Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the LTR, short for Long-Term Residence Visas. Although I sound like a broken record on this channel as I have said many, many times, not really a Residence Visa; it is called that, not a Residence Visa. In theory it is a 10 year Visa, in reality it's a 5 and 5. You get 5 years and then you have got to be assessed and then you can get an extra 5. Long story short, it's not a Residence Visa, not even really a 10-year visa and then on top of that I have discussed this a little bit but I wanted to kind of get into this in a little more detail regarding the notion of kind of like mandatory tax scrutiny associated with the LTR Visa.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand's 10 and 20-year visas face surging Chinese demand. There is a lot of interesting information in there, a lot of interesting insights. I urge those who are watching this video go check that out for themselves. Quoting directly: "Although the LTR route offers a digital work permit, which Elite does not," and, this is me talking, it doesn't always offer a digital Work Permit, it depends which category you are using. Quoting again: "Although the LTR route offers a digital Work Permit, which the Elite does not, there is a lot of overlap between the schemes. The fact that Elite is cheaper and less bureaucratic, does not require mandatory health insurance and excuses holders from tax on overseas earnings may be deciding factors in the eyes of Chinese investors wanting a regular base outside of the mother country. European expats may snap and snarl at these long stay visas as they grapple with the ever-changing immigration rules for one year renewals. But Thailand isn't looking in their direction right now." Yeah, not an unfair assessment on that.

But that said, the point of this video, "excuses holders from tax on overseas earnings may be deciding factors". Yeah as we have noted in other videos, there's sort of a tax audit element for lack of a better term associated with the so-called LTR Visa. In fact I kind of look at it as just volunteering to be audited and audited on what appears to be your worldwide income with respect to LTR status or maintaining LTR status I should say. So again, while the LTR may pose some serious benefits under certain circumstances for certain people, I think in my opinion that's something that really needs to be considered, this whole tax scrutiny, because I don't think people are looking at that. They are mostly just looking at the Visa side of it and that level of tax scrutiny is not something to just be dismissed out right. Now again, exactly how this plays out remains to be seen. We are still kind of seeing this LTR thing evolve. My personal opinion I made it clear in other videos, I think it is something between the Elite and the Smart Visa basically. Again it will probably be useful to a relatively narrow subset of folks out there who are looking to be in Thailand long term.