Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing FATCA in the context of Thai Bank Accounts as they may pertain to Retirement Visas. So FATCA, for those who are unaware, it is a Foreign Account Transparency Compliance Act I believe is the acronym for it. It was promulgated under the Obama Administration; we have all had to kind of deal with it.

Many folks who end up getting a Retirement Visa will end up having to fill out a number of forms, if you are an American, associated with FATCA and this can kind of throw people off, they say they don't really like it. Frankly I haven't seen a lot of people have an issue with this for years but just in the past couple of days, we have had multiple people raising a fuss when we are assisting them in setting up their Bank Accounts to assist them in getting their Retirement Visa sorted out and they have been sort of complaining about the forms associated with FATCA. Nothing we can do about the forms associated with FATCA. If you have got an issue with the FATCA reporting forms that the Thai Banks are required to disclose to the United States Government, if you have an issue with that, call your Congressman, call your Senator, call back home, get somebody to change FATCA. That is the only way to get rid of this regulatory structure that again the Thai Banks don't really want to be dealing with FATCA if they could all avoid it, so something to think about. Again you got to have a Bank Account in order to, it is kind of a catch 22, retirees need a Bank Account in order to meet the financial requirements associated with extension of status here in Thailand in Retirement Visa status and again we assist people all the time. This hasn't been an issue until recently and then a few people have sort of caused a fuss about having to deal with these forms associated with FATCA. Well it just is what it is. There is nothing we can really do about that. 

So again the thing to take away from this video, yeah you are going to need a Bank Account associated with the Retirement Visa. If you are an American then you are going to have to deal with FATCA; you are going to have to deal with forms associated with disclosure associated with FATCA, that is just the way it is. So for those who have an issue with that, well you are probably not going to have a good time getting a Bank Account here in the Kingdom of Thailand.