Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Income Affidavits for Thai Retirement Visas. Basically, so I made videos on this years ago. Actually I got burned when I broke the story that in the American and British, well mostly the American context because that was where I knew for sure - it turned out the British were doing the same thing at the same time - but at the time I was really heavily burned when I made a video that said “hey, it looks like they are going to stop certifying Income Affidavits at the Embassy for Thai Retirement Visas. What were those?

Well it used to be you could go into, I am going to talk about this from the American context, it is my understanding the British and Australians did it in a similar manner, but it used to be you could go into the American Embassy and you could basically fill out an Affidavit, just hand signed, there was like a form but then you filled in a few places, hand signed Affidavit that said I have this amount of money coming in in terms of income at any given time.” You would sign it, they would notarize the signature, and to be clear, they were never testifying as to the veracity of the statements, simply notarizing the signature. Then you could go and have that legalized at Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then that could be used as evidence in your Thai Retirement Visa Extension application and basically it was just accepted at face value, and you could extend based on that. It was a very straightforward way of doing things and people really liked it.

Well, they ended it because the Thais came to the Americans and I think the British as well, call it the Anglos, and said, “hey, are you attesting to the veracity of these statements?” and basically those parties said, the Americans for example said, “No, we are not; we are simply notarizing the signatures.” And the Thais said, “well can you please stop doing that”, because it is causing us confusion effectively. Basically, the practice ended. The American Embassy and I believe the British Embassy does not attest to the veracity of one’s statements for any documentation pertaining to one’s income. Now, apparently the Canadians on some level were continuing to do this especially as it pertained to certain aspects of their Social Security System. I am not really up to speed on Canadian, I am not Canadian, I have never been to Canada, I have no idea how Canadian Law works so I am talking about this as sort of an outside observer but I have gotten other correspondence similar to what I heard in a recent correspondent on this channel, quote: “A Canadian is reporting that his O Retirement Visa is at risk. He does the 65,000 Baht per month option. He says that when he extends, he must get the Canadian Embassy to stamp his income as pension. They are now refusing to do so for Canadian Pension Plan and Old Age Security.” So they were, I think the Germans do something similar to this too, they apparently were attesting to, “hey this person gets X amount of pension”, and now they are apparently no longer going to be doing this. I have received correspondence - detailed in some cases - from other Canadians saying “hey, this is happening to me.” Again, I was hesitant to do anything on it, one, because I only received one email at one point; I just sort of said, “let’s see how that kind of firms up or percolates up.” Now, I have received further correspondence. It does look like there is something is going on with this. I don’t know the exact details of how this works, okay? So I want to be clear on that. I am not Canadian; I am not a Canadian Lawyer. If you are interested in that, you are probably best off contacting the Canadian Embassy but it looks to me like it is a very similar set of circumstances to when the Americans stopped notarizing Income Affidavits associated with Retirement Visas. It now looks like effectively Canada is doing the same thing.

That said, for the Canadians in the audience, it is probably a good idea to contact your local Embassy, find out exactly what is going on if you are using income, especially Canadian Pension Plan and Old Age Security Income as a basis for maintaining your status here in the Kingdom of Thailand.