Abstract:
This research aimed to: 1) study the current state and problems of levying value added tax on low-value e-commerce shipments imported via international post in Thailand; and 2) to study guidelines for Thailand in levying value added tax on low-value e-commerce shipments imported via international post. This is a qualitative study in which the key informants are Customs Department officials at both the policy and operational levels who are directly responsible and have knowledge, expertise, and experience in levying value added tax on imported low-value e-commerce shipments, as well as officials who are representatives of working groups related to such levying, totaling 7 people. The documents used in the analysis are the laws and regulations of the Customs Department, the tax laws of foreign countries, study reports of international organizations, and academic papers, totaling 7 papers. To gather data, this research used document analysis and in-depth interviews, followed by content analysis to qualitatively analyze the data. The research's results revealed that the current state and problems of levying value added tax on low-value e-commerce shipments imported via international post in Thailand are not currently problematic; this is because levying value added tax on such shipments has never previously been imposed. However, the absence of the aforementioned value added tax levying has had a significant impact on four major areas, namely the loss of government revenue, higher costs in tax collection than revenue collected, distortion of trade competition between resident vendors and non-resident vendors, as well as low price declaration and parcel fraud. However, if Thailand begins levying value added tax on such goods in the future, there are still issues or constraints in levying, such as legal issues, management issues, and human resource issues. Additionally, the research founded that there are 2 guidelines for Thailand in levying value added tax on low-value e-commerce shipments imported via international post. The first is to improve traditional levying methods, and the second is to combine the method of levying taxes from non-resident vendors with the method of levying taxes from intermediaries.