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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing well folks saying they are going to leave Thailand over taxes. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article in the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the title of the article is: Many expat grey areas in Thailand's latest income tax policy. Quoting directly: "For the past four decades, foreigners (unless working here with employment permits) have mostly been excused interference by the Revenue Department. It has been a discretion not a right." Now let's go into that. So what are we talking about? Up to now, Thailand has had this peculiar set of protocols within their own Revenue Department which has said "look if money is accrued in a prior calendar year to the calendar year when it has brought into Thailand, we will not assess any tax liability on that, and that has been the case up until January 1, 2024 based on the announcement we recently have seen the last couple of weeks.

So in a way, Thailand was a better jurisdiction for expats living abroad then virtually any I could think of up to that point. Now we all didn't sit around just blowing this out on microphones everywhere because at least myself, I knew that this mechanism was something that was discretionary and clearly now they are changing it and I didn't want that to change so I wasn't sitting around putting that out on a mega phone. Just like lots of information I don't put out on a megaphone associated with living, working, doing business, whatever in Thailand, because by doing so it may result in folks having a problem with that later on or they may rescind the policy, whatever. Now I think this was more a result of the Government of Thailand feeling the need to raise more revenue but long story short it has resulted in the fact that they are getting rid of this rule starting January 1, 2024. Okay where does that leave us? Well it basically leaves Thailand in the same position as any other country really. So these folks that are saying "oh we are going to leave Thailand." Well go where? Where is there another country that is, virtually any other country that you probably want to live in, I am sure there are exceptions, I'm sure some commenter in the comments is going to say "well if you go live on the island of St. Helena you can do blah blah, whatever." I am sure there are jurisdictions where there is a great deal of permissibility that other jurisdictions don't have. Fine. For the most part, most countries, at least with respect to the United States have Double Tax Treaties with the United States; most countries out here in Asia have Double Tax Treaties with most of Europe, UK, most of the Anglosphere. I think you are going to be pretty hard-pressed to find any country that isn't that way. As we have discussed in another video, Double Tax Treaties are a bit of a double edged sword in the sense that on the one hand most people think they are a good thing but if you think about it, if you didn't have it, you would revert to the old system or back sort of pre-90s where you had true offshore jurisdictions, just jurisdictions that told other countries to pound sand when it came to trying to ascertain whether or not someone had money in that jurisdiction or whether or not they had any liability. The jurisdiction might say "yeah we will let you see whatever, but in this jurisdiction they don't have to pay anything, whatever that jurisdiction may have been." Now a lot of that has fallen by the wayside quite honestly. The era of, what was that, Mossack Fonseca and all of this like just setting up these entities to completely sort of avoid all taxation. Yes, there are always going to be strategies out there where you can mitigate your tax liability. But this era of just "I parked it in a bank, on a rock, out in the middle of an ocean somewhere and nobody can touch it!" That has kind of come to an end. Again somebody may say, "the atoll of wherever, I am not the end all be all of all tax jurisdictions everywhere, and quite honestly anybody that is claiming anything akin to that should be looked at with great caution. I see all these people in the sort of "nomad space" or "perpetual traveller space" or "tax sovereign citizens" you hear all this kind of stuff, at the end of the day the walls are pretty well closed in, I mean the fences are already put up around the system. Yes there are ways to legally mitigate your tax liability but in fact I view it is almost a kind of a waste of time except for a very, very narrow subset of folks and businesses out there that really do gain a great deal of advantage mitigating their tax liability. Just individuals walking around, the everyday people, they are not going to get a great deal of benefit out of trying to run around and play shell games for tax liability purposes. So again, but the thing to remember, the change in Thailand was one) more beneficial before and now it is really just going to what the global standard effectively is. It is not like Thailand is worse than any other jurisdictions with this regard at all actually. If anything it was better to be here before and now it's just like it is anywhere else from a tax standpoint. But, as noted in this article, it is a discretion; it was always their prerogative and now it is ending. Quoting further: "Some Thais have also been included in this category, for example overseas workers transmitting small amounts back to their families in Thailand. There is already much talk in expat circles about quitting Thailand. What is required is a policy statement by the Revenue or Cabinet Authorities even whilst acknowledging that a complex situation is in a trial period and may remain so for months. Sometimes silence is the best policy. Not in this case." Pattaya Mail, I remember them saying something like "we may never see an update to this!" and that may just be the way it is so I don't know why it is sort of going the other way now. However it plays out, this is how tax works. I have been a licensed Tax Attorney, a member of the Tax Court of the United States for years. Now I primarily assist folks in a corporate capacity, not so much on an individual basis although I expect at least from a consulting standpoint, that may change moving forward. But whether it changes or not, there are still the provisions out there so you don't need to necessarily sit around and wait for further clarification. Now I would prefer to see a more fleshed out regulatory structure which I think will be forthcoming. That said, even if it doesn't come, after about a week and a half of mulling this over and chomping on it, we have got a pretty good idea, especially as it pertains to Americans, how this is going to actually practically play out. For the most part, as I have said in other videos, the vast majority retirees don't need to really worry about this. Now folks doing business out here, so-called digital nomads, people with various business interests and then they are physically located here in Thailand, those folks you may want to go ahead and contact a legal professional, specifically a legal professional with a background in tax and gain some insight and guidance into how best to proceed.