Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing well tax here again in Thailand, and specifically discussion of VAT versus Income Tax. Let me jump into this real quick. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Income taxes may dip on trend, as VAT hikes. Quoting directly: "Global trends are shifting towards reducing income taxes and increasing consumption and wealth taxes, according to Finance Permanent Secretary Lavaron Sangsnit." First of all are the Finance people here in Thailand like behind every trend, because what I am saying is going back here it says, "reducing income tax and increasing consumption", at a time when the Western system, the wheels are metaphorically falling off the wagon with regard to this consumption-based economy. And now here's Thailand looking to engage in exactly what isn't working in the West. Quoting further: "In a recent lecture to National Defense College students, Mr Lavaron said if the value-added tax is raised in the future, it would be implemented gradually along with measures to mitigate the tax impact." 

I love how they never talk about getting rid of any of these taxes. It's always an inevitable and a foregone conclusion that they are going to go up notwithstanding the fact that value-added tax is arguably the worst kind of tax to create. And the reason for that is it literally taxes value which is the one thing you want in your system. You want value added. That is the way we create wealth in the world is by adding value and to tax that, attacks that directly, first of all. Secondly, I love how the debate is it's just a bunch of bureaucrats talking about how much money they are going to take from us and how they're going to do it, either through income tax or VAT. And frankly, especially after two and a half years of you bureaucrats shut down our businesses, now you are out of money because there's 'air' in the “metaphorical line” if you will, the pipeline of Revenue money to the Government, but instead of you just having to take that hit, no, no, no, we want to raise taxes on you, when you told us and I remember somebody, literally a Government Officer shutting down my wife's business and telling her, "well it's just the way it is!" Well guess what Revenue Department? There's ‘air’ in the line. It's just the way it is. We don't need any increase in VAT or income tax. 

Now meanwhile, the purpose of this video is to bring up something, why is all of this narrowly focused on, "we need to raise VAT", "we need to raise income tax". Meanwhile we have legalized a cash crop here in Thailand in the form of Cannabis; I have discussed this in other videos. Slap an Excise Tax onto Cannabis. There is whatever shortfall you need to make up for. That's it. Stop going after people's income. Think about what income tax is. Income tax is a tax on your labour, the sweat from your brow. Now on some level there may be some justification for some level of wealth extraction for societal purposes, the old adage, building roads and whatnot. But meanwhile I have a real problem with the notion of these bureaucrats sitting around fighting over how much money they are going to take from us, either in a very unproductive Value Added Tax or in an extremely in my opinion quite honestly, wealth extractive income tax from people. Meanwhile we have this cash crop that we could be taxing, that's being utilized by folks that the Government has clearly got issues with. Why not just tax them and then use that money to make up whatever you need to make up for and you don't have to go after people's income; you don't have to go after people's VAT. Well one of the reasons I think for this is, a) they're not quite certain that Cannabis will be around forever - I think that's silly at this point. I think it's very clear, Cannabis is legalized, it is here to stay here in Thailand.

But setting that also aside, again the other thing I think that they want is long-term they want to extract wealth from us. So they don't want to look for the solution to it, they just want to look for a way they can extract more wealth. So presumably presume or I should say presume that that's going to be the case moving forward.