Transcript of the above video: 

The title of this video and the thumbnail for this video may not really, people may not understand what I'm doing with the thumbnail. So this is actually one of the few videos I've ever done where I was very conflicted on what thumbnail to use and I ultimately came down to the thumbnail from the movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1, where there's this story about these three brothers and they meet Death along this eerie, creepy walkway and they try to cross a river and they use magic to cross the river and Death gets mad because he wanted his soul so he tricks them and gives them each a gift. One is the elder one which is like this super powerful thing, the guy that takes that dies. Another one is a stone that allows people to see the dead; this guy goes mad. The third one is he has this cloak of invisibility that allows you to be invisible even from Death. And then at the end of the sort of fable, the parable, basically the guy with the cloak of invisibility was sort of a humble guy, just one day takes it off and decides it's his time to go and Death greets him as a friend, as an old friend who takes him away. I thought of that along, also I was conflicted between that and a scene from the movie Meet Joe Black with Brad Pitt, where he says "death and taxes" - it's kind of a big reveal scene - "death and taxes" toward the end of the movie. I thought about using that as well. It conveys some of the same sense of what I'm talking about but what we're going to get into here, the article I'm going to cite, the notion of "tax as a companion", yeah I find that about as creepy as I do the notion of "death as a companion". Death and taxes may be a given in all of our lives, but would we necessarily call them a companion? I don't know that I would go that far, but that's the reason for the thumbnail. 

In any event I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Navigating taxes on your Thai retirement journey. Now I've done another video contemporaneously with this one. I'm going to quote what I cited in that other video and briefly summarise my belief that there's a lot of conflation of information in this article, especially regarding whether or not they look at Thai Tax documentation when determining and scrutinizing whether or not a Retirement Visa application for extension of status should be approved. The answer to that question is they don't. Tax documentation as of the time of this video is not part and parcel of the adjudication process for continuing one's Visa status in Thailand. So again, why that's even sort of brought into this equation is beyond me because they don't look at it, and I'll get to that here in a moment. There are other conflations I want to get to, quoting directly: "Imagine stepping out onto the balcony of your seaside condo in Pattaya. The morning sun spills over the sparkling waves, and a gentle breeze carries the scent of the ocean straight to your coffee. Life feels effortless, and for a moment, the world seems perfect. You have just renewed your Retirement Visa, and everything seems in order ... until a small thought sneaks into your mind. "Taxes ... should I be worried about taxes?" I don't exactly know people do that out on the seaside balcony of their condo or whatever. Look I'm not casting this, let's just keep going. Quoting further: "Funny how such a small thought can seem so heavy. But in Thailand, taxes are rarely monsters. If you understand them, they become a quiet companion." Yeah, no they don't, no. Yeah, they might become a lot of things. They might become understood; they might become something that you're not worried about, but taxes are not a companion, they're a burden. They might sometimes be a necessary burden, for example if you live in a given community and you need roads, or you need public works for various things, you may need whatever it is the taxes are bringing, but the taxes themselves are not a companion, they are a burden. Quoting further: "helping your retirement life flow smoothly." I don't think any of the retirees here in Thailand that have been watching or monitoring this tax stuff for the last couple of years would say that their lives were flowing smoothly in connection with the topic. Quoting further: "They are there, yes, but they aren't here to ruin your morning -- they are here to ensure your life in Thailand is worry-free." Taxes are here to ensure your life is worry-free? Quoting further: "What makes me a little more concerned, though, is this. Last year many of my friends chose not to declare their income and stayed outside the tax system, thinking it was no big deal." Coming from someone who makes their money filing people's taxes? Quoting further: "Now with news that Thailand plans to implement a Negative Income System," - no, plans that the last Administration talked about before they were summarily ousted and this new crew was brought in. 

You know that negative income tax is nothing but redistributive Communistic thinking, and it's all just a big carrot on the big stick of getting all Thais put into the Tax Registration System. I've discussed this at length. Negative Income, if you want to call it that, i.e. handouts, much like everything the last government brought us is the notion of free money, that's connected to totalitarian strings. None of this is a companion. This is a really it is an Orwellian attempt at trying to get us all bagged, tagged, tracked and traced so you can track everyone's every little thing, so that they can tax and extract wealth from frankly the bottom strata of the socioeconomic system, when we are getting into this negative income stuff.  I've talked about this at length in other videos. It's literally, it's not literally, it's metaphorically a carrot at the end of a tax stick. It's them saying, “oh you are going to get free money if everybody shows up and registers for the tax system” which heretofore is not a requirement and it is not a requirement of Thai law as of the time of this video, to the best of my knowledge. Just because you are alive, does not mean you have to go register in a tax system and be tagged and bagged. Quoting further: "I can't help but feel a twinge of worry. What once seemed simple could become more complicated, and the new system might track undeclared income." How? And beyond even that, is this a fearmongering attempt? I am asking the question genuinely, because a lot of the stuff in here, it not very sensical and I'll get to this further. "A small oversight could turn into a big problem." Oh, okay. 

Again, there is a big thing here also to keep in mind. Tax avoidance, tax, and I'm talking about this purely from an American legal lexicon standpoint, tax avoidance and tax evasion are two different things. Avoiding taxes lawfully can occur via a variety of different ways. Also, nothing in here that I have seen; well let me just keep going here. Quoting further: "The Retirement Visa itself is straightforward. You need to show either sufficient funds in a Thai bank account or a steady income/pension coming into Thailand, and you need health insurance to cover your stay." Well not true. O Retirement Visas, standard O Retirement Visas, do not require insurance; O-A Retirement Visas do require insurance. I'm not quite sure if Pattaya Mail is quite getting the information on this correct. It looks like they're conflating things, and further to that, quote: "But when you start thinking about the money flowing in from abroad or locally, taxes quietly step onto the scene. Timing becomes crucial. If you transfer foreign income into Thailand in the same year it is earned, it becomes taxable. Transfer it the following year, and Thai Tax Authorities simply nod and say, "No worries, just show us your bank balance and all is well." Well first of all, it wouldn't be Thai Tax Authorities doing that, it would be Thai Immigration Authorities; they're not the same thing. And Immigration and I get into this at length in another video I made contemporaneously with this one, Immigration is not in the habit of engaging in adjudicating one's taxes at all. It's not part of the application for extension, that documentation. So the Tax Authorities don't care about your bank balance either. They care about if you owe taxes or did you pay it.

So this is conflated; the requirement of insurance is not correct. On top of that, this whole "if you transfer it in a different year versus the year in which it was accrued", that's how it operated effectively under the system that existed prior to the memorandum of quarter 3/4 of 2023 which I talked about at length at the time. That was how it was up until December 31, 2023. As of Jan 1, 2024, timing of accrual is no longer the crux of the analysis. It now comes down to whether or not you have spent the requisite amount of time in Thailand to attach Tax Residency, and did you then have any taxable events such as income transferred in from abroad - and I stress income as opposed to one's own assets, one's own pre-existing money - transferred in from abroad. What I'm saying there, a bank transfer is not in and of itself a taxable event. 

But the point I'm trying to make with this video is one, calling tax as a companion of any kind I think is odd, let me just put it that way. Then meanwhile I'm reading through this and it's like things seem to be conflated. So I'm trying to make this video in order to clear up any possible misnomers, because I think a lot of folks out there could misunderstand what their possible posture is with regard to both their visa when it comes to their Retirement Visa, as well as their posture with respect to possible tax liability and/or assessability. Look, for those out there who feel themselves a bit overwhelmed by all of this, it may not be a terrible idea, contact a legal professional, gain some insight and guidance into how best to proceed.