Chuvit Kamolvisit's allegation that Srettha Thavisin, former president of SET-listed developer Sansiri, was aware of landlords using legal tactics to evade tax payments on land transactions is a common practice among landowners to minimise tax liabilities.
Surachet Kongcheep, managing director of consultant Property DNA, said landowners typically look for ways to minimise tax payments when selling their land.
"If two or more individuals collectively own a piece of land, the Department of Lands will consider them as a group. When the group sells the land, they must pay tax at a progressive rate. But the progressive rate will not be collected if the land has a single owner," he said.
In general, both single landowners and groups of landowners are required to pay a property transfer tax and a special business tax when selling or transferring land.
Mr Surachet said this is the reason why a group of landowners transfers the ownership as a single person, one day at a time, to avoid the tax collected from a group of landowners.
"It is a common practice by landlords and this action is not illegal," he added. "In general, during land negotiations, unless it's a forced sale, the sellers usually have more bargaining power than the buyers."
In many cases, landowners may request favours from land buyers to help facilitate the transaction, such as finding ways to avoid paying higher taxes or even covering all the taxes on behalf of the landowners.
There are several tactics listed developers or their executives use. Some use family members or set up a company to purchase a piece of land at a certain price and later resell it to their company at a higher price to generate a profit for themselves.
On Wednesday, Mr Chuvit alleged that Mr Srettha, one of the Pheu Thai Party's prime ministerial candidates, was complicit in tax evasion.
Mr Chuvit said there was strong evidence of irregularity in connection with a land purchase Sansiri made in August 2019 when Mr Srettha was company president.
Mr Chuvit claimed that Mr Srettha and Sansiri had colluded with the landowners to evade 521 million baht in taxes on the purchase of a 399.7-square-wah land plot in Lang Suan.