Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing banking here in Thailand, specifically compliance with what can only be described as the alignment of Thailand's banking policies and laws with regard to aligning with the OECD, so-called. Let me preface this by saying, this is early days on this. I'm going to probably have more to say on this - I expect I will - over probably the coming 6 weeks or so I expect going into the New Year. Again, there's a lot of talk swirling around the ether of the internet by a lot of people who really should keep their mouths shut. And then there are a lot of questions on whether or not this is a foregone conclusion. I'm really unhappy with the media as well in sort of pushing this as if it's a foregone conclusion but luckily I have compatriots in our shall we say struggle, against some of this supranational nonsense, which is sort of the only word I have for it at this point in the form of - so my friend Nick Creed who I did an interview with some years, not years but some weeks, months back. He's got a sub-stack which I'll put a link in the description below to that sub-stack because he made me aware of this. He actually sent me a message and said "hey my bank just sent me something", and I'm going to go ahead and throw this up on screen. It is FATCA/CRS, so what is CRS? CRS is Common Reporting Standards, again I'll get into the details of this, but I want to go ahead and throw this up on screen, this form right here. Apparently, many people got this form, and this person, again a friend of mine, I'll put a link to the description below. Again, tip of the hat to Nick, thank you very much for putting this on my radar. I’ll link over to sub-stack, he's doing a good job of getting all the data points out there. But again, Common Reporting Standards and they're sending this, they're just sending this out. In this case, this was Kasikorn and he sent me a message, quoting: "I called the Bank. They said all foreigners have been sent this email. I asked if it was mandatory or voluntary. She said it was mandatory." Stop just a minute here. "I asked if it is related to the Thai Foreign Income Tax Law and she said yes." Well, what foreign income tax law, first of all? This is again being talked about as if it's a foregone conclusion. I've seen no legal changes promulgated; I have seen nothing in the Royal Gazette regarding this. Again, as we have discussed before, there was an intra-Revenue Department memorandum that went out in the third quarter of last year that changed the way in which taxes were assessed beginning January 1 of 2024, meaning that the timing of when you bring money into Thailand was no longer a factor in whether or not you could be assessed. So starting from Jan 1, any money that came in whenever accrued is subject to assessability. Well we know that. That doesn't necessarily mean you're liable. At the same time, I have got to tell you - just a personal opinion - where do these Banks and all of this supranational, these people get off just telling us what to do constantly? This is a foregone conclusion, no due process, we are just going to tell you you have to do this. With regard to this Common Reporting Standards, that's what they are trying to do. With regard to FATCA, I'll get into the analysis further here in a minute, let me just finish this quote: "Foreign Income Tax Law and she said yes." Quoting further: "I confirm CRS means Common Reporting Standards. I asked if there are consequences for not completing the form. She said, "We will not be able to send the form to the Revenue Department" but confirmed no consequences such as closing my bank account." 

Well two things going on here. 1) FATCA. Who does FATCA pertain to? It pertains to Americans with bank accounts overseas. So, anybody that has a bank account, in this case with Kasikorn, but I'm not pointing them out, this is just who we found out this first from, I'm sure the other Commercial Banks are probably doing similar stuff although they don't have to and I kind of wish they wouldn't. I'm also sort of wondering if this is being sort of pushed out here, here in this in-run as we're completing 2024 in an effort to make it appear as if these changes are a foregone conclusion. In point of fact, they are not. As I pointed out in prior videos, we quoted Mr. Barry down there at Pattaya Mail, Barry Kenyon, sorry, excuse me there, I quoted the Pattaya Mail, a Pattaya Mail article he did at the time which quoted directly the Finance Minister who had been saying up to that point, "oh this is happening", and the media was pushing it out there as if this again is a foregone conclusion and they said themselves, it's going to take a number of years to roll out. It's not a foregone conclusion that Thailand is joining the OECD. In this past year I talked in the video when it first came up, that Thailand might join OECD, that Thailand is exploring it, not that it is a foregone conclusion. In fact, I think there's a possibility it may not happen. Meanwhile I also think the timing of all of this is interesting. Here we are sitting in the lame duck of the final couple of months of Biden's Administration. We're sitting in the lame duck of both the Congresses. There has been a clear electoral mandate in the United States for a clear change of direction away from all of this stuff. It's Yellen who came up with this whole Global Minimum Tax nonsense which all ties in to this OECD and this "we're going to tax you everywhere, there is a Global Minimum Tax". I talked about it when Mr. Srettha, at the time Prime Minister was saying, "oh mandatory tax." Yeah, by dint of being born, we are all subject to tax. It was nonsense, it's still nonsense, it's still this ongoing push by this supranational entity. Call it the World Economic Forum; I call it the old European Colonialist frankly, especially in the context of Thailand because that's all this looks like to me. Neo-Colonialism through banking cooperation rather than through old school colonialism by conquest, which quite frankly at least was a little bit more honest. This is just duplicitous and in my opinion kind of sleazy on a certain level to just kind of ease in here. Again, I view this as purely extractive in terms of Thailand's wealth long term. As we discussed in another video this is what they do. They “harmonize” you to their system and then they get you into this system whereby you are obliged to give foreign aid which they will then, through the International Banking System, they'll loan money to Thailand, our debt to GDP ratio gets to go up in order to give out foreign aid but then if it's not paid back, Thailand will then be on the hook for it but first they have to “align up” all of our laws here, so that they can easily suck that money out of Thailand. That's what's going on. I hope cooler heads in places that understand these things here in Thailand comprehend this that this is not great for this country. If you need any proof of that, look at the West, look at the member states of the OECD. Is this the direction we want to be on for Thailand? And again, I say this knowing full well we're sitting here in this kind of transitionary period when it comes to what's going on in the United States which again come Jan 20th, I think we're going to see a major about face, or what do they call it, volte face, it's just a complete turnaround from a lot of this stuff. And again, I really, I have to take issue with a lot of the media out there, the way they presented this as sort of a foregone conclusion, as if this is already done, as if due process has occurred. It hasn't. We haven't seen any of these new laws. It is not incumbent upon people to have to pay taxes just because they exist. It is not the right of the banks to tell people everything about your financial situation. People have privacy. It's really nonsense if you really think about it. It's really quite a bit of nonsense. 

Then meanwhile okay, so what is this? It's mandatory but there are no consequences. Well it's because this is a lot of smoke and mirrors. For Americans they have to do FATCA anyway and anytime an American goes to a bank here in Thailand, and tries to open a bank account, they're going to have to deal with filling out all these FATCA forms and the W8, and all of this other stuff. Meanwhile, I think this is a scare tactic being rolled out where okay the FATCA, and then they are saying, Common Reporting Standards and let's get in to that. 

I'm going to go over here to Nick Creed's sub-stack where he gets into this a little bit even further and I like his data points here. This is @nicholascreed.substack.com. Quoting directly: "Expect to hear more about Common Reporting Standards (CRS), in 2024. CRS refers to an existing agreement between banking institutions in multiple different jurisdictions, territories and countries. According to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The Common Reporting Standards developed in response to the G20 request and approved by the OECD Council on 15 July 2014…" Interesting that this came into effect 15 July, 2014. This is going back a decade ago when Thailand went a different direction and we've been rather insulated over here from all of this for the past decade and only within the past year, have we seen this major push from these supranational organizations and our Prime Minister going to the World Economic Forum of all places; that's like going to Mordor or something and coming back and saying, "hey we got a great deal out of it". It's like what is that? None of this was going on for a decade and then just poof automatically, it all comes roaring back. Quoting further: "..calls on jurisdictions to obtain information from their financial institutions and automatically" -  automatically - "exchange that information with other jurisdictions on an annual basis." Well, who talked to the Thais about having all their data shared with a bunch of other outsiders, non-Thais? Quoting further: "It sets out the financial account information to be exchanged, the financial institutions required to report, the different types of accounts and taxpayers covered, as well as common due diligence procedures to be followed by financial institutions." So Thailand is not even making her own banking law if we go under this “system”? Quoting further: "The Standard consists of the following four key parts: 

• A model Competent Authority Agreement, providing the international legal framework for the automatic exchange of CRS information." Yeah, by the way, has Thailand signed any of that? This process was supposed to take 5 years. Why are you telling us all when the process isn't complete that we have to do this? Or chase away banking customers here in Thailand under the rubric that this is a foregone conclusion? Quoting further:
• The Common Reporting Standard;
• The Commentaries on the CAA and the CRS; and
• The CRS XML Schema User Guide."

Quoting further: "Perusing the 174-page OECD implementation handbook for Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Information on Tax Matters" - again why should the Thais have their information shared with anyone other than the Thai state regarding their tax situation or their banking. Quoting further: "One can deduce the painstaking lengths that this global collaborative financial tracking and reporting instrumental framework has gone to, from maximum catchment and enforcement "cooperation" to have our banks share information transnationally, whilst having governments pressured into writing its directives into domestic law." And again, I wonder how much pressure there would be brought to bear on this come January 21, when we see the new Administration in the United States. Are they going to be pushing for this as hard or is this a last-ditch attempt to try to get this to happen here in Thailand while there still what is perceived to be the opportunity to do so? And I don't see how you're able to do that because again, they said this would take a full 5 years to be fully legally promulgated to go through all the necessary legislative and otherwise due process to get this done, but they're selling it if it already is. I think that is telling. Quoting further: "According to a tax consultant consultation of a friend of mine" - well take that for whatever it's worth and first off, I would love to know who the tax consultant is because as we have discussed in other videos, if they're a foreigner here in Thailand they are a criminal, so you have got to take anything they say with a grain of salt, but let's go further: "...friend of mine recently had in seeking advice in Thailand, the Thai Government will not back down from implementing the foreign income tax law on January 1st, 2024." What foreign income tax law? Where is the Law? Quoting further: "They need to raise funds (taxes) to literally pay for the 10,000 THB digital handout scheme." Well, that's not true. We've already discussed that. That money they've already handed out did come from places. Now they gutted the budget for this, and as we discussed at the time, they are probably going to have to go into further debt in order to keep doing what they do and keep running the country on any kind of sound fiscal basis, but they decided to go ahead and do that. That money's already gone. We don't need all of this implementation in order to pay for that. That's already been paid for. Again, I hate the way that this is being framed. First of all, they came out and said we're in an economic emergency; we have to go do all this digital stuff. Then they say, "oh it's not going to be a problem, we have the budget for it." First, they said we had to add 10% debt to GDP ratio, they walked that back. Then they said that they would find it in the budget which they never really did, they just gutted everything else and later on down the road are probably going to have to go into further debt to pay for the actual programs that we are used to running, but all right. That said, no, it is not imperative to adopt OECD/CRS mandates simply because we have the Digital Wallet Scheme, I shouldn't say the Digital Wallet Scheme, but we had the handout, okay? Stop using your own policies as justification for your own policies. It's nonsensical circular logic. Quoting further: "They have signed up to Common Reporting Standards" - who signed up to anything? The point of this was it was going to take 5 years to possibly integrate ourselves into that system. Thailand hasn't signed on for this, she's looking at it and there's no grand mandate for this to occur, okay? Whose platform ran on "we need to get into the OECD, and have all of our citizens' banking documentation shared with a cabal of supranational bankers? Who ran for that last year? Quoting further: "They have chosen the country for the early piloting of the CBDC." Well guess what? Nobody wants it okay. I mean the Nigerians; they tried this out on the Nigerians and the Nigerians flipped out over it because it's bad; it's bad policy; it's not real money. As I have discussed, Gresham's Law; it will cause our entire economy to go topsy turvy if you will, because again it's just bad policy. Have sound money, have sound fiscal policy and watch how well your country does. This isn't difficult, okay? This pie in the sky "Oh, we are going to have digital money and we will all sing Kumbaya and live on the clouds or whatever, it's nonsense. You know what it's going to be? Totalitarian surveillance tracking and tracing every financial transaction you ever make. That is CBDC. Quoting further: "The aforementioned tax consultant has recently been in discussions with Chambers of Commerce for both UK and Singapore." Well who cares? I don't care about UK and Singapore. This isn't a colony of the UK, and this isn't Singapore, this is Thailand. Thailand makes her own Laws  Thailand makes her own laws regarding taxes, Thailand makes her own laws regarding banking and I find it absolutely infuriating that they wouldn't even possibly be sharing private banking information of Thais with outsiders of this country, with people not Thai. Fine the Thai state, whatever, the Thai Government, okay, in line with whatever relevant privacy laws are out there but why should we be sharing this with outsiders? What does it have to do with anybody? Why do they get to come in here and tell us what to do in our own Banking System? Does this not feel like some level of Colonialism? I mean honestly, is it not self-evident? Quoting further: "They are currently negotiating for a caveat to the rules to allow for people to bring in max 10m Thai Baht for property purchases, anything over that is charged at 10% tax." Well to paraphrase Braveheart, good job squabbling over the scraps from the OECD table, and failing to see your God-given right to something better, which is just being Thai and being in Thailand and having a Thai banking system.

We don't need this OECD nonsense. All it is doing is causing consternation, all it will do is cause wealth extraction from the Kingdom and at the same time, in the meantime it will probably scare off investment and it frankly goes against every basic notion of Thainess that I've learned in the 17 years I've been here, most notably financial privacy.