Transcript of the above video:

While the title of this video might seem a little provocative, it is spot on, it really is. I have heard from a number of people here recently, I don't know, YouTube. I have been here 16 years. I can remember the old days when Thai Visa forum was the end all be all, sort of the foreign intersection of ideas if you will the, marketplace of Farang ideas out here in Southeast Asia, I guess you could look at it as such. With the advent of YouTube and online content creation, we have seen a lot of changes but the more things change, the more they stay the same. One of the reasons I formed this channel was quite honestly to combat a bunch of just incorrect, inaccurate information that was just floating around the ether of the internet and maybe one could say misinformation or even disinformation because there seem to be a lot of people out here in the forum era who just kind of either spouted nonsense, didn't know what they were talking about or kind of had a half notion of how things worked and then would kind of comment on it and I found people who would listen would get in trouble because things don't always work the same way that they work for one person, the way that they are going to work for another person; or different provinces have different ways of doing things. Meanwhile, as I have discussed many, many times on this channel, with regard to tax, everything is circumstantially dependent; that is how tax analysis works. Anyone who is out there giving "one size fits all" advice, that is idiotic. There is no other word for it. Making sort of broad sweeping statements to large groups of people and how that's going to work, sorry, that's not the way to look at it. I mean and anybody that has got any kind of legal background, knows that making findings of facts and conclusions of law it is going to differ in every single case, that's the way it works.

Then meanwhile, folks that are out there espousing legal notions, counseling people, providing sort of consultative information, again I have striven on this channel to be very clear, this is for educational purposes only, it's broad, it's just to put information out. It is not designed for people to draw legal or tax related or any kind of accountancy related conclusions. As we have discussed in many other videos, doing that violates the restricted occupations as set forth in the Decree that we have discussed in many other videos of 2020 specifically legal services, accountancy, consulting; you could even argue agency and brokerage, secretarial; there are all kinds of legal prohibitions against foreigners discussing such things because they don't know what they are talking about most of the time. It's the Thai system; it's the Thai tax system. It's not what some foreigner thinks the Thai tax system is. And I know, to many people, you are all going to burn me and say I am semi-hypocritical because I myself was once a foreigner. One, I make that abundantly clear. I naturalized to Thai citizenship about 5 years ago. That being said, I don't get on this channel and make "one size fits all" blanket claims about how tax policy is going to operate in Thailand. Meanwhile we don't even know how it is going to operate in Thailand. Nothing has been promulgated to give us any further guidance other than the rescission of a rule that has existed heretofore. So anybody that is out there saying this is how it's going to be, I have made my own personal kind of predictions; I have said that I think the vast majority of cases, I think 80% of people, probably don't need to worry about this, I have not said that is definitive, I have said that is just my intuition at this time. Meanwhile, yeah I do think there is a strong possibility there is 20% of people that could be impacted by this but each and every case is going to be different and anybody that is out there especially as a foreigner who is already engaging in illegal activity by providing legal advice, accountancy advice, tax assessment advice, you are already operating illegally. So anybody that is listening to a person doing that, what are you doing? That person is in my opinion the most idiotic legal person ever; there is not even a word for it. I wouldn't say that is professional behavior and I definitely wouldn't say that person is a legal professional because if they are a foreigner by definition they are not a legal profession in Thailand; they cannot be. They are precluded by law and there are criminal penalties also associated with that preclusion as well.

But let's look at the reason for it, and this is why I get so upset. I know people are going to say out there in the comments: "Well he became a Thai and he is just pulling the ladder up from underneath him". Well you know what? There is a little of that too and I have kind of earned it. I have paid my dues out here. I like being Thai and yeah I have never claimed to be a Thai Legal professional nor will I ever. I am an American Attorney but I can provide some insight into it. I have been the Managing Director of this firm for over a decade and a half and in that capacity I do what I do but I leave the Thai legal work to the Thai legal professionals and this is why I get so angry. If the line has to be with me that "hey, foreign nationals cannot be involved in Thai legal matters. There is good reason for that. It is Thai Law. These people don't know. The other thing is, look there are kind of some national sovereignty issues associated with that. If foreigners are getting in there, monkeying around with how Thai Law is interpreted, it is kind of like in the context of Obscenity Law in American jurisprudence - I used to teach a class on this here in Bangkok University and we would talk about Obscenity Law and one of the components of the evolving nature of Obscenity Law in America was what was called Contemporary Community Standards. This was basically a way that the law evolved because people's mindsets evolved. Well if Thai people's mindset are influenced by foreign actors pertaining to the law here in Thailand then the law here in Thailand could evolve in a way which is influenced by foreigners which is exactly the reason for the preclusion under the list of restricted occupations is to forestall exactly that from happening. This is why I get so passionate about it because I love this country and I don't want this place to be any more foreign influenced in the negative than it needs to be. I have said it before and I will say it again, people kind of say: "well, you seem to give a few people a pass on COVID that were involved with that whole thing here in Thailand," well first of all I didn't. If you go back and look at the record, we did say things at the time about problems that I saw with the whole legal reasoning behind it; we got into the Nuremberg Codes and talked about all of that good stuff, never mind that. The reason I kind of do in my own head even, give it sort of a pass is I view it as foreign influence. It was a foreign notion that came in here and said we had to do all this stuff and it turned out that was pretty nonsensical. I have the same aversion to this phenomenon because I don't want to see Thailand's legal system be unduly influenced and quite honestly improperly influenced by any sort of foreign notions.

I may have the fervour of the converted, I will admit it. I may be the most conservative Thai you have ever heard of. I don't want anything to change and in a lot of ways that is how I feel about Thailand. I loved it when I got here; I wish we could freeze it that way and just keep going ahead. I know that's not possible but when things are egregious and when there is something that I feel could harm Thailand, I feel obligated to point it out. And letting foreigners unduly and improperly influence legal thinking in this country is something that I find truly, truly dangerous and I know there are those that are going to say "well that is hypocritical coming from you foreigner!" Well one, I became Thai and two, I like to think that I sort of stay in my lane insofar as I explain that there are legal issues in Thailand but I am not sitting here trying to give conclusions as if I was a Thai lawyer. That is not what I am. I am just sort of providing some exposition so other people can do their own research and find out conclusions and come to and learn things, sort of educate themselves as to the sort of legal system here in the Kingdom of Thailand.