Transcript of the above video: 

A viewer of our channel and somebody I really appreciate for sending me this, tip of the hat to you, sent me this; I am going to go ahead and put it on screen. This is: Records the Testimony of Aliens long stay. This is actually a form from Roi Et Immigration Office. Since I initially got this, some other folks have gotten in touch with me, I have seen similar documentation. Again Province to Province, different Immigration Offices are going to do things slightly differently but over time, over the long period of time, you learn to try or at least you try to ascertain trends within Immigration in order to be able to predict things in the future. 

So throwing this on screen, Records the Testimony of Aliens long stay. If you look there,

‘I have collected money by opening accounts with the banks in Thailand as follows’: and they want:

-Bank names,

-Branch,

-Province,

-Bank Account number,

-Type of deposit,

-Total balance.

All of this stuff I do understand has to do especially with extension of Retirement Visa or a Marriage visa where you are utilizing bank account information, you are utilizing proof of money in a Thai bank account as the basis for the extension or at least for meeting the financial requirements associated with extending status here in Thailand.

But the thing to understand and the reason for the video, I did another video contemporaneously with this one talking exclusively about the issue of banking information in an Immigration context. Something that starting to worry me a little bit or is starting to cause my radar to go off a little bit, is okay first this banking stuff and now they are also talking about major policy changes with regard to tax. We've also seen, well they changed some of the tax, internal tax assessment protocols at January 1, 2024. They have now said that they want to change some of the rules regarding tax or come out with entirely new tax rules; they are talking about this harmonization with the OECD. All of this to my mind starts me down the path of thinking today banking information, tomorrow are they going to want a tax return filed here in Thailand and proof of at least a filing of a return even if somebody doesn't owe money here maybe due to the nature of the money that they have, or to the provisions of the double tax agreements between the various nationalities of various retirees here in Thailand and the Thai Government via Treaty; there may be circumstances where somebody may file a return here in Thailand but they don't owe any money. 

The question posed though is again today it is banking information. Tomorrow could it be tax information? Again, at this stage of the game, I don't think it is wise to say that that is a foregone conclusion, nor am I saying that. What I am saying is I'm sort of reading the tea leaves, I'm listening to the wind at the moment and it's looking to me like there is a confluence of events coming together wherein more financial information seems to be requested or required by Thai Immigration and then now we are seeing these policy changes or at least discussions of policy changes in the tax apparatus. I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility at this point to presume that sometime in the future, perhaps not the immediate or even the near term; perhaps not this year, next year or the year after, but I don't think it's impudent to being looking at the presumption as credible, that at some point down the line tax documentation or proof of filing a tax return here in Thailand may in fact become part of the overall visa extension process be it in a Retirement Visa capacity or even perhaps in a Marriage visa capacity down the road. Again it remains to be seen. I am not saying this is a foregone conclusion, just something to have at the back of your mind.