Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Tax here in Thailand, and this is going to be a bit of a deeper dive into the issue of remittance and how this may interact with both Visa policy as well as the possibility of assessing tax liability on foreign nationals here in Thailand, especially I fear foreign nationals who might think that they will not have tax liability assessed against them. I'll get to the detailed analysis on this here in a moment. 

Really quickly, before I jump in, I've had a lot of folks send us emails and things over the years and say, "look I really appreciate the content you guys make. I don't really have any need to avail myself of a Law Firm at the moment, is there anything we can sort of do?" Look, I have talked about this in other videos. My better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. The name is Pancake Palace, as the name implies, breakfast anytime. American Diner style food; we also have an English breakfast set on the menu. Not just breakfast though. We have American Diner style food: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chilli bowls, buffalo wings; we have got tacos, we have got grilled cheese sandwiches. So if you're interested, please feel free to come on down, we'd love to see you. Links are in the description below. 

But let's get back into this because I know tax is of significant concern to many folks. I thought of initially making this video after reading a recent Tweet, I don't know what they call "tweets" on X. I know it's now X, not Twitter but I still call them Tweets, under FattyNatsu, @FattyNatsu. Quoting directly: "Resident in Thailand with a Wise account? It's about to look very different on August 3."

For those who recall, I have done a number of videos on banking and things. One of them particularly pertained to TransferWise or Wise which is a service, an online banking service, that basically allows for a lot cheaper transfer of funds from other jurisdictions into Thailand. Well, they're changing their terms of service pretty fundamentally and I have discussed that at length in other videos. That said, I'll recap some of this from this tweet. But there's a very particular point here that this person brought up, I think sort of offhandedly that I think it's worth deep diving into. That said:

What's changing: Quoting further:

• "Incoming foreign currency auto-converts to THB" - that's important. I will get to that in a moment. Quoting further:
• "No direct FX transfers (USD to SGD (that’s Singapore Dollars) now routes via THB = extra fees) 
• ATM withdrawals in Thailand disabled 
• Extra verification required (DTV and ED visas accepted)
• Daily limits: 30,000 THB payments/750,000 THB FX conversions 
• 10,000 THB per transaction cap." - so they are capping it out at 10,000 baht. We have discussed this in other videos. As I made it abundantly clear, this isn't something I'm in favour of; I think it's a bad idea. Quoting further:

"Upside: PromptPay, local bank top-ups, easier domestic transfers." Well yeah, because they are trying to move everybody over to this cashless digital QR system. Quoting further: "Downside: Less flexibility for multi-currency/cross-border flows." Well yeah, and another big downside is even capping people off to begin with. I would really love to know the underlying policy thinking on this, because how is this good for Thailand? How is less foreign exchange coming into Thailand, good for Thailand? Is it just because the OECD says so? Or the World Economic Forum or whoever has decided that this is such policy brilliance, because I'm not seeing it, and I'm not seeing where it's good for Thailand either. 

That said, and this is key, and I think this is important in an even broader sense than just on this Transfer Wise stuff. Quoting further:

"Tax note: Auto-conversion could be treated as "remitting" foreign income under Thai Revenue Department rules. If you used Wise for multi-currency flexibility, that era is over." Yeah and I couldn't agree more with this person out there on X. That was a good post. I think it had a lot of good insight into it. I want to read this again, Tax note: "Auto-conversion could be treated as "remitting" foreign income under Thai Revenue Department Rules." I don't think it's coincidence that they're now auto-converting. And I have talked about this in the context of other videos especially with regard to the so-called Long-term Resident Visa - which isn't a Resident Visa as I have gotten into in other videos; it does not confer Lawful Permanent Residence in Thailand; it's effectively like a long-stay kind of Tourist Visa kind of thing. I've gotten into other things, there's all kinds of anomalies associated with that Visa because they said there are aspects of that work a certain way and then you actually read the law, and that's not really how things work. But that said, I don't want to get into the Immigration side of this. 

More to the point, the auto-conversion occurring, and this already happens with a standard international bank wire. If you transfer $10,000 from the United States, it's going to come in in Thai Baht in your account; it's auto-converted. Now, the way Wise, their sort of internal infrastructure works, they were able to sort of sidestep that because there was no auto-conversion necessarily. You could sort of hold in whatever currency you were transferring it over in. That's changing. 

But the point I am trying to make especially with regard to the LTR, but in general is, as we have discussed in other videos, supposedly and I say "supposedly" because we haven't actually seen LTR Visas go through their 5-year audit which will likely start happening probably at the end of this year at the earliest, more likely sometime next year in 2027, when we see the people who first got their LTR some nearly five years ago, have to go through the process of getting their second five years. In light of the fact that we have seen a lot of nitpicking of the Elite Visa holders and in light of the fact that we have seen the DTV Visa turn out to be a qualitatively different animal than it was sort of purported to be when it was being rolled out, most notably not allowing banking in Thailand for example which just kind of threw everybody a curve ball, again the LTR it's always been said, "well there is no tax on foreign accrued income." Now here becomes the question. If you're in Thailand 180 days, thereby meeting the requirement for territorial taxation for being in-country - tax residency if you will - if you've been in Thailand 180 days and you were to “remit funds” into Thailand through any mechanism, most notably by remitting and having it auto-converted into Baht, does that make it unequivocally a foreign remittance or more accurately a foreign remittance into Thailand. And on top of the fact that one has 180 days lawful status in Thailand, i.e. tax residency, whether lawful or not by the way, it is just 180; you could be an illegal alien in Thailand and still be tax resident - something that people don't often talk about - but that said, if you are here 180 days and money is transferred in, it's converted into Baht, could that be considered in-country income? I don't know. I don't know exactly how that is going to be interpreted. I've discussed this in many other videos especially in context of the LTR. I think with regard to everyone else, it's the standard rules. Yes, that's clearly now going to be considered in-country income. You've done your 180 days in-country; there was money that came, it may have come from abroad, but the nexus of receivership occurred here in Thailand, and I am borrowing that from a term from the American Common Law Jurisprudence, so-called Nexus of Commerce which is something they got into deeply with regard to taxes when the internet was first coming online especially in an interstate and intrastate Commerce context back in the United States, this idea of a Nexus of Commerce, I think we're going to start looking at a Nexus of Presence in terms of taxation here in Thailand, and again this announcement by Transfer Wise may be tipping the hand a little bit of what we may be seeing in the context of the LTR and more broadly down the line anybody who's in Thailand for 180 days it could be said, "oh hey, you are tax resident in Thailand and you have had a remittance into Thailand, and because it was converted into Thai Baht, that can now be viewed as in-country income." Now again, there's a difference between it being your own money, an exchange in and of itself may not be a taxable event, but depending on the nature of the funds, difficult to say at this date exactly how this is going to be treated. Again I have said this since the beginning, the devil is in the details and it's all going to be decided in the interpretive process in my opinion for the LTR specifically during the audit for those visas, but more and more as we go down the line, this interpretation of, "well was it converted into Thai Baht?" If so, the preponderance of evidence would suggest that that is an inbound remittance, and therefore that is in-country income especially where you've done your 180 days physically present here in the Kingdom of Thailand.