I have had two situations when I tried to withdraw money from an ATM in Thailand and nothing came out, but the money was still debited from my account. The first was maybe 3 years ago when I try to withdraw 10K baht. No money, but I got a notification on the banking app on my phone that the money had being taken out of my account. But after about 10 minutes I got another notification that showed 10K going back into the account. So there was obviously some kind of error that was corrected. The last time was about 3 weeks ago when again I tried to take money out of an ATM but nothing came out. The account was debited but this time it didn't correct the error so I had to call the bank and they said they would investigate. After a couple of days I got a call from the bank saying there had been a mistake and they credited my account. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't contacted the bank or whether the error would have been eventually corrected. All the ATMs are connected to a network so they send the data back from the machines to the bank's computer system which reconciles all the transactions and checks for any errors.
you are fortunate indeed that he is your former lawyer. Do you how know how many lawyers I've had dealings with? I don't know if you have been in Thailand as long as I have but if I had believed every rumour I ever heard about changing government policy that never ended up on the statute books I'd be a multi-millionaire. I'll give you an example. Many years ago when I was a marketing director for a property company I got a phone call from someone who claimed to be on the government committee that was going to change policy that would disallow foreigners from becoming directors on companies that owned land. Did it ever happen? What do you think? Apart from the fact that you are ignoring dual taxation treaties why did your lawyer pick 35% out of the hat. Why not the normal withholding tax of 15%. Beware of what Thai lawyers tell you or anyone else for that matter. Instead of spreading spurious rumours why don't you just wait and see what happens. Learn and understand.