Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing a topic nobody really wants to discuss at the moment which is tax and tax jurisdiction. But long story short just kind of as a recap, we have done a number of videos recently regarding the issue of tax here in Thailand as there has been a recent announcement as to cancellation of prior rules which allowed for mitigation of taxation based on the timing of bringing certain monies into Thailand. I am not going to belabour that point any further. We have done a number of videos on that. If you are interested in getting into the details on that, go ahead and check back over the last 10 to 14 days on our channel, the videos we have put up, there are a number of tax videos there. Most notably, we have also discussed Double Tax Treaties or so-called Double Tax Agreements.  

Double Tax Treaties in my mind are kind of a double-edged sword if you will, when you understand how the international tax system worked prior to roughly 20 years ago, 15-20 years ago where yes off-shoring was definitely possible because you could place assets or income producing assets or just your income stream, run it through an offshore jurisdiction which either had no tax or some low nominal level of tax. Well long story short, due to all the Double Tax Agreements that have occurred, on their face, I love the term Double Tax Treaty or Double Tax Agreement because people say "oh they are trying to mitigate, they don't want to double tax people." Yes, there is an element of that of course but really what they are is cooperation agreements wherein two different jurisdictions are cooperating with one another to go ahead and tax each other's nationals in each other's jurisdiction basically, that's what they are really designed for; again it's the cooperation not so much the Double Tax that they care about, it's that somebody can't be in another jurisdiction and therefore avoid, perhaps legally, thereby avoid taxation completely. 

That said, we have had a lot of talk about Double Tax Agreements. Again, how they are applied is going to depend on the underlying circumstances, the specific facts of a given case. But that said, I took note of a recent so there was the Emergency Act on the Exchange of Information, 2566 B.E. so, I believe that is 30th of March, 2023. This was published in the Royal Gazette, this Emergency Act on the Exchange of Information. What this effectively means is Thailand and other jurisdictions are now automatically going to start exchanging financial information, a lot of financial information; there is a lot to this, it is highly complex and quite honestly it is not really appropriate to get into the fine points of this on YouTube because I think honestly, depending on your situation, whether or not this is going to apply to you and how this would apply to you is again going to depend on your specific facts.

But the reason for the video is so people understand, I want to get the word out that "hey this isn't a situation where it is particularly prudent to be complacent. If you are concerned about tax liability, especially in this final quarter of 2023, it is probably a good idea to do your research and perhaps even contact a legal professional to gain some insight and guidance because these rules are changing, they are changing rather quickly and the enforcement and information sharing mechanism is already in place.