Under Section 69 of the Revenue Code, a company or juristic partnership is required to file its corporate income tax return together with a balance sheet, income statement, income account, expenditure or gross income account (as the case may be) which has been certified by its auditors (collectively referred to as the ‘audited accounts’) within 150 days from the last day of an accounting period. When the Thai Revenue Department (TRD) introduced E-filing, the Notification of the Director General of Revenue on Income Tax No. 127 (NDG No. 127) was issued in 2003 to provide guidance on the procedure to complete the E-filing process. Under the said NDG No. 127, the E-filing taxpayer is required to maintain its audited accounts at its registered address (i.e. head office) for a period of not less than five years from the last day to file a tax return for the accounting period in question. This implies that no electronic or physical filing of the audited accounts is required when a corporate taxpayer files its tax return through E-filing. 

On 17 May 2017, the TRD issued NDG No. 296 which repeals the above provision in NDG No. 127. In terms of NDG No. 296, the E-fling taxpayer is now required to submit its audited accounts within 150 days after the closing of the accounting period. According to NDG No.296, the effective date of these provisions apply to any E-filing taxpayer where the last day for the filing of its audited accounts is on or after 25 February 2016. In other words, an E-filing taxpayer with an accounting period ending on or after 28 September 2015 must file its audited accounts by 25 February 2016. However, since 25 February 2016 already passed at the time NDG No 296 was issued, the TRD has issued a further notification and update on their website in respect of audited accounts required to be filed during the period 25 February 2016 to 6 June 2018. The TRD has stated that the submission of the audited account can be done electronically and it will extend the time period for electronic submission of the audited accounts to the period 1 November 2017 to 7 June 2018 without imposing a penalty. The E-filing taxpayer may choose to physically file the audited accounts to the Revenue office in the same area of its registered address by 31 October 2017. Non-compliance will be subjected to fines of up to THB 2,000. 

We note that the mandatory filing of audited accounts can be done electronically to the Department of Business Development (DBD) and the Ministry of Commerce. Perhaps, the TRD should consider using the DBD E-filing database to access the audited financial statements and only require those taxpayers who are not required to file their audited financial statements with DBD or who are required to file additional financial information contained in the term ‘audited accounts’, to file them with the TRD directly. This will lessen the administrative burden on taxpayers.