Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the so-called Tourist Tax here in Thailand. Unfortunately all throughout even the lockdowns, they were still talking about this; even when tourism was in the doldrums when it was literally decimated. I did a video on that at the time when it was literally decimated, it was like 18% of GDP and then it went down to like 1.8% of total GDP, even during that time there was still kind of talking about "well we may want to do this Tourist Tax". Let me jump in here. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya News, that's thepattayanews.com, the article is titled: Thai Prime Minister announced to scrap controversial 300-Baht Tourism Fee. Quoting directly: "Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has announced the Government's decision to scrap the controversial 300-Baht tourism fee, initially proposed last year but faced opposition from the private sector. The fee, intended to be collected from each tourist entering Thailand was abandoned with the rationale that its elimination could encourage higher tourist spending in other areas thereby providing a more substantial boost to the economy." Yeah credit where credit is due here. I have really got to say this is a good idea on the Government's part. Hopefully this is finally put to press once and for all because this whole topic seems to come up about every six months, maybe every four, where they say: "oh well what about this tourist tax!"  Stop, stop. Let tourists come in and spend their money and then the VAT and other things will soak up that Revenue that way. By just putting it levying it on tourists it kind of looks to me like a little bit of an exercise in "killing the golden goose". 

So good to see that the Government and the Prime Minister have said "yeah we are scrapping this whole thing. This isn't a good idea". I think its problem is kind of an optics one too. It looks bad for the tourism sector here in Thailand when foreigners sort of see that “wow, the Thais want to put like a Tourist Tax on us. Well why do they want to do that?” I understand the other side of the argument too where yes tourists come in, they do utilize resources of the infrastructure; sometimes they are injured and there needs to be a fund to assist them, yeah, but I think there are other ways to do it rather than the Tourist Tax. Again I think not having this and just have it come out of the general budget; just create a budget to deal with these things and soak up the money through the tax mechanisms here, rather than a wholly new one that can have a detrimental impact on the Tourism Sector which is a very important sector; it is not the most important but it is one of many very important sectors of the Thai Economy.