Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing, well we're discussing the issue of retirees being sort of confused by the inactivity associated with Tax Offices here in Thailand. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that's pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Now China wants its tax share for overseas income but not pensions. I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail. We're going to quote an excerpt here but that goes in a slightly different direction. Quoting directly: "Meanwhile, Thailand's foreign retirees - living mostly on already-taxed pensions - say they are confused by the inactivity or lack of awareness in many provincial Tax Offices. Several European ex-pats on the ASEAN NOW Forum state that they have been told by TRD.."  that is Thai Revenue Department, Quoting further: "..officers that they don't need a cash identification number if living on pension income. No worries." 

As I've discussed in many videos before, a lot of people are really getting, in my opinion, a little bit unreasonably hysterical in some instances regarding this whole tax issue. The vast majority of people don't even need to worry about this and folks that are sort of running out and getting on the tax rolls, you may be doing yourself a disservice because you may not owe anything and now you may put yourself in a position where you are obligated to file certain things that you wouldn't have had to do had you not entered the system in the first place. 

The point I'm trying to make is as I have discussed in other videos, it is my personal opinion the vast majority of retirees aren't even going to be touched by matters pertaining to Thai Tax Policy emanating from the Revenue Department. As we have discussed in other videos it's my opinion that probably 80% maybe more of foreign retirees in Thailand are going to have no problem with these issues; they just they can just completely ignore it. As I have said also in other videos, when discussing when is the time to start worrying about the issue of tax in the context of being a foreigner here in Thailand - retiree or otherwise - my answer to that is you need to be worried about tax the moment they start requiring tax returns as part of a given visa extension application. For those for example who are on a Business Visa here in Thailand maintaining a Work Permit or even those on a Marriage Visa maintaining a Work Permit, if you want to go ahead and extend your status in that context, in order to file the extension, you're going to have to file a copy of the tax return as well. So again that shows us that taxes are going to be part and parcel of the process of being a business immigrant to Thailand. Again, retirees, that's not presently a requirement; it's not a requirement to have filed or to present a copy of a tax filing here in Thailand with the Revenue Department in order to get a Retiree's Visa extended. The point at which that does become a requirement, that's probably the point in time that you would probably want to start becoming concerned with tax policy as a retiree here in the Kingdom of Thailand.