Transcript of the above video: 

At the title of this video suggests, we are talking about common reporting standards. This video pertains to banking and taxation here in Thailand and unfortunately the developments are such that we're seeing yet again, these moves toward this supranationalist, in my opinion undue foreign influence on Thailand coming from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and so-called Development, OECD. All I can see these people want to do, the only development I can see that they want is a development towards totalitarian-esque banking and tax structures where people's own money is affectively co-opted essentially and you have to be scrutinized for moving and using your own money. And I have talked about this in many other videos made contemporaneously with this one. 

Very quickly before we proceed further, I've had folks say to me, we really want to support you, but we don't necessarily need to hire a law firm right now. Obviously, this channel has a promotional element for our law firm, Integrity Legal, but it's not monetized directly, and yeah there is actually a way if you want to support us, just kind of on a casual level. My better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. The name of the game, or the name of the place is Pancake Palace. As the name implies, it is breakfast anytime and American Diner style food. For those who are interested, it's not just breakfast, but we also have hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chilli bowls, buffalo wings, grilled cheese sandwiches. We've also got tacos now, as well as Coke in glass bottles, so if you're interested, links are in the description below, come on by, we'd love to see you. Let's jump in here. 

The article is titled: Foreign sourced income tax obligations and financial transparency measures in the era of digital transformation. I don't want to live in the era of digital transformation, just for everybody's record if they wanted to know. Again, Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, quoting directly:

 "Transitioning into the CRS (Common Reporting Standard) Era 

Thailand has formally committed to the Multilateral Authority Competent Agreement on Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information, or CRS. This means that financial account data and transactions of individuals residing in Thailand are now subject to automated exchange between tax authorities across over 100 jurisdictions globally." Quoting further: "This heightened level of transparency renders the concealment of income sources increasingly difficult and is the primary driver behind financial institutions elevating their Due Diligence processes to meet global standards."

That's a really nice way of saying the banks are being too nosy. It's not their damn business at the end of the day. Their job is supposed to be to be repositories of our capital to make a little bit of money for themselves by loaning out money on our capital and moving on down the road. We are at the end of the day customers. What I hate most about all of this is we are treated like sheep or something, like livestock and we are to be tracked and traced, and over 100 different jurisdictions now are sharing data regarding taxation and regarding people's, basically our private financial information with one another, and they are using it to then overly scrutinize any types of our activities. I've talked about this in the context of immigration, I’ve talked about it the context of even purchasing condos here in Thailand. Again, I think that this leads to bad outcomes, and I think it's leading to bad outcomes because it's based on bad policy. I think it's based on undue foreign influence here in Thailand. I talked about it during the last government here in Thailand where the World Economic Forum envoy was coming to the Purple Room and we saw folks from the OECD - they were playing that up. And ever since we have seen this stuff coming online, it's just increasingly more scrutiny, increasingly more totalitarian measures that are purely it looks to me designed to just basically nanny-mind everybody and nitpick everyone regarding monetary matters. 

Again, the whole notion of money laundering came about on the premise that "oh well drug dealers, we will go after drug dealers and use money laundering statues" which by the way, the term money laundering didn't even exist legally prior to 1987 in the United States, so it's not like this is something that has some roots back into legal tradition. No, what it's been used for in the aftermath of creating the term money laundering is basically bothering honest people about where they got their money; that's basically what I can see that it has been used for primarily. 

That being said, this looks like it's something that's going to be rolled out here in Thailand. We're going to see Thai Authorities sharing financial data with other jurisdictions primarily from the standpoint of dealing with Tax Matters, so we'll certainly be keeping folks updated on this channel as this situation evolves.