Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing this newly proposed Tourism Fee, but it doesn't seem to be a "Tourism Fee", it seems to be an "any Foreigner coming into Thailand Fee". The reason I thought of making this video is I was reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, that is thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Tourist levy hits further turbulence with fears it could harm Airlines effort to boost flight numbers. Quoting directly: "Efforts by Thailand to introduce a new tourist levy to be known as the Thailand Tourism Fee (TTF) are making slow progress after it was confirmed this week that the plan is currently being delayed over discussions to formulate a method to collect the charge for incoming Travelers by land and sea. It has also emerged that the proposed collection method has generated resistance from the international airline industry who are being asked to charge the fee which involves communication between Thailand's Ministry of Tourism and Sports and aircraft with the finalized passenger manifest required to be transmitted to Bangkok 15 minutes after takeoff for each incoming flight to the Kingdom. Industry sources fear this may jeopardize efforts to increase flight frequency into Thailand this year to boost foreign tourist numbers.” And this is important. Quoting directly: "It has also been confirmed this week that there will be no exemption for expat residents or foreigners working in Thailand." 

Yeah, so clearly that's a major change from when we were first discussing this. This thing was initially disgust as a tourist fee, sort of a tourism fee, and as we have discussed in prior videos it is apparently a kind of Insurance scheme in case folks come to Thailand and get injured or something and they have to go into the hospital, now it has been broadened out. On top of that, as we have discussed in a prior video made contemporaneously with this one, they brought on board this quite honestly what looks to me a really, really cumbersome way of collecting the money and it looks like the entire process of doing that puts a tremendous onus on the airlines who quite frankly I would think would be a touch discouraged to come to Thailand if they have to deal with all this extra paperwork. Meanwhile, we now come to find out it applies to expats and those working in Thailand; as they said, “expat residents and those working in Thailand”.

Again, I really have to wonder if this is the greatest idea at this point especially considering the fact that we have had two years of essentially a non-existent travel industry here in Thailand is it really a good idea to be honestly monkeying about in the internal dynamics of how Airlines come to Thailand and then on top of that, do we really want to be discouraging expats to come here. I really hope cooler heads prevail on this one and we don't see this implemented as they are discussing it right now. Hopefully they'll rethink it. If a tax is warranted, it is just needed, I think reasonable people can disagree on that but okay, presuming that let's say everybody agrees it is needed, let's find a reasonable way to impose it and then deal with that from there and maybe let's not mess with the people who are already working in Thailand and presumably paying taxes here.