Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, well "Sympathy for the taxman". Let me just get into this. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Nation that's nationthailand.com, the article is titled: Chadchart calls for revision of land and building tax structure. Quoting further: "The new Government should review the land and building tax rates as Bangkok's revenue has dropped significantly due to the new rates implemented earlier this year, the Governor said."

Well there is a lot going on in here. They did do a tax decrease and to their credit, credit where credit is due, they did a massive tax decrease on certain property taxes as a result of the lockdowns. They said look we are going to decrease property taxes because people aren't being overly productive due to the lockdowns. Okay, fair enough but and we have heard this in other contexts. I think Revenue Department, I did another video where Revenue Department was talking about this, that well revenues are way, way down. Yeah, yeah, they are. I am sure. You stopped everybody from being able to do business for two and a half years and that was Government intervention. Look, I guess reasonable people could disagree about thinking about that at the beginning when all this came down the pike and we were first dealing with it, we didn't know what we are dealing with, okay. But as time went on and then just on and on and then opening and closing. The one that was really galling was New Year's Eve Day of, I believe it was 2020 going into 2021, they had eased off the lockdown from like August I think and it got sort of better and better and then they just unilaterally pulled the lock down New Year's Eve night. I remember it at the time because we had reservations at a restaurant with one of these like multi-course dinners where family and friends get together, and it is just like a champagne deal leading up to the countdown for the New Year. All of those restaurants were just left holding the tab, when the Government just unilaterally said "hey you can't be open!" Is anybody out there trying to find some revenue for those folks so they can get made whole for that? Then meanwhile, I just fail to have a lot of sympathy for the Taxman here when that same Taxman was the one that said we couldn't do any business for two and a half years. I understand and I am not like just sort of an around the bend, a narco, libertarian whatever you want to call me, although that is probably not too far off, I get it. Taxes are necessary. I am not unaware of all this infrastructure that is getting built up around here; I am not unaware of the benefits and we do need, the social compact requires certain communal operations and communal endeavours and projects and tax money is where that is derived. But maybe in the future before saying everybody can't do business for years on end you will think about this, tax people, because in the long run there is not going to be revenue, you can't get blood from a stone as they say, there is not going to be revenue when nobody can do business. 

So again, I fail to be overly sympathetic at the moment. If anything, we were all in this together when everything was shut down. Well we were still all in this together and maybe the tax people need to kind of deal with and learn to live with the ramifications of not having the revenue that they effectively deprived the people they are taxing further upstream.