Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the OECD; that's the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and their so-called Global Minimum Tax. 

As a prelude to the rest of this video, I think it's important to point out that in the United States, President Trump, immediately upon coming into office, signed an Executive Order wherein he basically rejected the exploration of the OECD, the same thing Thailand is supposedly doing here where we haven't signed on to anything with OECD, we're exploring it. And all of this notion of a Global Minimum Tax as Mr. Trump pointed out in his Executive Order, it creates extra territorial jurisdiction. It also operates to the detriment of national sovereignty on issues such as internal tax policy as well as internal banking policy. So as Mr. Trump noted and I very much agree with him, and I am very thankful that he did this if for no other reason than it sheds light on this very troubling issue especially if you care about the sovereignty of the country you are in, or the sovereignty of the country come from. But long story short, he brought that up, the issue of extra territorial jurisdiction and national sovereignty issues. And I think it is important to point out at the beginning of this video, I do deep dive analysis into a lot of this stuff. If you are interested in that, please feel free to email us [email protected], and we can get you on the mailing list for long form content where I do analysis of these things to a deep level basis. Also while I am talking my book here, I guess it's worth pointing out, my better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok, Pancake Palace. If you're interested, breakfast anytime and American Diner style food, the link is in the description below. 

That said, getting into this and I think it is worth pointing out that we are seeing the tail end of this government; we are in a caretaker government right now. It looks like as of tomorrow as of the time of this video on Friday September the 5th, we're going to see a vote on a new Prime Minister. Apparently Anutin Charnvirakul has secured the necessary votes from The People's Party to go ahead and secure the Prime Ministership, so hopefully we will be seeing a new government and then hopefully thereafter, we will hopefully see some turnaround on some of this stuff. Again, it remains to be seen. 

That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Cabinet approved support for firms hit by new tax. Which I am curious to know where was this new tax legalized at? Where is the law behind all this? That said, quoting directly: "The Cabinet on Tuesday approved in principle the draft National Competitiveness Enhancement for Targeted Industries Bill to mitigate the impact of the so-called Top up Tax." So it sounds like, and I could be wrong here, but it sounds like all of this is inclusive in that one Bill, but they are trying to make it sound like the mitigation is only included in that Bill and so therefore the Bill is positive. Quoting further: "The Top up Tax is a mechanism designed to ensure multinational enterprises pay a minimum level of corporate income tax typically aligned with the Global Minimum Tax initiative led by the OECD. According to Chusak Sirinil, the Minister for the Prime Minister's Office, the draft Bill aims to alleviate the burden on businesses affected by the collection of the Top up Tax." Well who wanted the Top up Tax to begin with? And this whole notion that there should be or is a Global Minimum Tax is ridiculous. I talked about this in other videos. Janet Yellen came up with this nonsense and in my opinion, did a bunch of things prior to Trump's Executive Order that were undermining of US national sovereignty, created extraterritorial jurisdictional issues in the US context and I have serious problems with it here. Who says that an outside body, outside of Thailand, gets to dictate to Thailand what a minimum tax is or should be? It's really ridiculous when you think about it from the standpoint of national sovereignty. 

Now that said, we are presumably seeing a new government coming in here sooner rather than later here in Thailand, so hopefully we may see some positive developments with regard to this. We will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.