Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing taxes associated with the LTR Visa. I've been talking about this since the LTR Visa was created. I even quoted sources at the time, in the moment, that talked about the fact that there were to essentially be an audit at the five-year mark for the LTR Visa. 

For those who are unaware, LTR stands for Long-term Resident Visa - kind of a misnomer - it does not grant Lawful Permanent Residence in Thailand, it grants a renewable 5-year visa. So it's actually a 10-year status but you get two different sets of 5-year terms and at the 5-year mark, you undergo basically an audit. They basically assess you and ascertain whether or not you should be granted the next 5 years. As part of that, they basically assess regarding taxes. 

Now here's the thing. The LTR isn't old enough now that we actually know what that looks like because it's only actually been in existence operationally since 2022. I was talking about it going all the way back into 2021 but yeah that's sort of the state of play; it's not quite five years old yet. There is a fair bit of talk in the ether of the internet amongst the expats about the taxes associated with it. A bunch of people go on about, "oh you need to file". Maybe, again depending on your circumstances you might, and again tax residency and a few other factors will determine whether or not one actually needs to file. 

The point I've been making since the get-go with that Visa is until we start to see what the review process looks like on the LTR and how they assess and even determine liability on taxes, because as I have discussed in other videos, they do say, "oh well offshore income is exempt." Well that said, if you are in Thailand 180 days and you remit any type of revenue into Thailand, how is that not considered onshore income? Now I know that the people who want to believe that it's all exempt believe that, but at the end of the day, if you do your time in Thailand and you have got accrued revenue - you do your 180 days, you have got accrued revenue, it's offshore and you bring it onshore - that becomes, to my mind, that becomes domestically sourced revenue, I mean, or at least there's an argument to be made that it does. And then at that point, they can start saying - and this has been my thing all along with the LTR is - are they going to assess liability backward, back five years, over the five years somebody has been here and then say, "Oh, hey you owe us this money, and you are not going to get your new visa until you give us this money." All of this remains to be seen. All of this remains to be seen; that's the important thing to take away from this. 

That said, 2027 is coming along. We are sitting here in 2026. There is going to come a reckoning, there is going to come a moment when we are going to know. It's not here yet but I expect it's going to be coming along with the New Year basically next year, and I expect there is going to be more tax liability than people are presuming, at least as of the time of this video. That's all I'll say on it. I'm not going to make any detailed analysis on something that hasn't transpired yet, but I have been talking about this since the beginning. Yeah, it's an LTR Visa. It doesn't provide residency per se, it provides 10 years of status, but at the 5-year mark, they assess you basically. They review the situation; they scrutinize your status in Thailand and then they scrutinize whether or not there is tax liability possibly associated therewith. Whether or not that turns out good, bad or indifferent for folks that are using the LTR remains to be seen, because again we haven't gotten to the 5-year anniversary of the creation of the visa yet, so we don't exactly know what it will look like. We will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as and when the situation evolves.