Transcript of the above video: 

A question I have even been asking myself lately is, "what's going on with Work Permits in Thailand, work authorization generally?" It has become really quite a patchwork of laws, regulations, customs - customs isn't the right word - but it depends; let's go back, let's sort of go back here. 

If you go back 5 years ago and back from that, Work Permits were pretty straightforward. It was, you got a Visa, you got a Work Permit; depending on the underlying Visa would depend on the Work Permit. Then they came along with Smart Visas where they said that work authorization was sort of inherent to the Visa. Then they came along with this stuff where it's, "oh if you are a nomad or whatever and you are working - you are not working in Thailand, but you have operations offshore - you are allowed to do that but so long as it doesn't as I recall “impinge upon the Thai economy”, which I don't know how you can operate in an employment capacity without it impinging on the Thai economy. But the point I am trying to make is it is very vague; it's a sort of patchwork now of rules and regulations; it depends on the Visa. One thing that many folks I talk to that have the Elite Visa get frustrated about is they say we don't have any kind of work authorization. Well Elite was created decades ago under the prior Thaksin era and then it sort of disappeared. Then it was resurrected again, and it still does not have, to the best of my knowledge as of the time of this video, it still does not have any type of work authorization associated with it. Meanwhile, they sort of invented these other visas that have this sort of implied work authorization. What's going on? 

Well one, this is really, and obviously I am talking my own book on this channel as a general matter - it's a promotional channel - but yeah look, you really want to talk to a professional that deals with work authorization regularly if you are looking to come over here and work. And I say that even those folks who, "oh I saw this online that the LTR or the DTV or the this or the that, I can do this, that and the other thing on these visas." Maybe. It really does depend and honestly, I think there is a lot of extra nuance and interpretation that goes into some of this stuff because I think some people think they can come over here and do whatever they want on some of these new visas, and the fact the matter is that's just not the case. Meanwhile, the old school Work Permits - although seemingly more narrow in scope - actually provide practically more ability to work here in Thailand than ostensibly these other new visas that seem to be more flexible. 

In short, it's confusing and those who find themselves overwhelmed with confusion, it may not be a terrible idea to contact a legal professional, gain some insight and guidance into how best to proceed.