The straight comparison first
The question freelancers keep asking: "If iTAX exists, do I need anything else?" Short answer — iTAX is exceptionally good at what it set out to do, arguably without a real rival in Thailand. But it starts working once you already know your numbers. Producing those numbers is a different job.
What iTAX does well
iTAX grew out of doctoral research in tax law by Asst. Prof. Dr. Yutthana Srisavat, and its achievement is translating genuinely complicated Thai tax law into an app ordinary people can use. Credit where it's due:
- Accurate, comprehensive personal income tax calculation across salary, freelance income, rental income, investments, and crypto.
- Real deduction planning — answer questions one at a time and it surfaces the allowances you qualify for, then helps prepare PND 90/91 data.
- Fast legal updates — new allowances and government stimulus measures land in the app quickly.
- Free web tools including withholding tax and VAT calculators, plus iTAX pedia, one of the best Thai-language tax references anywhere.
- The app is free to download, which is not a small advantage.
If your goal is "file correctly and get the largest legitimate refund", iTAX belongs on your phone. That part isn't a debate.
So where's the boundary?
What iTAX doesn't do isn't a flaw — it's product scope:
- It doesn't issue quotations, invoices, or receipts to your clients.
- It doesn't track which jobs have been invoiced, who hasn't paid, or how many days overdue they are.
- It doesn't hold your withholding tax certificates client by client across the year so you can see which ones are missing.
- It doesn't manage projects, scope, or client history.
- Actual submission still happens through Revenue Department channels — providers connected via Open API prepare the return data; you file it yourself.
Put differently: iTAX is a tax-season tool. The work that makes tax season painless happens across the twelve months before it.
What MANA does
MANA is a workspace for Thai freelancers, focused on the delivery-and-get-paid cycle:
- Quotation → invoice → receipt, chained to the same job rather than scattered across files.
- Client records and contact history sitting next to that client's documents.
- Projects and job status, so you know what's outstanding and what's ready to bill.
- Income and expense records, plus withholding totals per client for filing season.
- Built for the Thai context: Thai-language documents, e-tax, VAT, WHT, PromptPay.
And what MANA doesn't do, said just as plainly: it doesn't plan your personal tax deductions, it won't tell you which fund to buy to lower your bill, and it doesn't file your return.
Compared by the work you actually do
| Job to be done | iTAX | MANA |
|---|---|---|
| Year-end tax calculation and deduction planning | Excellent | Not its job |
| Preparing PND 90/91 data | Yes | Not its job |
| Issuing quotations / invoices / receipts | No | Yes |
| Knowing who owes you what, and for how long | No | Yes |
| Collecting WHT certificates per client | No | Yes |
| Managing projects and clients | No | Yes |
| Answering "does this allowance apply to me?" | Excellent | Not its job |
The honest conclusion
This isn't an either/or. The freelancers who handle money best tend to use both, at different moments.
Use MANA through the year so you always know how much work came in, whether the documents exist, who still hasn't paid, and how much tax has been withheld in total. Then when half-year filing (PND 94) or annual filing (PND 90) comes around, take that clean set of numbers into iTAX and let it do what it's genuinely best at — calculating and optimising.
Thai freelancers rarely file wrong because a calculator was inaccurate. They file wrong because the inputs were incomplete. MANA makes the inputs complete; iTAX makes the final number right.