Thai netizens have joined well-known travel blogger Richard Barrow in condemning an official at the Revenue Department who allegedly asked a bogusly inflated fee for tax documents.
This morning Barrow (@RichardBarrow) was updating the progress of his visa and work permit renewal to his 21,000 followers when he came across the allegedly corrupt officer.
“Unbelievable,” Richard tweeted, along with a photo of the officer. “This revenue officer wants me to pay him 1,000 Baht before he will release my tax documents. I’ve refused.”
Richard continued live-tweeting the situation, saying he was able to get the price down to a normal rate and that he was later asked to delete the photo.
“Success against corruption,” his tweet read. “Price for my tax documents has gone down from 1,000 Baht to 260 Baht with receipt.”
“He now wants me to delete the picture that I took of him,” Richard continued. “I said I will think about it.”
But before it could be deleted, the photo began circulating throughout the Thai online community with help of many Twitter celebrities. Among those who re-tweeted Richard’s message were Nation Channel Noppatjak Attanon (@noppatjak), who has over 103,000 followers, and online TV host John Winyu (@johnwinyu), who has over 201,000 followers. MThai and Kapook, famous Thai portal sites, also picked up the story.
In the comment section on Kapook.com, some comments so far include:
“This is not a true story. If it was true, the price would need to be higher.”
“They do this everywhere, but it’s just not news.”
“There may be more to this story. We can’t judge yet with only this information.”
