Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Foundations in Thailand. This isn't a topic I discuss very often because quite honestly it has been my experience over the past roughly 16 years of living in Thailand and to be clear, I am a naturalized Thai citizen; I am an American Attorney; I have primarily always deal with American matters or American legal matters and how they interact with Thai legal matters through kind of a Comparative Law perspective. But the issue of Foundations is something that I have seen come up and foreigners be interested in over the years and it is usually something we sort of here at the firm shy away from encouraging foreigners to get involved with, because I think that their expectations regarding Foundations are quite honestly skewed from the way the underlying policy for Foundations here in Thailand is basically meant to be. What I am trying to say is, the fundamental policies pertaining to Foundations in Thailand are often at odds with the motives of foreigners who are interested in Foundations in Thailand, that's basically a good way to put it. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Immigration to review Swiss man's visa after beach 'assault'. For those who are unaware, this story has been pretty big news roughly the last week or so here in Thailand. There is a foreign man down in Phuket who is sort of at the centre of a controversy involving alleged assault; there is also public land encroachment also being alleged in this overall case, it is just generally, it is one of these cases where a foreign national is finding themselves at odds with the Thai legal system.

Now a lot of this stuff is allegation and accusation and we haven't seen the full facts fully elucidated in this case so I am not going to cost any excursions at anybody in any of these videos. I am simply making these videos to discuss this topic conceptually and also to hopefully provide some insight to foreigners into what Foundations are and how they work and also why they are not, again you shouldn't be looking at Foundations through the prism of like trying to game the system or gain some sort of massive tax advantages or things like this. I understand there are similar types of structures especially in Europe that are akin to Foundations that are similar to, well they are not even all that similar but I think people believe that they are similar to the Foundation structure here in Thailand and this is why we sometimes see foreigners here in Thailand dealing with Foundations or having problems dealing with Foundations. Honestly I think their perspective is just skewed honestly, that's my kind of thinking on it.

Again going back to this article though, Immigration to review Swiss man's visa after Beach 'assault'. As usual I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail, a lot of good information in there. Quoting directly: "Citing information from Immigration, Mr Adul said, (I am going to redact names), this foreigner has a Visa that is set to expire on March 13th. The Swiss man operates a number of businesses in Thailand and has a registered Foundation under his name." And then they went on to note that: "The incident has led to calls for a thorough investigation into his property and businesses." and then to quote before even that: "authorities are also looking at the legality of his businesses and foundation in the country."  

So apparently the upshot of this whole kerfuffle if you will, is resulting in heightened scrutiny on the part of the Thai Authorities on this person's business activity here in Thailand. I am making another video contemporaneously with this one where we discuss that at length, specifically the business side, but this video is to discuss Foundations. Again, Foundations are they are basically like a charitable enterprise. I would say that they are not too far off from what we would call non-governmental organizations in a western context so-called NGOs, that's not even quite an apples to apples comparison though. Again these Foundations it's not like NGO's, so-called think tanks and things. These Foundations are meant truly to have a charitable purpose. It is not designed to be sort of a structure to provide some sort of tax protection specifically, although there may be tax certain tax exemptions associated with foundations if they are engaged in charitable endeavours but again that is not a foregone conclusion one, and again these really should be used in good faith is basically what I am trying to convey in this video. And a lot of folks look at Foundations, and I have talked to a lot of people over the years who look at them this way and they say "well I am trying to use it as like a tax structure" or something. And again, this may be one of my unpopular opinions but in my opinion that is not a good way to look at these things at least from my perspective in this capacity as something of an outside observer looking in to the Thai system.

Look at the end of the day, if you really are engaging in charitable activities or you looking to set up a charitable endeavour here in Thailand, Foundation maybe the correct structure. Again there may be other ways to set things up or just to give of one's time and money sort of in an individual capacity rather than even going through a structure such as a Foundation. But long story short, those out there who are looking at Foundations as some kind of structure to avoid taxes or something in Thailand or to create some kind of structure to obfuscate relevant laws regarding foreign ownership or foreign ownership of certain types of endeavours or foreign ownership of certain types of property, again this is not the intention behind why the laws were promulgated to create Foundations in the first place and foreigners should be very careful with setting up Foundations and adhere in good faith to the legal provisions here in Thailand pertaining to not only the set up but the maintenance of Foundations.