Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the possibility of an Inheritance Tax on foreigners here in Thailand. What are we talking about here? Well first of all understand Property Law here in Thailand. Foreign nationals cannot own land in Thailand. We have discussed this at length; I'm not going to get too deep into that but long story short, foreign nationals cannot own land. That said, there is an exception to the prohibition on owning certain types of property here in Thailand including land, there's an exception in terms of the Thai Condominium Act which does permit foreign nationals to have what is often called in the Australian legal vernacular, Freehold Title; in the American legal vernacular, Fee Simple Absolute Title, and in the Thai vernacular, Chanote Title. You have the deed. It is possible for foreigners to own a condo to that extent. 

Now as we have discussed in other videos, there are rules to that. There are regulations associated with it; there are quotas associated with the Thai/Foreigner percentage within a given condo. We have discussed in the past, they've been talking about changing that; that doesn't look like it's going anywhere though. But there also it appears certain folks within the Thai Government that are very concerned about raising revenue. Now for me on a personal level I can't imagine why they would want to do this. Oh, could that be because they shut down the economy for 3 years and told us what to do and they didn't make any tax money? Well while they told us all we were “all in this together” and continued to get their paychecks, we had to slog it out and just deal with it. A lot of people suffered massively. I have very, very little sympathy for the Government coming out some years later and saying "oh we need money!" Well you should have thought of that before you shut us all down. Maybe think of that next time, and quite honestly this rampant attempt at wealth extraction, I don't think it's going to do any good for the country long term. 

That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from Khao Sod English, khaosodenglish.com, the article is titled: Expert urges Government to raise tax for foreign condo buyers. Quoting directly: "He proposed four types of property taxes on foreigners based on market transaction prices (rather than government-assessed values)." Yeah I love it. When they feel like it, they're just going to assess a value on you but if they don't like the assessed value, they'll say "well the market determines that and we are going to tax you on that because it's a higher number." It's having your cake and eating it too, as it were. Quoting further: "To raise revenue to boost the economy and increase funds for national development." 

Well I understand how raising taxes “increases” funds for national development, which again why not let the private sector develop. I do get infrastructure projects are necessary and Thailand actually in the past decade, has shown itself very good at investing in infrastructure for the long-term sort of fixed capital of the nation, and I will give credit where credit is due on that. Even the discussion of the proposed land bridge I think is a good idea, and certain reasonable taxes associated with that project and the increase in Thailand's infrastructure obviously is warranted. That being said, the notion that taxes in and of themselves boost the economy is just ridiculous. Anybody who knows about the private sector knows that at the end of the day, the private sector, all you are doing it is extracting money from productive use in the economy when you impose a tax. That's just what you are doing. That said, quoting further: "Inheritance tax: Proposed at a rate of 10 percent of the market value of the estate or 100,000 Baht per million baht.” So yeah, this is the big plan. We are out of money, let's not look at doing things more efficiently; let's not look at what problems we have. No, no, no, no. Let's just go tax the heck out of the foreigner.

Again it's worth reiterating. I have tried to reiterate this in the other videos I have made contemporaneously with this one on these topics. This is a proposal. This is not promulgated law so I don't want to be accused to being hyperbolic or sort of fear-mongering on this. But when they talk about this kind of thing, you need to be aware of it especially because you need to be aware of the one thing that you can usually get pretty well bipartisan if you will in the American context or non-partisan consensus on when it comes to Government, is taxing the people. They always seem to be able to compromise and come together if they decide they need to extract some wealth from their constituency basically.

So what does that mean? Nothing for now. I don't think we're going to see any major changes. I think it's worth noting, if a bunch of taxes get imposed on foreigners here in Thailand, look they just won't come. They won't buy condos, they won't want to be encumbered by that. So I'm hoping cooler heads prevail in the government and this expertise is okay taken, interesting proposals, but at the end of the day, if we're trying to boost business here in Thailand, more tax is probably not the way to do that.