The Finance Ministry plans to propose to the cabinet the implementation of a financial transaction tax on individual stock investors soon, says Finance Minister Arkhom Termpittayapaisith.
He estimated the tax would generate tens of billions of baht in revenue per year for the state's coffers.
Mr Arkhom said on Monday that the tax should be introduced at an appropriate time.
The financial transaction tax applicable for share sales by individual investors trading on the Stock Exchange of Thailand has actually been on the books for around 30 years but has always been waived to support market development.
The financial transaction tax is 0.1%. In addition to the transaction tax, investors are subject to a related local tax, which would bring the total tax to 0.11% per share sold.
The ministry plans to introduce a royal decree to revoke the waiver to put the tax collection into effect. Once the tax is enforced, concerned parties will still have a grace period of 90 days to prepare to comply with the tax collection.
In a separate development, Mr Arkhom said the ministry is expected to finalise within the third week of this month measures to bring relief to people suffering from the ongoing pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. The relief measures are targeted towards low-income earners.
The government has a remaining budget of 40 billion baht for the measures from the 500 billion borrowed under the second emergency loan decree. The government passed two emergency loan decrees to allow it to borrow a total of 1.5 trillion baht to alleviate the impact of the pandemic on the economy. It has spent around 30-50 billion baht to fund each of the relief measures.
