Can a Thai family use a Singapore trust - and what does it not fix?

Thailand's own answer: no private trust, and a bill that stalled

Section 1686 is short and absolute. In the form introduced alongside the capital-market Act, it provides that a trust created directly or indirectly by will or by any juristic act taking effect during life or after death shall have no effect, save by virtue of the provisions of a law for the creation of trusts. Thailand has exactly one such law. The Trust for Transactions in Capital Market Act B.E. 2550 was published in the Royal Gazette on 14 January 2008 and took effect ninety days later; the Fiscal Policy Office lists it among the statutes under its charge.

Its section 12 allows only three kinds of settlor: a company issuing securities under the securities law, an originator under the securitisation law, and a juristic person qualified as the SEC prescribes.

Section 16 closes the door. A trust created otherwise than in accordance with sections 11 and 12, or with a trustee not licensed under the Act, is void. A Thai individual therefore cannot settle a family trust in Thailand at all: not badly, not partially, not at his own risk. The Ministry of Finance has said as much in its own words. On 10 July 2018 the Cabinet approved in principle a draft Trust for Management of Personal Assets Act, and press release 113/2561 listed among its purposes an efficient tool for managing personal assets, a means of passing assets to the next generation, and a reduction in the taking of assets out of the country to be managed elsewhere.

That bill has not become law. As at 29 August 2026 the Fiscal Policy Office still lists the 2007 capital-market Act as the trust statute under its charge, while the personal-assets draft remains in its public-consultation archive with the full text and the consultation summary published there. Thai press reported in 2021 that a special committee of the Council of State opposed the draft; that is a press report rather than an official record, and it is offered here as such. The practical position for a Thai family in 2026 is unchanged from 2018, which is why the question is not whether to look outside Thailand but what a structure outside Thailand actually does.

What section 90 actually says, and its four conditions

Section 90 was inserted into the Trustees Act 1967 by the Trustees (Amendment) Act 2004, which came into operation on 15 December 2004. Subsection (2) is the sentence the brochures quote: no rule relating to inheritance or succession shall affect the validity of a trust, or of the transfer of any property to be held on trust, where the person creating the trust or transferring the property had capacity under subsection (1). Subsection (1) deems that capacity to exist if it exists under the law applicable in Singapore, the law of his domicile or nationality, or the proper law of the transfer.

Subsection (5) adds that reserving to himself any or all powers of investment or asset management does not invalidate the trust, which matters to founders who will not hand over the portfolio.

The conditions sit in subsection (3), and they are where families lose the protection without noticing. Subsection (1) does not apply at all if, at the time of creation or transfer, the settlor is a citizen of Singapore or is domiciled in Singapore. It applies in relation to a trust only if the trust is expressed to be governed by Singapore law and the trustees are resident in Singapore. And subsection (1) describes a person who creates a trust or transfers movable property to be held on an existing trust during his lifetime: lifetime, and movable.

A deathbed transfer is not what the section describes, nor is immovable property, nor a deed governed by another law with trustees elsewhere. Four conditions, each checkable in an afternoon, each a quiet way to lose the shield.

Two further mechanics matter. Under section 89 the perpetuity provisions of the Civil Law Act apply to trusts created on or after the commencement of the 2004 amendment, and section 32 of that Act fixes the perpetuity period at 100 years or such shorter period as the instrument specifies, with any longer period deemed to be 100 years.

And privacy in Singapore is the absence of a public register of trust deeds, not the absence of a supervisor: since 20 June 2025 Part 7 of the Trustees Act, Transparency and Effective Control (in the Act since 2017), has provided for a Commissioner of Trust Enforcement with statutory powers to examine persons, require production of information and seize property. A page that sells secrecy without saying this is selling a 2015 fact in 2026.

What it does not fix

It does not answer Thai tax. Thailand taxes the heir rather than the estate, and a Thai-national heir is assessed on assets situated inside or outside Thailand; see the page on whether Thailand's inheritance tax reaches a father's Singapore assets. Whether a distribution from a trust the founder settled during his life is an inheritance received from a deceased person for the purposes of the Thai Act is a characterisation question on the actual documents. It is the question Thai tax counsel is paid to answer on the facts, and this page does not answer it. Treating the structure as a tax answer, rather than as a control answer with a tax question attached, is how families end up defending a position they never tested.

It does not answer sin somros. Under the Civil and Commercial Code, property acquired during a marriage is marital property in which the surviving spouse holds her own half, and that half is separated out before anything is distributed as an estate. Section 90(2) shields a Singapore trust from rules relating to inheritance or succession. A marital-property claim is not an inheritance rule, and reading the section as covering it would be an inference this page does not make. A founder who settles assets that were marital property has not resolved his wife's position; he has moved it into a different forum, with a longer argument about what was his to settle.

And it does not move Thai land. Thailand's Land Code restricts the ownership of land by foreigners, and a Singapore trustee is a foreigner. Land in Thailand stays in Thailand, inside the Thai estate and the Thai probate court. What a Singapore trust holds is shares, funds and deposits, which is usually the point, since in most Thai business families the value sits in the shares rather than the title deeds. Timing decides the rest. Assets settled while the founder is well, on documents the family has read, are governed by the deed. Assets still in his name on the day he dies are governed by Thai succession law, whatever anyone intended. The window is a document date, not a diagnosis.

The rule that changed on 1 January 2024: a distribution brought home is taxed the year it lands

One dated fact reaches every Thai family with money outside the country, and it is not about trusts at all. On 15 September 2023 the Revenue Department issued Departmental Instruction Por. 161/2566, signed by the Director-General, Lavaron Sangsnit, read on rd.go.th on 18 September 2026. It instructs assessing officers that a person resident in Thailand under section 41 paragraph three of the Revenue Code, who has assessable income from work or business abroad or from property abroad, and who brings that income into Thailand in any tax year whatever, must include it in the computation for the year it is brought in.

Before that order the practice had been to tax foreign income only if remitted in the same year it was earned; a year's delay made it tax-free. That door closed for income arising from 1 January 2024.

Por. 162/2566 of 20 November 2023 added the one carve-out: the new reading does not apply to assessable income that arose before 1 January 2024, so savings earned earlier can still come home untaxed. What this means for a Singapore trust is direct. A Thai-resident beneficiary who receives a distribution of income in Singapore and brings it into Thailand is assessed on it in that year, whether the trust was settled in 2015 or last month, and the trust deed cannot alter the beneficiary's own residence or the Revenue Code's reach. The structure moves the assets and the decisions offshore; it does not move the family.

A relief has been discussed and has not arrived. Through 2025 and 2026 the Revenue Department floated an exemption for foreign income remitted in the year it is earned or the following year, and practitioners have tracked it month by month; as at 18 September 2026 no royal decree or ministerial regulation to that effect has been published in the Royal Gazette, and this page will say so until one is. A family planning distributions on the assumption that the relief exists is planning on a press report. The honest position is the one in force: Por. 161/2566, applied to income arising from 2024, with Por. 162/2566 protecting the older money.

Bangkok is told who the beneficiaries are: the exchange with Singapore, and the fines set on 9 September 2026

A Singapore trust is private in the sense that no public register lists it. It is not private from the Thai Revenue Department. Thailand's Emergency Decree on Exchange of Information for Compliance with International Agreements on Taxation B.E. 2566 was published in the Royal Gazette on 30 March 2023 and took effect the next day, read on rd.go.th on 12 October 2026. The Ministry of Finance notice of 10 August 2023 lists the partner jurisdictions whose account data Thailand exchanges; the Republic of Singapore is on it at number 100.

Clause 14 of the Ministerial Regulation of 8 August 2023 defines the controlling persons of a trust as the settlor, the trustee, the protector, the beneficiaries or class of beneficiaries, and any other natural person with ultimate effective control. Singapore's side runs under Part 20B of the Income Tax Act 1947 and the Common Reporting Standard Regulations of 2016, and has operated since September 2018. IRAS's List of Reportable Jurisdictions, updated 2 February 2026 and read 12 October 2026, carries Thailand, added for reporting year 2023, so the first Thai names left Singapore in 2024; each year's data is due from Singapore institutions by 31 May of the following year.

IRAS's CRS e-Tax Guide, fifth edition of 11 August 2026, says what is reported. For a trust, the settlor, trustees, protector and beneficiaries are always controlling persons, whether or not any of them exercises control. Where the trust is itself a financial institution, as a professionally managed trust usually is, the settlor and the beneficiaries are the account holders it reports, and a discretionary beneficiary is reported in the years a distribution is received. The deed's confidentiality clause binds the trustee; it does not bind the Income Tax Act.

The Thai end now has its fines. Section 28 of the Decree punishes a false statement or concealment in the information given with a fine of THB 50,000 to THB 500,000; section 29 fines a reporting institution up to THB 300,000 for failing its record-keeping duty; section 31 lets the Director-General compound both on criteria the Minister sets. On 9 September 2026 the Finance Minister, Ekniti Nitithanprapas, signed the notice setting those criteria: THB 500,000 per count for a false statement and THB 300,000 per count for the record-keeping breach, in force on publication in the Royal Gazette. The Revenue Department posted it on 23 September 2026.

What this means for a Thai family is plain. The structure still does what the earlier sections describe: a trustee, a governing law and a deed that outlives the founder. It does not do what a brochure from 2015 implied. Plan on the assumption that Bangkok has had the names since 2024, and that the only question it will ask is the tax one, answered on the page about Thailand's inheritance tax and in the section above on money brought home.