Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing YouTubers specifically in the context of recent announcements regarding Thai Tax Policy. Now to be clear, perhaps I am leaning into my accusations of being clickbaity or whatever; I am not actually talking about YouTubers specifically or I should say exclusively. I am talking about really more than anything digital nomads so-called, content creators, even expats, standard expat business people who may operate in Thailand or use Thailand as a hub, any and all of those folks I think are probably if not targeted by the recent announcement regarding policy changes on deferment of monies coming into Thailand from the time they were accrued, and I have discussed this in other videos, up until January 1 of 2024, it has been possible to basically defer bringing in money that is accrued offshore - either earned, unearned - what is called accessible income or accessible funds here in Thailand, so basically money offshore and it comes into Thailand. Up until January 1 of 2024 there has been this what some are calling a "loophole", I don't think that's a correct assessment, there has just been a state of affairs that has allowed a deferment to the following calendar year or later and then being able to pull that money into Thailand without any sort of tax oversight, tax liability. That is going away, that's is going away January 1. 2024 as we have discussed at length in other videos.

What's the purpose of talking about this with regard to this video? Well, there's a lot of misconceptions going around about this. Some seem to think it's targeting retirees, that was never who I thought it was really set to target. And as I have thought about it, and again we have not seen a more fleshed out set of regulations promulgated yet and published in the Royal Thai Gazette, so when that happens, presumably when that happens, we will go ahead and follow up with respect to the details as much as we can. For now it is just sort of a blanket announcement that this protocol that has been allowed in the past is not going to be allowed in the future. Why though am I saying that it's sort of targeting content creators, digital nomads, YouTubers etc.? Well because I think it might be. The reason I think it might be, is I have been thinking about this a lot. For example retirees and I have seen a lot of comments on this and you can't just dismiss this whole thing by saying "we have got a Double Tax Treaty". Well okay, your situation may or may not warrant usage of the Double Tax Treaty and even in the event that it is applied, your situation may or may not warrant exemption or a foreign tax credit of some kind stemming from that Double Tax Treaty. So again, depending on your situation, you may or may not be subject to tax liability based on the provisions of the Tax Treaty per your nationality. As we discussed in another video, look there is interpretation that goes on with respect to these things and there are two sovereigns involved; there are essentially the Treaty parties and their Courts respectively get to interpret the terms of those Treaties so just simply saying "oh, we have got Double Tax Treaty, no problem", that may not be the end of the analysis.

But leave that aside, for YouTubers specifically, you may have a different situation going on here. Specifically I started thinking of YouTubers, I think this same analysis could be applied to general content creators, so-called digital nomads, again depending on the circumstances but with YouTubers to my mind it's kind of cut and dried and in fact as I have been sort of parsing out my own thinking on this, I have come to some hypotheticals and always be aware with hypotheticals. Again in law school we joked about hypotheticals, you can make hypotheticals about anything but sometimes you need to do it in order to kind of run through what could happen moving forward. So okay, we have got this new announcement. There is no ability to essentially mitigate tax liability by deferring the bringing in of funds or the patriation into Thailand if you will, repatriation may not be the right word, but the movement of funds into Thailand the remittance of funds into Thailand until the next calendar year so you wait a year, bring it in or you may not even have to wait a year you wait till the next calendar year and bring it in and okay you don't have to deal with accrued tax liability. Okay that is ending Jan 1, so now timing of how you bring in your money from abroad no longer matters. 

More to the point and I told folks in another video, I made a video about a raid that happened down in Phuket regarding nominee corporations, and I said YouTubers be on guard because I think that there is insight in this for YouTubers because you can become complacent over time and start doing things just thinking it is going to keep working that way ad infinitum. What I think is going to happen here is quite the opposite of that in fact. I think moving forward we could see a situation wherein YouTubers who come to Thailand, I am not talking about travel YouTubers here for 2 weeks, they do some videos and they leave, that is highly unlikely, but YouTubers who live in Thailand and ostensibly are not making any money in Thailand from YouTube, under this new announcement I think that a lane if you will is being set up to create a funnel if you will, to go ahead and impose tax liability on folks who essentially make their living online but primarily live in Thailand. What kind of setup would we be talking about here? Well if you are somebody who is a content creator, digital nomad, whatever, and you are sort of globetrotting but you have decided to make your base in Thailand for example, and you have said "okay I am going to start doing YouTubes and things here but I get paid offshore." YouTube sends the money to my bank account in the United States, maybe personally, maybe you have a corporate account, a Limited Liability Company something of this nature and that money goes to that Limited Liability Company whatever, if you are the beneficial owner, there are mechanisms in place already and we have talked about this many years ago talking about the agreements between the Ministry of Finance as well as the Treasury Department in the United States to share financial and banking information on the nationals of both of those countries, I'll use America just as a for example because I am most familiar with it. But under those circumstances, I can see a situation where for example a YouTuber who by the way is making content which is time stamped and clearly evident of what they have done in Thailand because they have recorded themselves doing it here, and then if they accrued money from that, under those agreements between the Treasury Department of the United States and the Ministry of Finance here and all the banking that goes into that for example FATCA, the Foreign Account Transparency Compliance Act back in the United States, there are a lot of implications to that that resulted in a lot of bilateral cooperation between tax authorities, not to mention the fact that the Double Tax Treaty exists and I am going to make another video getting into the analysis of how kind of how the Double Tax Treaty is a little bit disingenuous, well disingenuous may not be the right word, but people take it the wrong way, they think it's one thing and it is really in many ways quite the opposite of what people think it is. Leaving that aside though, I can see a scenario now moving forward past 2024 where for example YouTubers, again content creators, especially folks who are spending more than 180 days physically present in Thailand, who say "well I do stuff online and that may make money but it doesn't actually come here to Thailand so I don't need to worry about that", or "I have it go offshore and then I bring it into Thailand", I think a lot of these provisions are being set in place to start dealing with that from a tax standpoint, from a tax collection standpoint. Let's view it also from the standpoint that look if Governments can raise tax revenue from folks who aren't their actual voting constituents, that's always going to be a win with politicians, you know that's pretty much a fact. 

So again there's something to be said for that just from a political angle but also when you look at what they are putting into place here, yes I think it is very safe to say that we could see a situation down the road and even, I can see a scenario arising where folks and I am not happy about this, I kind of grin because I know the way that these folks think at the end of the day, it is revenue generation, already created content that was clearly created in Thailand may become the target if it is bringing in enough money and if that money is ultimately coming into Thailand and to this point has not been taxed, I can see a scenario where yeah that is something that you have to deal with. 

Now are there solutions to this? Yes absolutely. We have set up many people over here for YouTube operations, for content creation operations, for sort of digital nomad type businesses, online type businesses, yeah there are ways that you can absolutely mitigate against those kind of problems. But as I discussed before regarding Work Permits involving content creators, YouTubers etc., people have gotten complacent and said "I don't really need to worry about that". Okay, fine. Whatever, worry about what you want to worry about. I have spent a lot of time watching people be complacent about such things and then ultimately we see enforcement but I started thinking about it as I have been diving into this whole tax policy issue and I am starting to really think that a lot of this tax policy change may be due to the fact that we have seen a change in the nature of doing business online. A perfect example of this is and we have done videos on this as well and I have had to deal with this myself having used PayPal here for years, there were major changes in the past roughly 18 months regarding PayPal, how PayPal is used in Thailand and tax assessment associated with PayPal. I think that this recent policy change may be in line paradigmatically with that change regarding PayPal and how people are paid here in Thailand, most importantly how they are taxed. I think we could see developments along those lines.

So for this reason I think especially YouTubers need to be starting to think about making arrangements. If you wish to live in Thailand long term, I don't think it is overly prudent to presume you are going to be able to sort of offshore income that is accrued from sort of these type of businesses that maybe occurring in Thailand or this type of content creation occurring in Thailand, I don't think it is prudent to presume that taxes can be avoided on an ongoing basis into the foreseeable future.