The Thai cabinet decided to inject the second portion of funding worth 5 billion baht to help improve the competitiveness of almost 100,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Industry minister Atchaka Sibunruang said that the second funding would target 15 projects ranging from improving the creativity and innovations of the SMEs, reengineering, promotion of product designs to skills development and franchise development.

The Commerce, Industry, Science & Technology ministries and the SME promotion office will jointly help implementing 11 projects aimed to help the SMEs at a total cost of 1.8 billion baht. Altogether over 27,000 SMEs will benefit from these projects.

Don’t punish the tax dodger

The Revenue Department is to recommend the Finance Ministry not to punish small- and medium-sized enterprises which failed to pay their taxes improperly or have several account books.
Revenue Department director-general Prasong Poonthanet disclosed on Monday there are about 2.7 SMEs throughout the country and only 400,000 were registered with the Commerce Ministry and, of these, only 200,000 of them actually filed their tax forms.

The new move is meant to encourage SMEs to enter the tax system and to properly file their tax forms so that the state can claim taxes from them.

But the move not to punish SMEs which failed to pay their taxes properly or have never filed their tax forms does not mean that they will be exempted from paying backdated taxes but they may be exempted from fines or have their fines substantially reduced.

Mr Prasong said that the new move would be announced during the New Year as a gift for the SMEs.