Transcript of the above video:

I have kind of been poking around the periphery of this issue in a lot of prior videos but I thought I would make one specifically where we talk about the interaction between current Immigration Policy, tax policy and banking policies and how I think it is creating something of a perfect storm in this low season insofar as it is a really low, low season. Like foreigners are around, and if you go to sort of the foreigner dominated if you will areas, the tourist spots, Grand Palace, down in Khao San Road or some parts of Sukhumvit, even here near our office in Silom you will see foreigners, but you get anywhere, even a little bit outside of those little bubble areas, it gets very clear we just don't have the same number of what we call 'farang' running around here. 

Now I have talked about this in other videos. One, I think the sort of perpetual expat or perpetual tourist, which I get into in another video I made contemporaneously with this one, but they are sort of gone and I have talked about this a lot in other videos, it's tax; I think it's just this insane OECD, WEF inspired tax policy that Thailand seems to have unfortunately had poison poured in its ear over. We are sitting here, a little past the halfway point of the year, I think a lot of those folks came in during kind of the end of last year, the high season, and we are 6 months into the year here and they are sitting there going, well I met my 180 days, I'm out of here, and I'm not going to come back until there is a new calendar year so that I don't have to worry about tax stuff; people just don't want to mess with the hassle. 

Now as I have discussed in other videos, multiple people aren't going to really have to worry about that, but, or I should say multiple people that are worried really don't need to worry about it. I've discussed it at length. I would say 80% of folks out there, it is just not really an overall issue, but it concerns people, and they don't want to mess with the hassles of tax. Meanwhile, banking policy is having an impact on Immigration insofar as because they want to go after “scam” accounts and a lot of it seems to have, it's like a feedback loop. Folks coming in on the Destination Thailand Visa are having problems with banking and people that set up bank accounts on that kind of Visa are having their Bank Accounts closed because they are not considered Non-immigrant visas and they are worried about scam accounts and anti-money laundering provisions and all of this. I think it's kind of nonsense, but it's having an impact; when policies get implemented, they oftentimes go broader than you would think. There is sort of the Murphy's Law, there are knock on effects that you don't think of and the overall policy is resulting in it being very difficult to set up banking which is resulting in for example standard Retirement Visa, new ones being issued, it's getting more difficult; extensions I am hearing now are getting to be somewhat difficult, especially as it pertains to banking with some folks, especially if they didn't get their banking sorted out at the beginning of their stay here. And this is having an impact because of, in my opinion rather shortsighted and frankly kind of half-thought out Immigration Policy in the form of the Destination Thailand Visa and then, really this nonsensical kind of totalitarian OECD inspired banking policies which are then having an impact on people's ability to get a Retirement Visa, which my opinion, standard Retirement Visa holders are kind of almost, it is not a matter of class or standards, but they are really an optimal subset of expat or immigrant, however you want to look at it. They come here; they dump money into an account; they sit here, and they spend it. I mean what more do you want, really? They tend to be older, they tend to be more laid back, they are not wild or anything. I'm not saying all of them. I've seen some good old boys around here that are fairly old that are still having a good time raising cane. 

But the point I am trying to make is it's having an impact on new retirees being able to get into the Retirement Visa system - a lot of it is banking policy that is having a knock-on impact. Is this good? I don't think so. I mean those again those are kind of optimal folks we'd like to have here in Thailand; just want to spend money.