Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Tax Residency here in Thailand from an Immigration context. To preface this I would like to say I have been doing Immigration Law for about 17 years I think I've had my tax license from the United States for about 10, if I recall correctly. Long story short, I think moving forward Tax and Immigration are going to become inextricably linked and what I mean to say is they are very similar bodies of law insofar as they are narrow but deep; they pertain to a specific part of one's life if you will, but it's a very deep sort of code driven, statute driven, that's how US Immigration Law especially is, Tax Law is kind of the same way. We saw that in the aftermath is so called Trump Tax. It sort of just shifted the system. Again, narrow but deep, that's sort of the way to look at this, and long story short your Immigration status - your physical presence in various jurisdictions - more and more as time goes on is going to have an impact on the possible assessability or liability associated with taxation. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand's new visa rules from June 1 break fresh ground. Quoting directly: "There are also implications for Thai Revenue's policy "clarification" to tax the overseas income of tax residents," - that is not what they are doing. They are assessing tax liability on funds that come to Thailand. Quoting further: "Namely anyone staying in the country more than 180 days in a calendar year." Yeah, if they bring Revenue into Thailand. Quoting further: "Using a combination of the new 60 days rule, plus a couple of Border Runs, it would easily be possible for individuals to clock up more than six month residence without having any visa at all. Thus the idea that Thai Revenue," and by the way, apparently in the British vernacular they call the Inland Revenue Service, "the Revenue". So that's kind of how they, in the States we call it the IRS. I always thought it was funny when you put together "The" and IRS, what word does it spell? "THEIRS"! That's always a kind of funny one. In any event, yeah in the past I made videos where like “why are you calling it the “Revenue” or “Thai Revenue”? Apparently that is the British way of referring to it; I was not aware of that, so thank you to the person who clarified that for me; I'm sure that they will be watching this video. 

Quoting further: "Thus the idea that Thai Revenue can identify potential tax residents by the type of Visa they have is faulty. Enforcement of the new Revenue regulations is unclear to say the least." This is where I think this notion of it being faulty, I don't think you're looking at this the right way. Let me quote that again. "Thus the idea that Thai Revenue can identify potential tax residents by the type of Visa they have is faulty." That is not how they are going to do it. Remember we have biometric readers now in Thailand. They know precisely who passed through what checkpoint at Thai Immigration and when, and they are able to reverse engineer from that data when they came in and when they left. So they will be able to assess physical presence in Thailand almost instantly due to the digital nature of the biometric readers that everybody goes through when they go through a Thai Immigration checkpoint. So it has nothing to do with the, well it has something to do with your Visa because you need to have Visa status to be here, but in theory you could be in overstay and be here and still be tax resident for purposes of assessing tax liability. 

Now again, everything is circumstantially dependent so it's going to depend on if you brought money in, what kind of money you brought in, what the nature of the money was. As we talked about, there are Double Tax Agreements out there that may stipulate that people of certain nationalities if they brought money into Thailand they may not have to pay anything depending on the source of funds. Meanwhile other nationalities may have different issues. Again I know I sound like a broken record; I know many find this very frustrating but it really is dependent on the specific circumstances, the specific facts in your given case. But the notion that they are going to be using your Visa status to try and assess tax liability, they don't even need to do that. They can do it using the checkpoints, using the biometric readers because they can tell with absolute certainty who came in, how long they were here and when they left. That is the most precise way to assess physical presence and then thereby maybe determine assessability of tax liability here in the Kingdom of Thailand.