Transcript of the other video:

Last week we made a video regarding a recent announcement by the Revenue Department wherein they basically changed some liability rules effectively regarding the timing of how money comes into Thailand versus when it was acquired. Not going to get into super deep analysis on that in this video because I have already talked about it and in my mind, we are still lacking some clarification on some of the finer points that I do believe will be forthcoming as we progress through the end of this year. So to that point, at least for the time being to my mind, this is yet to be settled; we've yet to see how this all shakes out. 

Now to the title of the video, 'Should retirees be concerned about this? Should they be worried about this change to the rules?' I think the vast majority of retirees here in Thailand are going to be completely unaffected by this quite honestly because, again accessible income, earned income all of the permutations on the spectrum between those two definitions, I've yet to see that fully parsed out and I have been the past week, sitting down talking with our tax people, our accountants and things and they sort of said look there are some gray areas and things but one clear thing that we know now is the former sort of deferral mechanism wherein you just sort of waited between the time money was accrued - now that is my word, accrued - as opposed to earned, unearned, accessible income whatever, let's just say "funds that came into your possession," let's just keep it as broad as possible. Just to be on the safe side, a lot of folks, they would just kind of buffer it; they would wait and bring in money after the calendars had passed in such a way that tax liability would not be assessed against them per Thai Law. That "loophole" - I hate the word loophole - but that particular provision has now been nullified effectively and they have said look moving forward from January 1, 2024, we are no longer going to have a different analysis regarding tax liability if something was accrued a year prior to when it was brought in the country. We're no longer going to make that differentiation between the types of funds that come in, we are going to presume tax liability whenever it was accrued, there is not going to be this timing differentiation, this buffer if you will, this deferral where if you bring it in a year later you are not going to get taxed on it. We are no longer going to allow that, that is what we know.

Now as far as how this impacts, again as we have discussed in other videos the Double Tax Treaty, there is various Double Tax Treaties, I am making another video contemporaneously with this one just talking generally about Double Tax Treaties but they are different; there is no uniform Double Tax Treaty. Different countries have different agreements with Thailand in Treaty form that preclude certain taxation of certain things. Again I have read a number of articles recently on this topic; there are some that have some really great information in there. A lot of misconceptions floating around out there  I can't go out and sort of dispel every single one but one thing that I am confident of at this point is that for the most part, I don't think most retirees are going to be overly impacted by this, I just don't. And the reason I think that is because most don't actually have the kind of income, the kind of financial circumstances that are even going to warrant this tax issue being applied to them. I think probably 80% of the retirees in Thailand just don't have that issue as something that is going to particularly affect them. I will get into it deeper as time goes forward, as we continue to sort of assess and see how this is going to actually be applied for now. I am not trying to be vague but the fact of the matter is it was just announced; it is kind of a perfunctory announcement. We are presuming there is going to be another announcement made likely something akin to a rule, regulation or a law promulgated which will come from The Royal Gazette which will provide more clarification. That said, it may not come and if it doesn't we may learn how this plays out in a practical manner just through experience. At the end of the day, that is kind of how Law works especially when it changes, you learn how those changes are going to be applied in real time as those matters are actually adjudicated. So we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.