Transcript of the above video:

A topic that has come up a lot more recently here in the past well roughly week or so, about 10 days has been the topic yet again of gambling or casinos here in Thailand. I thought of making this video after a reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is: bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Taking the casino punt. Quoting directly: "However, the report points to a vagueness in the legal definition of "gambling" and "entertainment complex". The Excise Department is able to demand excise tax from casinos if and when they are legalized and go into operation. Under the Excise Tax Act, a subordinate law such as a Royal Decree or a Ministerial Regulation may be issued that permits "gambling services" to take place and sets excise tax rates for them. Money won from casinos is deemed taxable income and must be declared as income tax with the Revenue Department." 

Now what I am hoping, my hope is, as I have discussed in other videos on this channel, you have to be careful with gambling. You open that Pandora's Box in a given economy, there is a lot of social ills that come from that; there are a lot of economic ills that come from gambling. As I have said in other videos that it can create kind of a sinkhole effect on the economy, kind of a “black hole” when you only have one given Casino. What I have said in the past is, as counterintuitive as it sounds, allowing smaller venues or even on a temporary basis, others to operate gambling, gaming exercises in a limited context can have a positive impact on the overall economy.  For one thing, it mitigates that sinkhole effect, that “black hole” effect on the economy. It also allows quite honestly more people than just a few to benefit from the ongoing activity so for example if small venue operators in Thailand could occasionally host things like poker tournaments or something like this, that can have a tremendous impact on some place that otherwise is operating is as a pub just as a for example. I'm not advocating anything, I am just talking hypothetically, let me be clear. The point I am trying to make is this notion of "gambling services" being taxable under the Excise Tax Act, that is something significant I think and something that we could see some real appreciable benefits on a more broad basis here in Thailand coming about from possible legalization of gambling.

Now again, it remains to be seen whether gambling or let's put it this way, broad-based gambling, the notion of gambling in the traditional sense that we think of in the West, Thailand by the way does have some gaming activities; things like lotteries and racing are permissible under certain circumstances here in Thailand on a regularly basis but the thing to take away from this video is yeah this notion of trying not to create sort of an economic sinkhole in the form of one complex that just sucks up all the money and a lot of the entertainment dollar too because people that go to casinos, that's what they spend their night on that night. They don't go to the other places they would otherwise wander around and go to at a given location. So just something to think about but I do think the notion of having a little bit more broad-based kind of ability for smaller operators to gain some benefit out of this, I think that could have a tremendous positive impact on the overall Thai Economy.