Transcript of the above video:

There has been a lot of news lately about crackdowns regarding nominees on corporations, as well as Immigration crackdowns regarding groups of foreigners here in Thailand because the feeling is that they there are issues surrounding things like "foreigners behaving badly" as well as there seems to be an issue at a policy level where Thai folks are concerned that people are coming to Thailand basically to resettle here and are just sort of flouting Thai Law, Thai regulations on things like work authorization etc. But there was a confluence of facts that I noticed in the citation we will get to here in a moment, where I finally - I have observed what I can only describe as a disconnect that I could not understand when the following this and it recently was clarified and I wanted to make this video in order to clarify it for others. So I thought of making this video after reading a recent posting on X from Pure Guava, and I follow Pure Guava on X, and honestly, that person, they really put up a lot of interesting information from time to time about living in Thailand. 

Before I get into this real quick, my better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. For those who don't necessarily have a need to avail themselves of a law firm, but you do want to support us in what we do with regard to this channel, check the links in the description below. The name of the restaurant is Pancake Palace, as the name implies, American Diner style food, and breakfast anytime. We also have an English breakfast as well as hamburgers, cheeseburgers, buffalo wings, chilli bowls: if you're interested come on down. 

That said, Pure Guava's posting on X, the posting was titled: Thailand is taking a harder line on "low-quality" tourists. Thailand's Interior Ministry ordered provinces nationwide to strictly enforce laws against foreign tourists behaving improperly, with no "case clearing" or special treatment regardless of influence or connections. Officials said foreigners cannot use Thailand to build Criminal influence, break laws, or intimidate Thai citizens." Now that has been kind of a running theme here for the past six or eight weeks.

That said, this forthcoming paragraph had a kernel of information that I think is very, very important to all of this. "The move follows reports involving some Israeli tourists in Surat Thani, especially in Koh Pha-ngan, Koh Samui and Ko Tao," - and this is key - "allegedly using Tourist Visas to secretly operate businesses through Thai nominees." Now I have had a few of our clients who we have been assisting for years in maintaining their corporate structures here in Thailand, maintaining their Business Visas and Work Permits and they have said, "should I be particularly concerned?" Now I didn't have as clear an answer regarding issues of should one be concerned about this Crackdown, and I basically was telling them look, everything you are doing is lawful; I am not particularly worried about it just in a general sense. But then when I saw this, and I quote this again: "allegedly using Tourist Visas to secretly operate businesses through Thai nominees." It's both; it's that both things are happening concurrently. If one was to set up a company and basically be on that company with a Business Visa and Work Permit, be out front, be out in the open, be transparent; operate their business and most importantly, pay relevant taxes associated with working in Thailand, I don't think we would see as many problems associated with these raids. But it's the fact that folks are coming in - and it's not just one nationality, there are many different nationalities doing this I think - it's like the worst of all worlds for Thailand. They are setting up nominee businesses and then not even paying taxes. And I am not saying a nominee business that pays tax is necessarily in the right per se, but what I am saying is the two of those things put together, now I can see where the impetus is, where the momentum is coming from, from Thai Immigration, from Law Enforcement here in Thailand to stop this because it looks to me like they are seeing the situation for what it is which is, "oh my goodness, there are people coming in, using nominee corporations but on top of that they are not even setting themselves up in such a way to pay any kind of even nominal tax associated with working illegally in Thailand." 

So that to me looks like what the crux of this issue is falling to. That is what it's coming down to is the issue of not only using a nominee company but using a nominee company in conjunction with a Tourist Visa, which isn't itself work authorized, in order to completely circumvent taxation here in the Kingdom of Thailand.