BANGKOK, 24 Dec 2013, The Revenue Department is considering collecting taxes from tutorial schools beginning next year.
Mr. Suttichai Sangkamanee, Revenue Department Director-General, on Monday made the announcement after a meeting on the 2014 tax collecting directions. According to him, the department is planning to expand the nation’s tax base to include cram schools, which have been exempted from paying corporate income tax and personal income tax as well as value-added tax for quite a considerable amount of time.
It has been debated for long while whether or not the excemptions should be allowed to continue. The department expects to reach a conclusion by the end of 2014, he said.
If his department is to start collecting taxes from these schools, it will rely on the Education Ministry’s guidelines to determine the income level of each tutorial school and its size of operation to calculate the amount of tax a school has to pay annually.
He believed the move could be done without having to amend the law.
Mr. Suttichai pointed out that the reason cram schools have been exempted from taxes is that such schools in the past were aimed at promoting and improving students’ academic performances. However, he expressed his concerns over the quality of such tutorial schools of late, particularly questioning the effectiveness of having students learn from a video-tape-recorded lessons, which is widely used by several cram schools.
