Transcript of the above: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing tax prognostications for 2026. At the end of a given calendar year going into a new one, I often take an opportunity to make these videos which are ‘whatever 2026’, and I do this to do sort of a Roundup on the overall topic; in this case we are talking tax. 

So boy, there's been a lot to discuss on tax ever since the memorandum of 2023 which changed the assessment protocols associated with taxation beginning January 1, 2024. Unfortunately we have got a lot of charlatans and what I called stamp-pimps coming along trying to tell everybody, foreigners by the way, unduly without legality ,without any legal basis to do it, went around and started advising all these other foreigners regarding taxes in Thailand, got them all whipped up and got a lot of people to do a lot of things that were not in their interest vis a vis if you will, or as regards the Thai Tax system. The net result of this was basically a lot of people filing a lot of things and a lot of much ado about nothing, a sort of a storm in a teacup at the end of the day, but it's left a lot of people feeling very uneasy about matters pertaining to tax. 

Now as I have discussed in many videos, the vast majority of foreigners in Thailand especially retirees, are going to have no problems with regard to this. In fact most of them wouldn't even know this was happening, if it wasn't for all the hyperbole and hubbub drummed up by all the frauds out there in that space. But that being said, there may be a subset of for example retirees or many foreigners here in Thailand that may have issues, depending on the underlying facts in their case, they may have issues and need to file their taxes here in Thailand, or they may need a Tax ID number etc. There are some that don't; there's a large number of people who may think that they need to do something, that don't need to do anything, that can just forget it and just move on. There are some people who think they don't need to do anything and might need to actually file something; again it's going to be factually dependent. 

Now as far as prognostications going into 2026, I'm not going to engage in any because quite frankly all the nonsense that has been spouted from the foreign community that seems to think that they have something to do with the Thai Tax regime, which they have nothing to do with, at least legally pursuant to the restricted occupations here in Thailand and the Decrees pertaining thereto, but let's leave that aside. At the end of the day, I'm not going to make any prognostication for the exact reason that these people that made these prognostications like, "oh this big change is coming down the pike with regard to taxes, a memo is coming", I've been listening to that for 9 months, longer. It might have even gone back into the 2024 when I first started hearing that. It's all been nonsense; it has just been nonsense for a bunch of charlatans to try to fleece the public is basically what it comes down to. 

So where do I think taxes are going to be in 2026? I think they're going to be dependent on the underlying facts in a given case.