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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

Average income (%)
(Baht)
Business only (13 members)

Salary etc. 5,379,295 14.4
Meeting Allowances and fees 3,712,182 9.9

Interest income 4,018,599 10.8
Rent income 649,846 1.7

Dividends 23,168,443 62.1
Other 384,615 1.0
Total 37,312,980 100.0

Source: Pasuk Phongpaichit, 2016, Table 5. The source for data in this table is the National Counter
Corruption Commission. ตรวจ่สอบับััญชีที่รัพย์สิน/หนี�สิน สนช.หมดได้ http://www.nacc.go.th/nacc_asset_legis.
php (site accessed in 2016)

Table 2 also shows the yearly income of 13 business members of the
NLA. Their average income was 37.3 million baht or about seven times the
average for all 220 members. The composition of their income sources is very
striking. Employment income was only 25.3 percent (salary plus meeting
allowances and fees); dividends and interest income shot up to 72.9 percent;
while rent was only 1.7 percent.

Another relevant source is the analysis by Kobsak (2013) of data from
socio-economic surveys conducted by the NSO for 2011. He found that the top
1 percent of income-earners received around 30 percent of their total income
from dividends, rent and interest, while the next 2-5 percent received much less.

As a result, around half of total income from dividends and interest in the
country accrued to the top 1 percent.
These data confirm that the income tax dataset greatly underestimates
unearned income at the top.

In the National Accounts for 2012, total investment income of households
is estimated at around 700 billion baht. If half of this accrued to the top 1 percent
of households, as suggested by Kobsak’s analysis, this would mean an average
3.5 million baht per household, compared with 0.2 million baht reported in
Table 1. After adjusting for this, the average total income of the top 600 in the

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Francis Cripps and Pasuk Phongpaichit

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