Transcript of the above video: 

For those who are unaware, I've done a number of videos lately talking about these foreign so-called professionals who are operating here in Thailand illegally. As I've discussed in other videos, notwithstanding even people that are credentialed in other jurisdictions, if you don't have either Thai nationality or some form of Thai credential, for example in the case of medical doctors, it's possible for a non-Thai to be a medical doctor here in Thailand but you have got to pass the Thai accreditation boards; you have got to pass the Boards here in Thailand. Meanwhile, foreign nationals are not able to be in the legal service business nor are they able to be in things like accounting and other professions pursuant to the restricted occupations as designated by the Department of Employment which I have read at length in many other videos. 

That said, in a prior video talking about these issues specifically so-called foreign tax "professionals" talking about how people should - again foreign tax professionals - talking about how Thai tax law works which is in flagrant violation of Thai Law, again for the reasons I've already described. But that being said, there appears to be another element associated with this which I can only describe as something akin to the “Zero-Dollar” tours situation. Again, the Zero-Dollar tours was an issue that arose some roughly 5, 8 years ago, and it's still kind of an ongoing concern amongst authorities in Thailand, which involved tourism from China primarily where all the tourists would come through but none of the money would get to Thailand. It would all be put into some offshore account like Hong Kong and then it would never get to Thailand. So, these people would be down here in Thailand; they would be going to hotels and all of these things, but they’d never actually be in Thailand. 

Meanwhile, I just saw a recent comment on of our prior videos, quoting directly: "You're not wrong Ben. I'm a foreign lawyer and wealth management professional based outside of Thailand. I do not advise retail clients, and this is not sour grapes. I'm being objective. I'm a Thai Elite Visa holder; I watched a presentation by this character at a function organized by Thailand Privilege broadcast online. This is clearly not in the interest of Thailand Privilege or its members. If you have any contacts at Thailand Privilege, you should let them know." Well Thailand Privilege, consider this me letting you know, okay? Quoting further: "From what I gather, he is touting a scheme where clients place funds in a Hong Kong Trust to avoid tax in Thailand. I am sure you're aware as a lawyer how dangerous this could be. Its success rests on scaring people to surrender their funds to the HK Trust investing the funds and of course charging hefty fees. It could easily be classified as a fraud, if certain regulatory hurdles are not met. Is this character licensed in Hong Kong as a financial advisor under the HKMA?" - That's the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Quoting further: "Is he licensed as a Financial Advisor in Thailand under SEC? You're not permitted by law to even market or generally discuss these types of financial solutions with retail customers unless you have a Financial Advisor's license in the jurisdictions where you present the materials." Well yeah okay, I'm not going to get into all of the licensure of that kind of stuff. That gets pretty deep; it's kind of beyond the scope of this channel. That said quoting further: "Let alone the issues this raises in Thailand and HK regarding work authorizations. I am shocked that the Authorities in Thailand have not acted. If anything, to shows why these tax changes are such a bad idea. The system is just not geared to handle them and there are predators out there." 

Again, keeping this, without getting into deep specifics and again getting into financial sort of licensure and certifications and stuff, that's kind of again, beyond the scope of this video. But the point I'm trying to make is again these elicit, "pseudo professionals" again, they are illegal in Thailand. We have discussed this already especially if they're talking about Tax matters and they are foreign and they're not Thai nationals, they don't have any legal basis for doing that. In fact it is a crime. Again, it's a violation of Thai Labour Law; I've gone through the restricted occupations at length. 

But the one thing that got me thinking when I read that comment was, what else could be going on out there? Again, if these people are just flagrant enough to not care about Thai Law regarding consultation regarding local taxes etc., what else do they just not seem to care about? And again it begs the question, are they again doing things to allow people to remain here in Thailand and then sort of circumventing the relevant laws to make sure Thailand gets the relevant taxes that they should be getting from people living here in Thailand and basically sucking up the resources of Thailand, taxing Thailand's infrastructure etc., and then these people are not actually effectively paying any tax in Thailand associated with that usage of resources? Again, I don't know, it remains to be seen but I have got to be honest with you, I did not want to get into this precisely because I didn't want to get sucked into this sort of big spiral of looking at all of this stuff, because frankly there's a lot of foreign shenanigans that goes on out here in Southeast Asia? But it is a valid question, and I thought that the comment was worth sharing, so I decided to go ahead and make this video. Hopefully this stuff will kind of solve itself and people will figure out and self-regulate say, "hey, I can't be doing this." That said, I can't say that's a foregone conclusion, so we'll keep people updated on this channel as this situation evolves.