Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we're talking about the OECD and Tax. Now I'm going to go over here to KPMG, that is kpmg.com, under something they put out titled: Thailand Publishes Emergency Decree on top-up tax to align with OECD's BEPS 2. PiLLAR Two global minimum tax framework in the Government Gazette. Now I talked about this at the time, so some of this is going to be kind of a review but I felt like it was really important to kind of come back to this, because a lot of mechanisms have been utilized to try and sort of finesse all of this through because I don't think the vast majority of Thais want this. I have got to be honest with you, I think there's probably a large cohort in the policy making, sort of policy makers realm, that probably don't want this either; that is probably just, Thailand is better off regulating everything pertaining to Thailand itself, including banking, including tax. She doesn't need to be a party to the supranationalist nonsense. 

That said, quoting directly: "On 26 December, 2024, the Emergency Decree on Top-up Tax, B.E. 2567, was published in the Government Gazette," - and that leads me to the first question. Where is the Emergency? Where is the fire? Why did this need to be done under Emergency Decree? And on top of it, in December of 2024, I mean where were we at governmentally? There wasn't some big mandate for OECD is what I'm trying to say. That said, quoting further: "and has become effective from Jan 1, 2025 marking a significant step in Thailand's tax reform. It aims to implement additional tax measures to align Thailand's fiscal policies with the international standards set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, specifically focusing on the OECD's Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) 2.0 Pillar Two framework. 

Key Updates

BEPS 2.0 Pillar 2 mandates a global minimum tax rate of 15% for multinational enterprises. Affected entities in Thailand include subsidiaries, branch offices, and in-scope joint ventures - together with their joint venture subsidiaries (as determined by the GloBe Model Rules)." 

So, what I'm trying to say here is why does Thailand need to be at the international standards of anybody? It doesn't? And why are we “aligning” our, or we moving toward - that's the other thing, this hasn't actually been implemented, they just sort of are doing this on stopgap emergency sort of authorizations, but they haven't had an actual promulgated law on this, nor should they, which by the way, Mr. Trump - and I have disagreed with many things Mr. Trump has done, but Mr. Trump got this one right. Because the previous administration in the United States under Biden, specifically under Yellen, and I did the videos on this at the time, in my opinion started moving in all sorts of surreptitious ways; in very clandestine ways started moving around the world trying to get this Global Minimum Tax thing online, and tried to make it a thing. Trump came in and effectively cut the legs out from underneath it. I talked about that at length. He noted OECD operates as a threat to America's national sovereignty. I continue to say Thailand needs to look at it the same way. This thing isn't some great benefit. If anything, let's look at the past 18 months and see what we've gotten. All we've gotten is a bunch of obstruction in being able to do basic banking functions the past roughly 18 months, 2 years, and what benefits has anybody got? Has it made banking better? No, if anything it looks to me like we're being brought into what can only be described as almost a neo-communist functional system, because again and people forget, the USSR had Central Banks; Central Banking is actually I think one of the tenets of Marxism, is that they need Central Banks because they need to extract the wealth off the value-added parts of the economy and redistribute it to places where they think it should go. 

The point I'm trying to make with this is I don't think OECD is good for Thailand, and I don't see where the so-called "emergency" is that is giving the authorization to do these things. And frankly, looking at the practical implications of what has rolled out in the past year or so, I think it's self-evident that this isn't good for Thailand's economy. One I think it's going to slow down velocity of money, i.e. liquidity moving through the economy. It means it's causing things to seize up. And now on top of that, we've got this oil situation which I expect will be the basis by which the sort of the scape goat if you will for much of the economic problems that are coming, and rightly so under certain circumstances, but I think it will also operate to obscure the fact that a lot of these problems are also being caused, but because of the problems in banking that have arisen as a result of OECD. And on top of that I just completely dismiss out of hand the idea that for some reason, some self-evident reason that is never explained to anybody, Thailand has to “align” herself with international standards; it sounds to me a lot like Neo-colonialism. "Well Thailand needs to align herself with the way that Imperial France wants to do things or Imperial Britain wants to do things." Well no she didn't, and she doesn't need to do this now in my opinion. 

My hope is cooler heads will prevail. They will see that this is a problem and they will reverse it. That being said, we will certainly be keeping folks updated on this channel as the situation evolves.