Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Residency in Thailand. I like the term that Wikipedia uses sometimes where there is a conflation of words either in the sense that they are homophones, they sound the same but they are actually very different words or the fact that different things happen at different times and they will often times have similar names, so Wikipedia says "okay we do a disambiguation and we list out the differences so people can see that although they are using maybe the same word, there are different implications to that word. That is what I am hoping people will take away from this video. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment on our channel, quote: "Tell people how they are not a Permanent Resident if they have to regularly renew or extend a Visa. They are only temporary residents even if they stay for 30 years. Many people don't know the difference." Actually, residency and residence have been bandied about a lot out in the ether of the internet here recently, so yeah let's get into some disambiguation. 

First off in Thailand let's be clear, when I discuss Permanent Residence, what we are talking about is something analogous to Lawful Permanent Residence, aka Green Card status back in the United States, or what we would call in a British context Indefinite Leave to Remain, ILR. Basically you are in the country and you are resident there. In order to sort of "kick you out of the country", they have to put you through deportation proceedings very similar to Permanent Residence in any other country; so you are just presumed to be Resident in Thailand once you have Permanent Residence. This should not be confused for example with the so-called Long-Term Residence Visas that have been created in roughly the past year here in Thailand and created out of whole cloth mind you. When it comes to, I think it was a bad choice of terminology to call that a Resident Visa, it basically should be called a long-stay Visa because it does not confer residence in the legal sense of Permanent Residence or Lawful Permanent Residence here in Thailand; it's just a really long visa and non-immigrant mind you. Again I have discussed this in other videos they keep claiming "oh you don't have to do 90-day reporting as a result of being on this Visa", I don't know how, it's non-immigrant. Non-Immigrant Visas are covered under the provisions of the Immigration Act in 1979 and that Act says anyone in non-immigrant status needs to do a 90-day report, that's the Immigration Act, that is what it is. 

But leaving that aside, again there are all kinds of confusion that arises in this whole notion of Residence which brings us over to the tax issue which is Tax Residence. Again as we have discussed in other videos, your rule of thumb is 180 days, strictly speaking 183 is the number that I have always seen but I use 180 just as a rule of thumb and also it's a conservative number because if you go into 181 days you are probably going to be all right but 180 days, that is the rule of thumb for Tax Residence in Thailand. That means that they may be able to assess taxes on you for money that is brought in a given period of time because you have been in the country over a certain period of time, in this case 180 days. Again different nations have different rules regarding Tax Residency. 

That said through the OECD and all this "harmonization", we are seeing some of this stuff even internationally, starting to be harmonized if you will; I don't even like that word really in this context but basically throughout many different countries they are making these rules similar, substantially similar or totally the same. 

Leaving that aside, that is Tax Residency which people on top of all of these terms get mixed up with a Yellow Tabian Baan which is a House Registration Book. As we have discussed it has no bearing on immigration or tax for that matter. Yellow Tabian Baans or House Registration books are for foreigners; they were created under the Civil Registration Act of 1991 and as we have discussed in other videos, they have no bearing on one's immigration status in Thailand nor does it have any bearing on one's tax status. 

So those are the differences between Residence here in Thailand and I hope that provides some clarity and insight for those in Thailand who are dealing with issues related to living here long-term or tax or how all these things interact.