Transcript of the about video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Retirement Visas. And quite honestly, for the retiree, the person that is over 50, there are a plethora of options out there. As I've discussed in many other videos, there's the standard O Retirement Visa; there's the O-A Retirement Visa. They created the O-X Retirement Visa some time ago; it's more of a longer stay Visa. My personal self, well I'll get into let's just go through listing them off.  There's the LTR; one could utilize the DTV if one wanted to retire in Thailand. I don't necessarily think that's the most optimal setup under current circumstances. But long story short, and the thing to take away from this video and the reason for the thumbnail that's a scene from the movie The Fifth Element where Bruce Willis' old commanding officer is basically getting him to go off on another secret mission and they basically rig a radio show contest so that he wins tickets to this far off planet so that he can go get the bad guys, type of thing. And the general says, "oldest tricks are the best tricks" or "old tricks are the best tricks." At the end of the day, just to preface everything standard O Retirement Visas, if you guys are in that stay in it - I think for a variety of different reasons. 

Getting to the LTR, I have discussed this in other videos, and I know a lot of folks, they look at that visa and they say, "hey everything is hunky dory, looks great to me." For me the jury is still out on that visa and that will not cease until we start seeing the people who started getting these visas right around about 2022, begin to go through their 5-year audit. So the LTR was basically promoted as a Residency Visa which it is not: Lawful Permanent Residence is a different status in Thailand. It was also touted as a 10-year Visa, well it's not. You get five years, then they review you. Then if you pass review, you get five more years. As part of this, there has been discussion of "oh, all offshore accrued income cannot be taxed in Thailand, or if it is it's capped out." I am really curious to see how the interpretation is going to be dealt with with those matters, when we start seeing people have to go through the review to get there further LTR extension at their 5-year mark. We are not going to start seeing that until 2027. Until then - and again there are exceptions to this rule - I have put people into the LTR by the way, but I've done it after I first of all told them "hey I have caveats, I have my concerns about this." And also they listened to me and then they said, "yeah, I still want to do it." Fine. They got into with their eyes open. For the vast majority of folks that are retirees here in Thailand, I think the standard O Retirement Visa is probably the best. It's better than the O-A because it doesn't require Insurance. The DTV in my opinion is so nebulous and even if it works perfectly and you get the full five years - which is not a foregone conclusion - the DTV was designed as a Nomad Visa. You are not supposed to just be living in Thailand that entire five years; that was not the presumptive intent behind the Visa. Now it was rolled out - it got all political - and it was rolled out in order to create sort of a boom in tourism to make Paetongtarn Shinawatra look good when she was coming into the Office of the Prime Ministership, but at the end of the day, I would not want to rely on the DTV if I was an over 50 retiree; I think you're better off just being in the standard O. 

Another reason I'm a big fan of the standard O is because during the '90s, and I have discussed this in other videos, the financial thresholds associated with meeting the obligations for the financial requirements were increased, three times actually. Each time they were increased, the people that were in the system under the prior iteration were grandfather in, and it's my belief that if any massive or fundamental changes occur to the standard O Retirement Visa, they will very likely grandfather in everybody that was already in the status. So that's another reason I'm a fan of the standard O over again the O-X has been talked about as well 10-year Retirement Visa. Yeah in theory it's out there, but as a practical matter, we've had problems with it and many of my clients who kind of pursued the O-X on their own, then they have come back to us, and we said, "look, we can get you into an O status right now" and they go ahead and do it, then they say, you know what, I just don't want to mess with it anymore; I can renew on a yearly basis, I'm happy to do that." and they just move along. 

So all things considered, when comparing the O and the O-A, the big difference is that the O-A requires insurance, the O does not in order to maintain status. Now one probably wants insurance as a retiree in Thailand, but you want it as a requirement to maintain your ongoing status in the Kingdom, it may not be optimal for you.

So long story short, it is going to depend on the underlying facts in the given case what is going to be the best visa fit for a given person. That said, anybody over 50, if you're not at least seriously considering the standard O Retirement Visa alongside other options, I think you're being remiss.