenment would then spend at least one year explaining to the people how the land and property tax would be collected, before it was implemented, he said.

Mr Korn said in the principle behind the land and property tax was to encourage people to make the most use of their land.

The minister used his own declared assets as an example.

He had asked the Fiscal Policy Office to calculate how much tax he would have to pay on his land if the bill was passed into law.

The office told him that he would have to pay 860,000 baht per year. This made him think that he should sell some land which was lying unused.

Mr Korn said the government has no plans to propose an inheritance tax at this time.

Deputy Finance Minister Pruetichai Damrongrat said on Friday. the ministry had plans to lease up to one million rai of state land to poor farmers by 2013,

He was speaking after a ceremony to present lease contracts to 439 farmers over a total of 3,303 rai of Treasury Department land in Nakhon Ratchasima province.

Mr Pruetichai said the department had so far leased 21,139 rai land to 1,538 farmers. The Finance Ministry aims to lease up to one million rai of land to farmers by 2013, he said.

The Finance Ministry has negotiated with state agencies which have not made use of state land they own for the land’s return to the Treasury Department. It could then be leased to landless farmers for agriculture, particularly to raising crops for food and alternative energy.

They had so far returned about 500,000 rai of land to the department.

The government also has a policy to use the returned state land to build silos where farmers can store their produce, Mr Pruetichai said.