Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing taxes in Thailand and I kind of thought of that song, "Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide". I think it was in the 60s, is it the Supremes who made that song? In any event, I got to thinking of that song, I've been doing a lot of analysis in light of the recent announcement regarding changes to how tax liability will be assessed based on timing of inbound funds to the Kingdom and I have done a number of videos on that.

I think folks that are watching this video will understand, but long story short, in the past if you deferred bringing money into Thailand until the next calendar year from the time it was accrued, there was no tax liability. That is now changing, the timing of when the money comes in no longer really applies in the analysis. Things like tax residency, where the underlying taxable event occurred, are now more of the issue. But the thing that I am trying to convey with this video is I have seen a lot of folks out there saying, "well we are just going to leave, we are going to go to this other country!" Name the country, I am not going to point out even any one specific country. Well look first off, most other countries are already in the position we are going into Jan 1, 2024. What are we talking about? Thailand has just had for themselves their own protocols associated with inbound funds and under their rules, they allowed this mitigation of liability via deferral of bringing in the money until a certain time period has passed, so the elapsing of certain calendar dates, let's just leave it at that. So in the past, it was possible if you brought in money later, effectively from the time that it might be accrued offshore, if you brought it into Thailand later, you just didn't have any tax liability on that. It was just viewed as sort of a net neutral, just sort of nothing, it was a null set, it didn't sort of exist in terms of assessment of tax liability.

Thailand is changing that. January 1, 2024 assessment of tax liability will now be applied regardless of when the money is actually brought into Thailand in terms of from the time it was made. So, it has got to be brought into Thailand, that is the triggering factor. But there is no longer going to be this analysis of "okay, well when was it accrued?" because just because it was brought into Thailand it might not be susceptible to Thai Tax Liability. I don't know of any other countries that have this. There may be some out there but I don't think so. Thailand had this, it was just a peculiarity of Thai tax law and now they are removing it so it is just, every other country that I know of in Southeast Asia, at least with the United States, most of the countries around the world and in Southeast Asia already have tax agreements, agreements regarding the sharing of banking information especially regarding Americans abroad, as well as Double Tax Treaties which covered all this. So again, if anything, up to this point Thailand has been substantially or orders of magnitude better because they had this rule that allowed for this kind of tax avoidance via timing, that even other jurisdictions never had in the first place. I have talked to some people in some other places and they have said "no I have never heard of that. That's just something Thailand apparently came up with." So first off, understand if anything Thailand's not getting worse, it's just like anywhere else, it's going to the system that any other country uses so this is why I say, there's nowhere to really run, nowhere to really hide with respect to this. 

Now on top of that, people need to fundamentally understand what Double Tax Treaties are, because they are a little bit, I hesitate to say disingenuous but they are a little bit counterintuitive in the sense that people think a Double Tax Treaty is created as like a benefit to the citizenry. Not really. They are created because in the past you could get out of tax liability by having money accrued to you in some offshore jurisdiction which may have very limited or no tax whatsoever and you still undertake the business activity or whatever you need to do associated with getting that money, you may do that in some other jurisdiction but they have no agreement so that jurisdiction may not have the ability to tax you on that money that is sitting in that other jurisdiction. That has largely gone away and these Double Tax Treaties are the circuit to do that; they are the mechanism to effectively nullify the ability for people to avoid taxation simply by parking money in some other jurisdiction. And what we are seeing now on a global scale is kind of at a supranational level, these Nations have all gotten together via these Double Tax Treaties and made it so effectively people cannot, individuals, let's stay away from corporate stuff, that gets into a whole other set of analysis, that is far deeper and much more complex. But on an individual basis, what is clear to me is what it has done is it has effectively mitigated to the point of almost completely getting rid of the ability to just move around bank accounts into various jurisdictions and accrue money in a given jurisdiction and thereby avoid taxation in virtually all other jurisdictions. As a practical matter and I am sure there are going to be a few exceptions to this depending on the jurisdiction you are dealing with, but as a practical matter, that era is over. This notion that you can just sort of up stakes, and run off, run off from tax liability, I think as time goes on we are going to see more and more that is not the case.

Let me be clear, I am not in favour of this stuff. I think people think that because I talk about it, sort of report on it for lack of a better term, that I am in favour of these things. I am very much sort of what has been referred to sometimes as a libertarian; I prefer to think of myself as just a free person that enjoys free enterprise and where possible I am going to avoid tax. That said there are circumstances where it is unavoidable. I don't question that I have tax liability for example here in Thailand, it just is what it is. But yes, if you are in an international context, yes there was a time when you could sort of structure things in such a way as to physically place money here so as to avoid being taxed there. I think that is falling by the wayside. The more I see it, yes corporations are a different thing. I do a lot of corporate tax advisory; I set up and assist in corporate matters and yeah corporations are different. But on an individual level, yeah, I just think that those days of being able to do that are over.

The other thing to take away from this video is look, Thailand is not substantially better or worse than any of the other countries out there especially for retirees. If anything, I think that Thailand is probably qualitatively better due to the standard of living, low cost of living as well as the fact that quite honestly the Visa scheme here is one of the most favourable in the world for retirees. But even individuals who aren't retirees, look, at the end of the day, this is just kind of happening on a global basis. We are ending up with this sort of supranational tax oversight that quite honestly, if you are dealing with the Banking System, I think more and more it is going to get to the point of near impossibility to avoid taxes in the way that it was possible to do so in the past.