Transcript of the above video: 

Yet again we are talking about this Tourist Tax which this is just one of these ideas, it just keeps floating up to the surface over and over again and honestly it's one of these ideas that I had trouble really kind of buying into it to begin with and then now upon further reading of a recent article, it looks to me like it's just more tax in order to have more useless, invasive, interventionist Government oversight. I am a big believer, I love the quote from the late President Ronald Reagan where he said "Government is not the solution to our problems, Government is the problem." Nothing proved it more in my mind than COVID because we saw, okay the thing was real, but no it was wrong to do everything that they did and we are now dealing with the rippling aftermath in terms of economic problems and lack of purchasing power, lack of just money and wealth because we shut ourselves down for years because the Government said that that's what we must do even though they said, they called it mandates, but then they later said you had a choice and all of this nonsense. It has just been one giant Orwellian exercise in double-speak and communistic thinking.

That being said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, article is titled: Call to renew levy on tourism. Again this is one of those where it is like look tourism is something of a golden goose. If you mess with it too much, you risk killing the golden goose. I mean at the end of the day I have to imagine there are other ways of extracting taxes not directly against the tourists. On top of that, we have gone over this multiple times, and I urge those who are watching this video go check out that article because they do do a good job of sort of pointing out sort of rehashing all the points that we have been talking about for years on this topic. One of the biggest ones is how do you collect the thing? Because you have got to differentiate between true tourists and Non-immigrant Visa holders who are otherwise living here and things. What is the point of that? On top of it, it puts a negative veneer over the entire topic of Thai Tourism. Even talking, I don't like to make these videos about it, but I feel I kind of need to because I don't think it's a good idea. I think it could actually have a detrimental impact on tourism in Thailand which is why I am making these videos but I also understand that even talking about it has its own detrimental impact because tourists look at things and say, "oh they want to tax me just for wanting to come to their country and spend some money there? That is silly." And they are right but hopefully at some point we will finally put this to bed in my opinion. 

That said, I thought of making this video after reading this article, quoting directly: "Tourism operators are urging the new Tourism Minister to resume the plan to collect a 300 Baht fee from tourists because it is not considered an obstacle to arrivals." Yeah they get into, "oh it's like 9 or 10 dollars, it's no big deal." Well you know, 9 or 10 dollars here there and everywhere, does add up. 

Quoting further: "The Tourism Council of Thailand (TCT) said it plans to discuss the necessity of this project with Sermsak Pongpanich, the new Tourism Minister as soon as he takes office." And then further on down there is a quote in here from Surawat Akkaraworamat,  Vice President of the TCT, again that is the Tourism Council of Thailand, quote: "The Tourism Department can set guidelines for each type of tourism service, such as tour buses, restaurants and adventure activities, but it lacks sufficient budget to regulate and audit all operators." Who said we needed that? Honestly. Where does this impetus come from to tax everybody and then create more bureaucracy where I can't see that it's been overly necessary? At the end of the day, this is one of those situations where, again Government is not the solution to the problem, Government is the problem. The problem we have had is that has been no tourism. Now we have some back and the first impetus on some folks' part is to let's run out and tax those people and create more bureaucracy to make it more difficult for small businesses to operate their tourism operations providing services to those tourists. So it's like double negative feedback loop. You are shaving off capital of the top of an otherwise profitable enterprise, industry and you are funneling it back into a bureaucracy that's going to shave off efficiency of that same industry. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Quoting further: "Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin recommended freezing the fee collection to pump up the number of tourists." Yeah and he's right. I have said this before. I have been critical of certain aspects of this Government but credit where credit is due. This Government has been pretty good at understanding, tourism is necessary for Thailand. It is a major component of the economy. It is not the all-encompassing component of the economy but it is a big one and it has a lot to do with some of the smaller folks here in Thailand who operates more businesses so my hat is off, tip of the hat to the Prime Minister on seeing the exigent need of maintaining tourism and not going out of our way to try and kill the golden goose. 

Quoting further: "But the TCT believes implementing the levy would not impact the flow of tourists." It probably won't impact the flow of tourists directly but again imposing any of this, what actually bothers me more about this is not the notion of the tax itself, the tax, probably you could figure out some way of kind of doing it in such a way that it is not really noticeable. That said, constantly talking about it I think operates against the interest of the tourism sector because people around the world hear these things and oftentimes it's a bit of a mis-communication because they don't understand, "no we are not looking to just bang people over the head and text the heck out of them just for being a tourist here" but they hear the word tourist and tax and the two things, it is kind of like the reverse of chocolate and peanut butter, they don't go. It's two great tastes that taste worse together if you will. My point being fundamentally is what bothers me in all of this is not the notion of the tax, it's the notion of building up a reservoir of capital and then using that to create a bureaucracy that will again quote "regulate and audit all operators more sufficiently" which again who is calling for that? I think most tourism operators want more tourists than anything.