Transcript of the above video:

For the retirees who have viewed this channel for a for long period of time, the issue of Income Affidavits may seem a little odd but let me go ahead and get into why I'm making this video. We are talking about Income Affidavits in the context of Retirees and Retirement Visas here in Thailand.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment on one of our prior videos. Quoting directly: "Why won't Thailand accept an official letter from the US Government that I am receiving more than the minimum requirements of having a monthly income? I keep my bank in an American Bank because I get interest on my money. If I move all my money to a Thai bank, I lose that interest over a 10 year period. That's a lot of money I would lose by having my money here in a Thailand Bank."

Well, as to the first question, the reason is we discuss this at length going back a few years ago, they stopped issuing the Income Affidavits in an American context because the Americans were never attesting to the veracity of the contents of those Affidavits, they were simply notarizing the signature of the people who were making out those Affidavits. So there was a time when folks could go down for example to the US Embassy, I believe this was true for the British and the Australian, I think Canadian Embassies as well, basically fill out an Affidavit that they basically filled out themselves that just said "hey I make this amount of money signed so and so". The Officer would notarize that at the Embassy, you could that over, get that notarization legalized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here in Thailand, then use that document in conjunction with other documentation to go ahead and get a Thai Retirement Visa. That practice was retired, I believe back in '19, maybe it goes back further, '17? It has been a while, it has been quite a long time. '19 seems too recent. I think it was '17, '18 yeah I think it was '17 when they totally got rid of the Income Affidavit. It was a big deal at the time; we were talking about it at length. Yeah this has been gone for quite some time. Now as far as folks I have talked to, sort of just in passing that kind of know or would know about American policy pertaining to Income Affidavits, essentially the issue comes down to this which is that the American Government is not really in the business of ascertaining the net worth of people and then providing that information to the Thai Government. The big issue there is that the US Government is not going to sort of go on the record as saying "so and so is financially viable to this amount." that isn't what they are going to do. So that is basically where that stands. The Income Affidavit is basically a dead letter in the context of American, it is my understanding British and Australian for sure. There are some other countries that I do believe actually will provide certain types of Affidavits. Some European countries for example especially associated with state pensions. I believe it is my understanding that some countries will do that but in the context of most of the Anglo countries, the English-speaking countries, my understanding is virtually none of them that I know of will do it. Happy to stand corrected in the comments if that's not the case but it is my understanding most of them no longer do that. 

Now with regard to banking issues, no the Thai Government wants to see that money in Thailand. That is part and parcel of why they allow it to be used as evidence for either the application or the extension of a Retirement Visa in Thailand because the reason for the Retirement Visa, the benefit garnered to the country, is that foreign funds are in Thailand and being used in Thailand presumably, but also there's a lot going on here with respect to it does benefit the country that certain foreign exchange comes into this country in order to for example support an ongoing Retirement Visa. So again yeah that's just the way of it and I don't really see it changing anytime soon.