Junta imposes new tax on undocumented migrant workers from Myanmar

The Myanmar military council’s ministry of planning and finance announced plans last Friday to tax the wages of Myanmar nationals working in Thailand and other neighbouring countries without full documentation. According to the ministry’s statement as reported in the regime-run Burma Gazette, Myanmar workers will be required to pay the tax as a condition for obtaining certificates of identification (CI) and other documents such as letters of recommendation from embassies and consulates. The regime put the new tax requirements in place by adding amendments to Myanmar’s Union Tax Law of 2023, which is enacted annually but had remained unchanged for more than ten years. Statements released by Myanmar embassies and consulates said that paying income taxes could ultimately help Myanmar nationals purchase property by serving as a means to prove they had earned their money legally. A tax expert who spoke with Myanmar Now said the intent of the new policy is to extract as much revenue as possible from undocumented workers. “It appears they’re going to take a hard line on this. It’s essentially robbery,” said the tax expert, who asked that his name be withheld. Millions of Myanmar migrant labourers live in Thailand working odd jobs, using the Thai government-issued “pink card” as identification. In order to work as a pink card holder, a migrant worker is required to obtain a CI from a Myanmar embassy or consulate. The CI—also called the “green book”—identifies a migrant worker without a passport as a Myanmar citizen and can be traded in for a job passport (PJ) if accompanied by fees and supporting documents. The Myanmar embassy in Bangkok announced on December 21 that offices in the Thai provinces of Chonburi, Pathum Thani, Samut Prakan, Samut Sakhon, and Surat Thani would begin issuing CIs to migrant workers in early 2024. However, the same embassy had announced a week earlier that the offices would only prepare the documents for people who could show proof of having paid their income tax. An official at the Confederation of Trade Unions, Myanmar (CTUM), one of Myanmar’s largest labour unions, commented that it was exploitative to tax people who had already had to sell or pawn their homes and properties to work abroad rather than helping them. “It seems to me that imposing more restrictions on the access to CI cards and pink cards is simply exploitation of labour,” the CTUM official said. According to Min Oo, a labour affairs officer at the Foundation for Education and Development—an advocacy organisation for Myanmar people in Thailand—regime personnel started collecting taxes from Myanmar nationals seeking to renew passports at the embassy in Bangkok as early as October, and they would soon start doing the same with workers holding CI and pink cards. “They’ll have to pay the income taxes as long as they hold military council-issued documents. And there’s also the requirement to remit 25 percent of their income back to Myanmar. In short, people are going to be left with no money,” the labour affairs officer said. Under current rules, workers have to pay taxes in order to receive social security benefits, claim compensation for injuries, and to obtain marriage status documentation from Myanmar embassies and consulates. According to information published by the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok, they have assessed the monthly wages of workers in Myanmar at 7,500 Thai baht (US $220) and require a minimum payment of two percent, or 150 baht (US $4.40), in tax. The same two percent minimum applies to the income of professional workers such as corporate or office employees. Among the Myanmar nationals who have moved to Thailand for work and currently hold CI or pink cards, there are a number of activists and participants in the civil disobedience movement, which organised strikes to protest against the military regime in the wake of the 2021 coup. One Myanmar citizen currently living in Mae Sot, Thailand, said that although a CI would allow him to travel more or less freely around the country, he planned to live in Thailand with only a pink card in order to avoid paying taxes to the military regime. “They said we had to pay income tax when we apply for a CI, and it’s apparently on a monthly basis, so we simply won’t apply for it. They can arrest us when we go back into the country because I, for one, am not going back until the revolution succeeds,” he said. Labour activists estimated that there are currently more than two million Myanmar migrant workers holding a CI in Thailand. Most Myanmar nationals currently living in Singapore, South Korea, and Japan were only able to enter those countries through legal channels, had to use current Myanmar passports, and are therefore obligated to pay taxes when they renew their passports. The military council has also announced on more than one occasion that workers returning to Myanmar will be required to show proof of paying taxes at Yangon International Airport.

Junta imposes new tax on undocumented migrant workers from Myanmar

A labour union official called the new rules, which require migrants to pay income tax before receiving certificates of identification needed to work in Thailand, “unjust” and “exploitation”

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