You have a job. Somebody offers you money for sending customers their way — a lender, a clinic, a broker, a shop, an online platform. The sum is small enough that it feels like a favour with a tip attached, and nobody in the conversation mentions the Revenue Department.
In Thailand that silence has a very specific consequence, and it is not the one people expect. Salary is one of eight categories of assessable income, and the return you file for it is due once a year, between January and March. A referral fee is not salary. Depending on how you earn it, it can land in a different category, and four of those categories carry an obligation your payslip never did: a half-year return, form ภ.ง.ด.94, due by the end of September for income received during the first six months of the same tax year. Same person, same year, two filings. The Revenue Department sets this out on its own filing-deadline page, consulted on 16 August 2026: ภ.ง.ด.90 and ภ.ง.ด.91 run January to March of the following year, while ภ.ง.ด.94 covers categories 5, 6, 7 and 8 and runs July to September of the tax year itself.
Working out which box you are in is worth one evening. While you do it, apps such as I am Beezy pay you for viewing content — videos, articles, advertisements — so something keeps arriving from a mechanism you already understand while the referral side is still an experiment.
Why does a referral fee behave differently from your salary?
One tax year, two possible deadlines
Thai personal income tax is not organised by employer, it is organised by category of income. Someone whose only income is salary files ภ.ง.ด.91, which the Revenue Department describes as the form for a taxpayer with category 1 income alone. Someone with income of every type files ภ.ง.ด.90. Both are due between January and March of the following year. The half-year form ภ.ง.ด.94 is a separate obligation that exists only for income in categories 5, 6, 7 and 8, and it falls due within the last day of September of the same tax year, according to the Revenue Department page consulted on 16 August 2026. Nothing sends you a reminder. If your fee sits in one of those four categories and you have never filed in September, that is the gap.
The zero band is a total, not an allowance per source
The Thai schedule starts at zero up to 150,000 baht of taxable income, then rises through 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 per cent, the top rate applying above 4,000,000 baht. People treat the first band as though each new source of money got its own. It does not. Your fee is added on top of your salary and the total is what meets the bands. A fee that felt like pocket money can therefore be taxed at the marginal rate your salary already reached, which is exactly why the answer to "how much is this worth" depends on what you already earn, not on the headline percentage the payer quoted you.
Deductions are not the same in every category either
The category does more than pick a form. It also governs what you may set against the income before tax is worked out. That is why two people quoted the same fee, doing what looks like the same work, can end up with different amounts in hand. It is also why the honest answer to a friend asking "is it worth it" is a question back: how are you earning this, as a service to one payer, or as an activity you run yourself.
Which of the eight categories does your fee land in?
Category 2 — a fee for a job, a position, or services rendered
The Revenue Department lists category 2 as income by virtue of jobs, positions or services rendered. A commission paid to you by one company, for introductions you make on its behalf, under its instructions and its terms, sits naturally here. Category 2 is not in the list of categories that trigger the September return. That is the good news, and it is also the reason so many people never discover the September return exists.
Category 8 — business, commerce, or any other activity
Category 8 is the catch-all: income from business, commerce, agriculture, industry, transport or any other activity not specified earlier. Someone who runs the introductions as their own small operation — several payers, own tools, own promotion, own risk — looks much more like category 8 than category 2. Category 8 is one of the four categories that carry the half-year return, so the same money earned a different way can add a September deadline to your year.
Why one hour spent here beats a year of guessing
Nothing about this is decided by what the payer calls the money. A company can label a payment "commission", "bonus", "reward" or "gift" and none of those words appear in the eight categories. What decides it is the substance of the arrangement. Write down, in five lines, who pays you, for what act, under whose instructions, with whose materials, and whether anyone else pays you for the same activity. Take those five lines to the Revenue Department — the area offices exist in every province and the e-filing portal is at efiling.rd.go.th — and ask them which category applies. You will get a straighter answer in ten minutes than a year of forum threads will give you.
| What you are being paid for | Category the Revenue Department lists | Which returns are in play |
|---|---|---|
| Your ordinary employment | 1 — personal services rendered to employers | ภ.ง.ด.91 or ภ.ง.ด.90, January to March |
| A fee for a job, position or service rendered to one payer | 2 — jobs, positions or services rendered | ภ.ง.ด.90, January to March |
| Letting out property you own | 5 — letting of property | ภ.ง.ด.90 and ภ.ง.ด.94 |
| An activity you run yourself, several payers | 8 — business, commerce or any other activity | ภ.ง.ด.90 and ภ.ง.ด.94 |
Source: Revenue Department, list of assessable income categories and filing-deadline table, both consulted on 16 August 2026.
Checking who is paying you, before you send anyone
There is a register, and almost nobody opens it
Thailand regulates direct selling and direct marketing through the Direct Sales and Direct Marketing Act B.E. 2545, which is 2002 in the Gregorian calendar, amended by a second act in B.E. 2550 and a third in B.E. 2560. The Office of the Consumer Protection Board publishes that legislation on its own site, together with a public list of registered direct-sales and direct-marketing operators at ocpbdirect.ocpb.go.th and a separate list of businesses facing proceedings. The Office has also published a formal notice warning operators to register before they trade, which tells you what an absence from the register means. Searching a company name there costs a minute and happens before, not after, you put your own reputation behind it.
Being a distributor is a status, not a favour
This is the part people miss entirely. Thai law names the individual, not only the company. Among the notifications the Office of the Consumer Protection Board lists under that Act is one, from B.E. 2547, setting the penalty rate where an independent distributor or a direct-sales agent fails to refund a consumer the amount and within the period the law requires. Read that sentence twice. In an arrangement of that kind, the duty to put a customer right can attach to the person who made the introduction. A referral that goes wrong is then not merely an awkward message; it is your name on a consumer file.
What to keep in writing, and where to complain
Get the rate, the trigger, the payment date and the cancellation terms in a document rather than a chat thread. Keep the receipts of anything you were asked to pay to join, because a scheme that charges you before it pays you is the single clearest warning sign in this market. If it goes wrong, the Office of the Consumer Protection Board takes complaints online at complaint.ocpb.go.th, on the 1166 line, and in person at the provincial hall of every province.
| Check | Where you do it | What a bad answer looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Is the operator registered | ocpbdirect.ocpb.go.th | "Registration is in progress", repeated for months |
| Is it already in trouble | The Office's published list of businesses facing proceedings | The name appears, and your contact has an explanation for it |
| What exactly triggers payment | A written agreement, not a message | "We will sort it out when the first ones come through" |
| Do you pay anything to start | Your own bank statement | A joining pack, an activation fee, a compulsory kit |
| Which income category applies | Your Revenue Department area office | The payer answers the tax question for you |
Keeping the month steady with I am Beezy while the referral side settles
How the earning actually works
With I am Beezy you view content — videos, articles, advertisements — and each view generates earnings, paid out to the payment method you already use. Active users report the equivalent of roughly 190 to 570 baht a day, converted at the Bank of Thailand reference rate published on 5 August 2026; the central bank republishes that rate every working day, so check it rather than trusting a figure copied from an article.
Where it sits next to a salary and a fee
It is not a replacement for either, and treating it as one is how people end up disappointed. What it does is remove the pressure that makes referral offers look better than they are. When the month already has something coming in, you can afford to check a register, ask a tax question, and turn down the arrangement that will not put its terms in writing. The national statistics office recorded average household income of 28,308 baht a month against 22,420 baht of spending and 153,038 baht of average household debt for 2025, which is the margin most families are actually working with — narrow enough that a bad referral arrangement costs more than the fee was ever worth.
Questions people ask about referral fees in Thailand
Do I have to tell my employer?
That is a contract question, not a tax question, and the two get confused constantly. Your employment agreement may restrict outside activity, particularly if the referral touches your employer's own market. Read the clause before you read anything else. The Revenue Department does not care who your employer is; your employer might care a great deal.
Is a small fee below some threshold ignored?
No. The zero rate applies to the first 150,000 baht of taxable income in total, not to each source separately, so a fee added to an existing salary is not sheltered by a band that salary already used up. Treat every fee as reportable and let the arithmetic decide what is owed.
The company is overseas and pays me directly — does that change anything?
It changes the plumbing, not the obligation. There is no IBAN in Thailand and no SEPA transfer: a Thai account is identified by bank and account number, and an instant domestic payment is addressed by PromptPay identifier, which is a mobile number or a national identity card number. A payout page that will only accept an IBAN was not built for this country. Money arriving from abroad is an international transfer, with a conversion cost that is usually larger than the advertised fee.
What to do before your next introduction
Do three things in this order. Establish which of the eight categories your fee belongs to, because that single answer tells you whether your year has one deadline or two. Search the payer on the Office of the Consumer Protection Board register before your name is attached to anything. Get the terms into a document. None of it is difficult, and all of it is much easier before the first payment than after the first complaint. And while you are sorting out the referral side, a steady, boring source of extra income makes the whole thing easier to judge on its merits — sign up free on I am Beezy and let the first earnings land while you do the paperwork.
