Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing tax policy as it may pertain to retirees on so-called annually renewable or one year Non-immigrant visas or just one year visas, one year extensions if you will. Well, when I say that, O Retirement Visa extensions or possibly O-A Retirement Visa Extensions.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Does Thailand really want humble expats anymore? Quoting directly: "What will happen to the annually-renewables," so what they mean there is people who are maintaining their Retirement Visa status via either an O Retirement Visa Extension, or an O-A Retirement Visa Extension. Quoting further: "If they stick their heads in the sand and hope for the best nobody knows. Maybe nothing, at first, as there are much bigger fish to fry out there." So what they are talking about here and I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail to get more insight but long story short, they are talking about the possibility, the possibility of changes to Thai Tax policy and how that could impact retirees. Again, we have not seen any promulgated draft; we have not seen any promulgated changes to the Thai Tax code as of now. So for now it's imprudent to presume that there even is a change.

Could there be in the future? Possibly.

Would it impact retirees in Thailand? Well there is a lot to take into consideration there, most notably things like the double tax agreement, issues associated with assessability versus liability, so it may be a situation where they say “well we can assess you for taxes but you may not owe anything".

So that brings up the possibility of you may need to file a tax return here in Thailand but you don't owe anything. As I have discussed in other videos, the notion of having to file a Thai Tax return associated with maintaining or renewing a Thai Retirement Visa remains to be seen. It is possible. I've sort of analogized that to the American Immigration System where sponsors of those who want to come to the United States with a Visa need to go ahead and file what is called Affidavits of Support and in support of those Affidavits of Support, you have to actually file copies of your tax returns. 

Could we see something like that in the Thai Immigration System? I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility. 

Do I think it's overly likely in the relatively near future? Not really. 

Now again as I've discussed, I think possibly by the end of the decade we may see something akin to that but there are a lot of variables that play into that most notably one being the Thai Revenue Department may do a cost-benefit analysis and say: "It is not worth our time to process a bunch of paperwork on people that aren't going to pay us anything. So I think that is actually the most likely thing that will mitigate against this having a substantially negative impact on retirees is probably Revenue Department officials who by the way are very adeptly, acutely capable and efficient at collecting tax revenue and doing it efficiently, so doing it in such a way that they get the most benefit for the least amount of cost. When you are looking at the tens of thousands of foreign retirees here in Thailand that probably owe nothing to the system, what really is the benefit to the Thai Bureaucracy to be clogged up with tons of paperwork on people that aren't paying anything in. What's the point? You are just expending government resources and time and energy on people you can't get anything from. Meanwhile, the people you might be able to get something out of, you are not expending time and resources on them. So I suspect that that type of analysis will be the most likely thing that could mitigate against the possibility that retirees are placed with sort of onerous tax burden on them here in the Kingdom of Thailand.