Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the situation involving tax here in Thailand. Unfortunately there are a lot of expats out there that are telling me all kinds of things: "Oh, I know how the tax system works," and then they'll tell me something about it and it's just nonsensical. Presently, the system is not all that different than it once was. The way that they assess certain possible liability has changed. They have talked about major changes to the rules, but as of now, it's fundamentally not all that different.

That said, I thought about making this video after reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, that is thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Economy in bad shape as the Revenue Department ramps up demands for more taxpayers to pay up. Quoting directly: "Revenue Department boss Kulaya Tantitemit emphasize that her Department had sent out 100,000 letters to individuals and entities who should be reporting for tax. Certainly this is not yet linked to the Kingdom's plan to tax foreigners resident in Thailand. However, from Jan 1st it will be." January 1st it will be. Again, there's nothing out there to suggest that that is a foregone conclusion. They've talked about it but they talk about a lot of things that are usually wildly off than what ultimately happens. That said, quoting further: "There are fears that Thailand's deteriorating economy may put further pressure on the Kingdom's tax collection agencies." This is another one that's just out there as this like, they talk about this in the media and elsewhere as a given, when that's not the case. I mean Quarter 1 of 2024 was a boom time. We not only hit numbers associated with tourism, they beat them and then on top of that, consumer spending was up by almost 10%.

So again, I often wonder if this notion that the economy is deteriorating isn't coming from a place where they are trying to create a narrative, most notably for this new ‘digital wallet’, which will end up having this sort of tokenized system that will have total mass surveillance of all transactions. Again, I think it was Martin Armstrong who is out there on YouTube talking about this, that people who work in Government think that by having total surveillance of the economy that they are going to make a bunch more tax money. That may work for about a minute until everybody just decides to try some alternative, and not go through their system. I think that this whole thing is set up for failure. 

Meanwhile, where was all of this concern for revenue of small businesses here in Thailand when they shut down the economy for years on end? Where was the concern then? Where was the Revenue Department piping up then saying "hey if we shut everything down, we are not going to have tax revenue?" Hey we all had to deal with the constraints of lockdowns and not being able to do business and the concomitant revenue deficiency associated therewith. Maybe this is a moment where the Government is going to have to feel a little bit of a pinch for a while because of the lag effect of having the economy shut down. By them, by the way! Quoting further: "On Monday, Revenue Department boss Kulaya Tantitemit emphasized that her Department had sent out 100,000 letters to individuals and entities who should be reporting for tax." Think about what that will be like when they have total surveillance over all the money. They are sending out letters now, what are they going to be doing then? Quoting further: "Certainly this is not yet linked to the Kingdom's plan to tax foreigners resident in Thailand. However, from January 1st it will be." Well who said that? I haven't seen anything to that effect. Quoting further: "In addition, it is coming at a time when Exchequer income in Thailand appears to be falling. For instance, it fell 1.5% in the 8 months up to the end of June this year." Well okay. Tax revenue is down. Again the economy, the whole economy was shut down for years on end. Meanwhile, does anybody really care about the business revenue associated with that?

I mean look, at the end of the day, this obsession with tax revenue, especially coming off of everybody telling us we had to be shut down for years and we had no say, and there was no sort of questioning the reasoning behind that; it was just do it or else. Then to turn around and say "oh now we are worried about all this tax revenue", and then on top of it to be out there saying that foreigners are going to get sucked into this new tax scheme. I don't know that any of this is true and if any of it is true, is it even warranted? I wish cooler heads would just prevail; everybody would just sort of take a breath and step back and make some reasonable and commonsensical rules, regarding both tax collection, revenue assessment and just general policy making here in the Kingdom of Thailand.