Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Destination Thailand Visas. So okay, first of all, I'm going to call something of a little bit of a truce on the Destination Thailand Visa. I know there are a lot of folks out there that have problems with my attitude toward it or my thinking, especially on the policy side of the DTV, and understand I'm an Attorney. Law is our business, as our motto implies here at the office. It's what we do. It's what I do. And I am able to disagree with something on a policy level while assisting clients in getting that type of Visa. I don't know why people get all bent out of shape about that notion, but I am. We assist a number of people with the DTV; we're processing off the top of my head like a half a dozen at the minute. So just because I have my issues with the policy thinking behind the DTV, it doesn't mean we are not perfectly happy to assist people in getting the right visa for them. And understand, just because look, yeah, I may have the fervour of the converted as a naturalized Thai, I want to see best outcomes for Thailand. I think that the way the DTV exists in its current form may not provide the best outcomes for Thailand and I'm going to be vocal about that. That said, I'm also, for lack of a better term, a mercenary, and there is that great line in the movie The Ninth Gate where Frank Langella's character is talking to Johnny Depp's character and he says, "there's nothing more reliable than a man whose loyalty can be purchased with hard cash." Yeah, I'm kind of like that, and for my clients, I want to get them the best benefits. So understand, I'm not against the DTV as a practical matter but me with my hat on as a Thai wanting best outcomes for Thailand, I think there could have been better ways to have set up the DTV; that's where I will leave that. 

Now the analysis here is not me getting into "the Destination Thailand is bad, it's a distraction from something", no. What I'm talking about though pertains to the developments of the last two years - which I have discussed at length across this channel quite a great deal - and why I think that perhaps the DTV might have been created because I’ve discovered, I will put a link in the description below to a brief that I've written on this, that Amity Treaty Companies in my opinion are domestic non-resident corporations of the United States and so long as they are not doing substantial business in the United States, i.e. they don't have a branch or something or subsidiary doing business in the United States presumably under the rubric of what we would call minimum contacts to cite the old "International Shoe" Case which is basically the basis for what we call long-arm jurisdiction in the United States as it pertains to civil procedure, as long as these type of Amity Companies are purely operating in Thailand, you end up with a situation where they sort of if you will fall through the cracks of US Tax Law. I have discussed that at length in many other videos and again in the brief which I will put in the description below regarding that as well. 

Long story short, the things we saw being rolled out in tandem with the DTV going back like 18 months, ago where again at the time the Pheu Thai led coalition government was really pushing the DTV because in my opinion, there was a lot of undue foreign influence especially from the World Economic Forum, and the likes of the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development so-called which just looks to me like a giant banking consortium that is just trying to figure out how much money we all have and track and trace all of our transactions whatever, this DTV sort of rolled out at the same time it looked to me like they were rolling out a new interpretation of the old Tax Clearance rules, wherein they were basically going to stop people at the airport and basically say, "hey did you do 180 days?" If so, they would be able to cross-reference your banking history and see whether or not they could basically extract tax at the Immigration checkpoint, and I did the videos at the time. That was forestalled by then Interior Minister and later Prime Minister and Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul rolling out the Thailand Digital Arrival card which basically pushed all that off. Then we find out that the DTV can't do banking. Well I think that that then came about because they wanted it to do banking when they were going to go ahead and basically trap people at immigration in these man traps, and basically say, "oh you have done 180 days; you had X amount transferred to yourself here in Thailand; we're going to call that a taxable event and try to extract funds from you"; and what are you going to do when you're at the airport? Again they have the rubric for this. The infrastructure exists in the form of the Tax Clearance Certificate System; they were just looking in my opinion to digitize that and bring that online in a practical manner. Again Anutin's actions rolling out the Digital Arrival Card sort of pushed that off. 

I've recently come to the conclusion that basically there is an establishment the world over that is just always going to want to tax. They are going to want to extract revenue. It's what governments do, and I kind of posited to myself, was the DTV actually kind of rolled out because this Amity Company thing acts as a kind of cloaking device if you will, and I'm not imputing or implying any nefarious or illegal activities going on, but these companies are unique insofar as their legal posture as it pertains to US Tax Law, was perhaps the DTV being sort of rolled out to mitigate against that by basically getting people to go into that Visa rather than looking at other options which could put them in a more favourable position especially as it pertained to US taxes. Hard to say whether or not that was what was going down there, but I've seen in the aftermath, a lot of folks who would have been better off in many ways going after standard Business Visas and Work Permits, seeking their Permanent Residence under an Amity Treaty set up, company set up, that put them in a favourable position vis a vis US Tax Authorities and the DTV kind of acts as if you will, and it looks easier and more hassle free and in certain ways it is. Again for not everybody would an Amity Company be the best thing but there is a subset of people where depending on their factual circumstances it would be their best option and it actually would provide a lot of long-term benefits, again especially for Americans who are actually looking to truly live and work, set up a hub here in Thailand. For a lot of different reasons Amity Companies are very, very useful and I think the DTV was sort of in a sense, brought out to again distract from that and maybe get people to look at something else because again in my opinion, they were trying to create this sort of integrated supranational tax system that seems to, with the exception of Mr. Trump over in the United States, which say what you will about all of that, there's good, bad and different things going on there, one thing Trump did come out with unequivocally was rejecting the OECD - and he has rejected a lot of other things here recently as well - but that OECD rejection reminded me a lot of his rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership at the beginning of his first term, where that to my mind was a very big benefit to many folks who never saw it, especially Hollywood did not see how Mr. Trump really did save them in many ways by getting rid of the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

But again, the thing to take away from this video and understand, my point being I'm not denigrating the DTV itself. In fact it can be a useful option for many, many people, but there are serious benefits especially to Americans to be had both in Thailand and possibly in the US from an Amity Treaty setup, and I think in many ways, the DTV may have been designed to kind of deflect attention from that fact here in the Kingdom of Thailand.