e-Tax Invoice Tax Deduction in Thailand: Which Costs Qualify in 2026 and 2027.

The e-tax deduction is back for 2026 and 2027

The e-tax invoice tax deduction in Thailand is back. Royal Decree No. 808, published in the Royal Gazette on 12 October 2026, lets a company or juristic partnership count qualifying spending on e-Tax Invoice & e-Receipt and e-Withholding Tax systems twice: once as an ordinary expense, and again as exempt income equal to 100% of the amount actually paid. It covers payments made from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2027, so money a business spent earlier this year counts even though the decree only arrived in October.

The measure has been renewed several times since 2019. The previous decree, No. 766, covered spending to 31 December 2025, which left 2026 spending without a decree in force until the new one arrived in October.

Two other measures are easy to confuse with this one. Easy e-Receipt, a shopping deduction for individuals, is a separate personal income tax scheme and does not apply to corporate spending. The 1% withholding rate for payments made through e-Withholding Tax comes from a separate instrument, covered further down.

What follows is which costs qualify, the conditions on equipment and software, who is excluded, the dates that decide eligibility, and what is still missing before a claim can be filed.

How the e-tax invoice tax deduction works in Thailand

The decree exempts an amount of corporate income equal to the qualifying expense, on top of the deduction the business already gets for that expense. It reduces taxable profit, and the tax saved follows from the company's own rate. The Revenue Department describes the result as a deduction of two times the actual spend, which is why most coverage calls it the 200% deduction.

The decree sets no cap in baht, no turnover or capital test and no minimum spend. It applies to companies and juristic partnerships of any size.

What the extra 100% is worth depends on the rate the company pays. The standard corporate income tax rate is 20% of net profit, with lower rates on the first bands of profit for small companies. At the standard rate:

The last row is the number that belongs in a budget. For a company on the standard rate, the incentive is worth about 20% of the qualifying spend, and less for a small company taxed at a lower rate. Estimates that count the full 200% as the saving double the real benefit, because the ordinary deduction was available anyway.

The dates that decide eligibility

Several dates attach to this measure, and only one of them decides whether a cost qualifies: the date the money was paid.

The Cabinet approval is in the Revenue Department's press release of 16 June 2026, and the decree appears on its new-laws page dated 14 October. Neither date changes what qualifies. The decree's wording ties every head of relief to expenditure paid within the window, so the payment date is the one to check. Contract, invoice and go-live dates are not mentioned.

Equipment and software carry a second deadline. The asset has to be acquired and ready to use for its purpose by 31 December 2027, so a system paid for in December 2027 but not yet working at year end falls outside the decree's wording. The commitment also runs past 2027, because the asset has to stay in use for at least three consecutive accounting periods.

Which costs qualify

The decree splits qualifying spending into five heads. The split matters, because equipment and software carry conditions that service fees do not.

An e-tax invoice here means the tax invoice a business registered for VAT in Thailand issues under the Revenue Code, including abbreviated tax invoices, debit notes and credit notes, prepared electronically by an operator on the Revenue Department's list. The remittance heads in sections 5 and 7(2) apply to companies that remit withholding tax, income tax or VAT through the electronic method in section 3 quindecies of the Revenue Code, which in practice means the bank-based e-Withholding Tax system.

Three details in the wording are easy to miss.

Receiving counts as well as sending. Section 4 covers a system for receiving e-tax invoices and e-receipts, so a buyer that invests to take in its suppliers' electronic invoices can qualify as well as the seller that issues them.

Repairs do not count. Spending to keep existing equipment in its original condition is excluded by reference to section 65 ter (5) of the Revenue Code.

The decree is silent on training, consulting, installation and internal staff time. It neither includes nor excludes them by name. Whether they sit inside "investment in a system" is for the Director-General's criteria to settle, and those have not been published. A claim built on licence, hardware or provider fees rests on firmer ground than one built on consulting hours.

Equipment and software: the six conditions

Section 6 of the decree attaches six conditions to every asset claimed under sections 4 and 5. The asset must:

1. Never have been used before.
2. Be depreciable under section 65 bis (2) of the Revenue Code, and be acquired and ready for use by 31 December 2027.
3. Be located in Thailand.
4. Stay in use for at least three consecutive accounting periods, counted from the first period in which it was acquired and ready for use.
5. Not have received a tax benefit relating to it under any other Royal Decree issued under the Revenue Code, in whole or in part.
6. Not be used in a business exempt from corporate income tax under the investment promotion law, the targeted-industries competitiveness law or the Eastern Special Development Zone law, in whole or in part.

The three-period rule is the one that surfaces later. Under the rules that applied to the previous decree, a company that broke a condition after claiming had to add the exempt amount back to income for the accounting period in which it claimed, which reopens an earlier year. Retiring a system after two years, or moving the equipment outside Thailand, could unwind the benefit if the same approach carries over.

Service fees under section 7 carry none of these six conditions. That makes the choice between owning a system and subscribing to a provider a tax question as well as an IT one. The subscription route avoids the new-asset test and the three-period commitment, while owned equipment has to stay in place and in use to keep its deduction.

Who cannot claim

Individuals and unincorporated businesses. The decree names only companies and juristic partnerships. Sole traders fall outside it, whatever they spend on e-tax systems. It does not distinguish companies by the nationality of their shareholders.

Service providers and software vendors, for their own systems. Section 4 does not apply to the expenditure of e-tax service providers, or of developers who build software to sell or provide as a service to others. Their relief is the new section 7(3) head for ETDA audit fees. The Cabinet's own statement put the number of authorised e-Tax Invoice & e-Receipt providers at 23 as of June 2026, and the Revenue Department said the audit fee head should encourage more businesses to become providers.

Equipment used in an incentive-exempt business. An asset used in a business that enjoys a corporate tax exemption under the investment promotion law cannot be claimed, even where only part of the business is exempt. A company holding BOI tax incentives has to look at where the system is used before counting on the deduction.

Spending already claimed under another decree. The overlap to watch is the SME digital decree, No. 802. It gives smaller companies, with paid-up capital up to 5 million baht and revenue up to 30 million baht, the same 100% exemption on software, hardware, smart devices and digital services bought from sellers registered with the Digital Economy Promotion Agency, capped at 300,000 baht of spend and excluding computers. Decree 802 (section 5) denies the exemption where a company already gets a tax benefit on the same software, hardware or digital services under another Royal Decree, and Decree 808 (section 6) applies a similar bar to its equipment and software. Read together, the same item of spending looks likely to sit under one decree or the other. The Revenue Department has not said how it applies the two bars, so this is a reading of the text.

The 1% e-withholding rate is a separate measure

Ministerial Regulation No. 402, published on 9 October 2026, sets withholding tax at 1% on a range of payments made from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2027, where the payer remits through the electronic method in section 3 quindecies. Payments that would otherwise be withheld at 5%, 3% or 2%, such as service fees, professional and contracting fees, rent and advertising, drop to 1%. The Cabinet approved it alongside the decree in June, and Nation Thailand reported the government's estimate of about 27 billion baht in extra business liquidity.

As the Revenue Department described the system at its 2020 launch, the payer sends the payment and the tax data through a participating bank, and the bank remits the tax to the Revenue Department within four business days of receiving the money. The regular withholding tax rules in Thailand still apply to payments made outside the system.

The two measures reward different things. The regulation lowers the tax withheld at the moment of payment, which keeps cash with the recipient. The decree lowers the corporate tax bill of the company that pays for the systems. A company can use both, and the bank's fees for e-Withholding Tax are themselves a qualifying cost under section 7(2).

How a claim reaches the corporate tax return

Royal Decree 808 leaves the "criteria, methods and conditions" to a notification by the Revenue Department's Director-General. As of 19 October 2026, none appeared on the Revenue Department's published lists for this decree. Until it appears, the procedure for claiming 2026 and 2027 spending is not settled.

The previous round shows what to expect. For Decree 766, Director-General Notification No. 435, signed within a month of that decree, required a company to:

• Claim the exemption for equipment in the accounting period in which depreciation of the asset starts.
• Keep a record of when each asset was installed and removed, ready for inspection.
• Hold evidence that service fees were paid to the provider.
• Notify the investment and payment details through the Revenue Department's electronic system before filing the return for the period of the claim.
• Add the exempt amount back to income if a condition was later broken.

A new notification may repeat these rules or change them, and none of them can be assumed for 2026 spending until it is published.

On the return itself, the relief has been reported in the PND 50 attachment for exempt income and additional deductions, under the item for spending to promote and support electronic systems. The current edition of that attachment still refers to Decree 766, so a revised form is likely before 2026 returns fall due. The deadlines themselves are covered under corporate tax filing in Thailand and in the company compliance calendar.

Companies that have already paid in 2026 are documenting spending against rules that have not been written yet. The records the previous rules asked for are a sensible baseline: payment evidence dated inside the window, contracts that show the e-tax purpose, an asset register entry with acquisition and ready-for-use dates and location, and confirmation that the provider is on the Revenue Department's list of authorised service providers. These sit on top of the accounting requirements in Thailand that every company already carries.

What changed from the previous decree

Royal Decree 808 is the fourth round of the same incentive. The Revenue Department's index of Royal Decrees lists the earlier rounds as No. 683 (2019), No. 718 (2021) and No. 766 (2023).

For most companies the practical change is the gap. Spending between 1 January and 12 October 2026 had no decree behind it while it was being paid, and the new decree reaches back to cover it.

Where a professional can help

Most of the judgement in a claim sits in the grey areas the decree leaves open. Splitting a mixed ERP project between qualifying and non-qualifying costs, deciding between Decree 802 and Decree 808 for a small company, and working out whether a BOI-promoted company's system is used "in whole or in part" in exempt activities are all fact-specific calls.

A tax lawyer in Thailand can review how a claim is structured and what the evidence needs to show, and advisers who handle corporate tax planning in Thailand can time spending against the window and the three-period rule. For a specific case, speak with a qualified professional.

This guide is general information about Royal Decree No. 808, current as of 19 October 2026. It is not tax, accounting or legal advice, and how the decree applies depends on a company's facts and on the Director-General's notification, which is still to come.