Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "Work from Thailand" schemes here in the Kingdom, and what are we talking about? For those who are unaware, I did another video on this channel, it was titled: "The Workation". They are talking about "Workations” where people come to Thailand and they may be working online and this has been talked about in the context of a lot of these new visas for high net worth individuals, digital nomads, experts coming in to Thailand, these kind of folks. I wanted to go ahead and do this video because I got some correspondence from someone who sent me the following, I am going to quote. Quoting directly: "It looks like they keep promoting this new “Work from Thailand” idea. Are they going to revise the Work Permit rules? Or are they just going to pretend it is illegal?  (I think I think this person meant it is legal or it is not illegal) but are they just going to pretend it is legal to work in Thailand without a Work Permit?" So what are we talking about here?

For those who are unaware, Thailand has very strict foreign labour rules, in fact restrictions against foreign labour here in Thailand. To go ahead and kind of provide some clarification here, I am going to go ahead and quote from our website, legal.co.th, and this was a video we did but we have got it up on there with a transcript and some further information in there. It is titled: What is the Legal Definition of Work in Thailand? Quoting directly: "Foreigners Working Management and we took this definition from the Foreigners Working Management Emergency Decree of 2017 which came from the Department of Employment website and that is doe.go.th, and within Section 5 of that Decree "Work" means the use of physical strength or knowledge or engaging in an occupation or job with or without an intention to obtain wages or any other benefit except the work prescribed in the notification by the Minister." So "use of physical strength or knowledge", that is kind of anything. I mean the knowledge part is interesting to me because that may apply in this “Workation” context to so-called digital nomads, people who are working online and coming to Thailand to spend a prolonged period of time presumably to engage in working but also having a nice time here in the Kingdom.

Now as we have discussed in other videos, these "new visas" have been approved in principle, we have not seen a regulatory framework promulgated with respect to this so it remains to be seen exactly how this is going to look. Presumably they would do something, one would think they would may do something to deal with the work restrictions associated therewith but it remains to be seen. It is not unheard of for there to be unintended consequences as a result in regulatory drafting oversight here in the Kingdom of Thailand.