Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing tax and unfortunately tax is, it's one of these things that I don't know, it's like immigration used to be. I remember before I had this channel, Thai Visa was especially, the Thai Visa Forum was especially known for this although there were other forums and places people sort of went and congregated and talked about Immigration stuff and there would just be these misnomers and just little incorrect factoids. There were like free radicals wandering around in a biological system or something. They just kind of bounced around and they would sort of latch on mimetically if you will in people's minds and they started thinking things that just weren’t really accurate in terms of how things practically work. What I am talking about here is yeah you would have these sort of adages if you will or you would have these anecdotes of the way like an Immigration Process worked. And under certain circumstances it worked that way but then under other circumstances it didn’t. Not everything works the same, as we have discussed many, many times on this channel.

That being said, we are seeing a lot of the same phenomenon in my opinion coming about in discussions regarding tax. I often see it where laypeople will take one aspect of the way for example Thai tax Code could be applied and they sort of stretch it out and balloon it into sort of a fact pattern scenario that is really not in line with the way the reality is going to operate. 

That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment on our channel. Quoting directly: “If the new Tax Law actually starts, where expats pay as much as 34% on money transferred in to Thailand, the expats should get the 30Baht Government hospital scheme like a Thai Citizen gets as a minimum.” Well, as I have discussed in many other videos, you are either a Thai citizen or you are not and certain privileges and immunities of being a Thai citizen accrue to Thai citizens and they just don't accrue to foreigners, so I don't know where people get it in their head that there is this sort of trade-off that doesn't really exist. Meanwhile, going back to this though, if the new tax law actually starts, “what new tax law?” There isn't a proposed new Tax Law; we have discussed this in many other videos. There was a rescission of a memorandum regarding how tax assessability will be implemented beginning January 1, 2024 which was different, timing wise, to how tax assessability was ascertained prior to that date but there is no new tax law. Meanwhile, “starts where Expats pay as much as 34% on money transferred into Thailand.” As we have discussed in other videos, that is not how it works. Again there is a whole myriad of analysis that goes into each individual's situation regarding whether or not there will even be assessability of tax and then if there is assessability, will there even be any liability associated with tax; again that is going to be dictated on a case-by-case basis.

Please, folks out there, I am really kind of begging you at this point. Stop trying to analyze tax matters in this sort of ‘one-size-fits-all’ sort of way and also understand that there is nothing wrong with knowing that you don't know what you don't know, it's okay. At the end of the day, that is the reason people with expertise end up becoming professionals is so you can basically just go hire them, assist you in this one little aspect of your life and move on with it. At the end of the day, do you really want to be an expert on Thai tax? I know I don't. I don't even like being much of an expert on US Immigration for that matter but at the end of the day it's what I have sort of done all these years and it's what we know. Here in our office we have tax lawyers, we have accountants, that's what they do. Again your tax assessability and your tax liability is going to be dictated by the facts in the given case and they are going to be assessed on a case by case basis. Making these ‘one-size-fits-all’ claims doesn't really help anyone and in fact if anything it further obfuscates an already rather nettlesome situation.