Domestic withholding tax rate quick reference (editable workbook)

01The common mistake is checking only one of the two documents

Domestic withholding does not rest on one document but on two, and in practice they get cited interchangeably. Section 3 Teras of the Revenue Code empowers the Director-General of the Revenue Department to order payers who would otherwise have no duty to withhold; but the criteria, the conditions and the rates are set by ministerial regulation. That regulation is No. 144 (B.E. 2522), and its article 2 is a classified rate table. The order the Director-General issued under it is ThPo 4/2528, and it answers a different question: who must withhold from whom, on what conditions, and with what exceptions.

So there are two places to look: for the rate, article 2 of Ministerial Regulation No. 144; for who must withhold and the exceptions, the Order. Check only one and it is easy to reach a conclusion that looks right and does not land. Hire-of-work is the clearest case — the regulation lists 3%, while a payment to a company established under foreign law that carries on business in Thailand without a permanent branch office here is 5%, and that distinction sits in the Order, not in the rate table. This sheet puts both documents on the same row so those two steps stop being separate searches.

02What is in the workbook

Four sheets:

• Rate quick reference: the sub-clauses of article 2 row by row, each with four things — the recipient, the rate, the clause number, and the payers the Order requires to withhold.
• 1.0% self-check: the two conditions checked one by one and the seven listed classes compared one by one. Each class excludes foundations and associations carrying on revenue-earning activities, and that is written into the sheet so there is no need to go back to the text.
• Who must withhold, and in what order: a five-step checking order, each step naming which document to look at and what goes wrong if it is skipped, plus two notes on what most often goes wrong — the de minimis threshold, and whether a foreign company has a permanent branch here.
• Payment ledger: blank throughout, one row per domestic payment, rows added as needed, with an internal cut-off date and an owner so it works as a control sheet before funds go out.

03Which cells are deliberately left blank

The rate column is fixed in the text and can be traced back from the clause number, so the sheet states it. What genuinely moves case by case is three other things, and all of them are amber:

• Which sub-clause your payment falls under — that follows the class of income and who is paid, not what the contract calls the payment.
• Whether the 1.0% rate holds for this payment — the remittance-method condition turns on the route the money actually took, not the route that was intended.
• The de minimis threshold — the two documents each state one, at different levels of the hierarchy, and which governs your class of payment is for an adviser to settle, so the sheet gives no single figure. A quick reference with the threshold guessed in is more dangerous than one that leaves it open: it invites people to stop checking.

One more thing to say up front: the return, the remittance deadline and the form of the withholding certificate are outside the scope of this sheet. That cell is amber too — please take it to our advisory team separately.

04How to use the sheet

Work the five steps in order. Step 2 is where mistakes happen: a sub-clause often splits by who is paid, and reading the clause number without the recipient is how 3% and 10% get mixed up, or how something that belongs at 5% is withheld at 3%. Step 3 is the one skipped whole — going back to the Order to check whether the Order requires you, as payer, to withhold on that payment type.

On the 1.0% rate there is a timing gap worth noting. The previous 1% period ended on 31 December 2025, while the new provision was only published in the Royal Gazette on 9 October 2026 — yet its period runs back, by payment date, to 1 January 2026. Payments made between January and October 2026 that were withheld and remitted at the earlier rate therefore do not match the provision as it now stands. Ministerial Regulation No. 402 contains no transitional rule, so the difference cannot be adjusted off the rate table on your own; it has to be worked through payment by payment against the Revenue Department's current practice. Only the rate changed — the return, the certificate and the deadlines are unaffected.

Which sub-clause and which rate each of your payments falls under, which of them reach the 1.0% rate, and how to handle amounts already withheld at the earlier rate, all have to be verified payment by payment against the contracts, the payment records and the remittance route, and checked back against the official provisions in force before filing.