Transcript of the above video:

I remember having a Law Professor, I think it was my second semester in Law School, I think that is when I took Civil Procedure, I could be wrong, my memory might not be right, but in any event pretty new to going to law school. We had a professor going into the exam period and anybody that has gone through Law School knows, Civil Procedure - not fun - and going into testing, the students are kind of pulling their hair out, they are apprehensive about going into the test period and this law professor we had, just sort of have this very nonchalant way about him and he just sort of said "well this too shall pass" and honestly that always provided a little bit of reassurance to me, and hopefully this video will provide some reassurance to retirees here in Thailand or prospective retirees regarding all this talk about taxes. I know that there is a lot of consternation out there about the possibility of Taxation but honestly this too shall pass. I have said it in other videos, I am saying it again, I think 80% of the sort of retiree community here in Thailand is going to be absolutely unaffected by this. 

I do think there is a subset of folks that are going to have to deal with certain Tax matters in Thailand if they continue to reside here on a permanent basis depending on the structure of their overseas assets and their overseas operations; again it is going to be on a case by case basis. Anyone out there who is giving sort of a one size fits all advice on this is not someone to really listen to quite honestly. Also this isn't a dialectic; this isn't an either/or, this is going to be adjudicated case by case. So again, different people are going to experience this a little bit differently but I say again, the vast majority of retirees here in Thailand are not going to be overly impacted by this and even that other 20% that I am kind of, in my head seems like about the number, sort of one and four people, might actually be impacted by this, first of all I don't see how any practical implications could exist until 2025 because this new rule is coming into effect January 1, 2024 so that means it would be tax year 2024 that these new rules would pertain to so it would only be 2025 at the earliest where we would see folks having to deal with things like filing tax returns etc. 

Meanwhile, yeah I think that there is an off chance or maybe I should say it is in my sort of crystal ball, I have got in the back of my mind the possibility that yeah, probably from 2025, it is not imprudent to presume that we may see tax returns and tax IDs becoming another document associated with Thai Retirement Visa Extension; that may become a component of Retirement Visa Extension. And quite honestly this is in line with an overarching trend that I have watched in Immigration for going on nearly two decades now with taxes becoming more and more linked to Immigration matters. For example, in the context of Fiancée and Marriage Visas to go back to the United States, taxes for the American spouse or American fiancée are an integral part in proving up the ability to act as a sponsor for one's wife or fiancé or husband back in the United States. So this is not something that is particularly coming out of the blue. I know for folks that are retired in Thailand, this makes them uneasy, I get it. Any time taxes comes up, it kind of makes people uneasy, there is really no other word for it. That said, again I don't think that this is going to have a massive negative impact on most folks. If whatever negative impact it is going to have I think it is just a matter of more documentation associated with Visas and Visa Extension here in Thailand and again I don't see any of this from a practical perspective actually transpiring until 2025 at the earliest.