Migrant workers protest in Thailand as Myanmar regime enforces new income tax

The Myanmar military regime announced last week that from October of this year, it was implementing a requirement for Myanmar citizens working abroad to pay two percent of their wages in taxes. The announcement appeared on the website of the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok, Thailand on December 14. “We don’t know how they are going to collect the money. We only know Myanmar citizens working abroad must pay taxes out of their wages starting from October,” said an officer of the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok. The coup regime amended Section 22 of the Union Tax Law in September to levy the new tax on income earned abroad, with the provision scheduled to remain in effect until March 2024. A Myanmar national working in Thailand under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) contract said he had no intention of paying any part of his income to the military council. “Only those who have no other choice will pay those taxes, I think. No matter what they say, our salaries belong to us. I am not going to pay them and I do not want other people to pay them either,” said the man, who was working at an electronics store in Mae Sot, a Thai town with a large migrant population from Myanmar on the border with Karen State. Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand held a protest against the two percent tax at the UN office in Bangkok, Thailand, on Sunday. A Myanmar migrant worker who took part in the demonstration said he and his fellow labourers felt compelled to protest after Myanmar embassy staff visited a fish cannery in Samut Sakhon Province south of Bangkok on December 6 in order to pressure employees from Myanmar to pay the tax. “They brought along Thai police officers for their security. They were even wearing bulletproof vests. They picked out about ten workers at the factory and told them that they couldn’t renew their passports if they didn’t pay the two percent income tax,” the protesting worker said. “Other workers at the cannery weren’t even given a chance to ask questions. We only heard about it from the few workers they spoke to. We want the UN to intervene,” he said. Migrant workers in Thailand’s Samut Sakhon Province wait to be tested for Covid-19 in January 2021. (Myanmar Now) According to data collected by the United Nations Development Programme, there are currently around 2.5 million migrant workers from Myanmar in Thailand. According to Burmese labour advocates in Thailand, there are over a million and a half Myanmar nationals employed in Thailand with legal documentation, including around 300,000 on MOU contracts as of this year. “Threatening not to renew our passports if we can’t show proof of paying the tax sounds like the junta-controlled embassies in Thailand neglecting their duties and afflicting millions of Myanmar migrant workers,” said Thar Gyi, an activist helping the Myanmar migrant workers. “I think only those migrant workers who need to renew their passports will pay the tax but no one will be happy about doing so,” Thar Gyi added. The military council is also reportedly pressuring employment agencies to transfer up to 25 percent of Myanmar workers’ wages to the military through financial institutions. Naing Aung Aung, a labour advocate at the Arakan Workers Organisation, said the military is trying to push more Myanmar nationals seeking work abroad to go through employment agencies, and pressuring agencies to stipulate in their contracts that wages can only be paid through approved banks. “They might have succeeded in forcing workers to pay the tax in other countries, but it would be difficult in a country like Thailand, where the number of undocumented migrant workers is so high. So they started pressuring agencies and employers to go along with their contract and visa renewal requirements,” Naing Aung Aung said. Thai law requires that migrant workers be paid in full and in legal tender, and does not authorise either their employers or employment agencies to deduct from their wages. According to data collected by the Myanmar embassies abroad, Myanmar nationals working in Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, and Singapore remitted more than US $1.5 billion back to Myanmar between November of 2022 and April of 2023.

Migrant workers protest in Thailand as Myanmar regime enforces new income tax

The junta is refusing to renew passports for workers who have not paid the tax and reportedly pressuring employment agencies to withhold wages due to Myanmar nationals abroad

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