Transcript of the above video:

Sort of floating through the ether of the internet at the moment seems to be this notion of the possibility of what can only really be described as an "exit tax" or a "departure tax" from Thailand has recently been brought up over the last couple of days. Now the news cycle on this has moved really quickly as we will get into here in a moment. I want to start by saying that on the record, officials have come out and said that this will not be imposed so folks that are looking to maybe be tourists here in Thailand this year or expats who are wanting to live here, possible prospective expats, again folks that might be moving here to retire and things, understand that while this came out initially as sort of I guess a survey as it has been described now, it is not policy and it was merely a discussion of the possibility of policy. I'll get into that in a minute but let's preface this by saying this isn't being imposed. 

So I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Departure tax proposed. Quoting directly: "Thai outbound travellers and foreign permanent residents in Thailand have been asked for their opinion on a Government departure tax of a 1,000 Baht in an attempt to prevent locals from spending excessively abroad with the Revenue Department announcing online public hearings this week. The Department posted the public hearing questionnaire on its website saying it wants to listen to public opinion about an Emergency Decree on a departure levy based on a law passed in 1983 in order to assess its impact. The information attached to the poll said the tax aimed to generate revenue for the government and prevent Thais from excessive overseas spending with a focus on reducing the trade deficit." Well I thought that was interesting and there is another article that goes even further but I went ahead and just Googled it, "What's Thailand's Balance of Trade?” and under the heading of Thailand Balance of Trade on the website tradingeconomics.com, it states: “Thailand unexpectedly logged a trade surplus of US dollar 2.72 billion in March 2023."  So the notion of this being based on sort of a trade deficit issue, I don't see really where that is coming from. Now again, as I said at the beginning of this, it has been stated that this will not be imposed which brings us to another article from the Bangkok Post, again bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Departure tax just opinion survey, 'will not be imposed'. Quoting directly: "Winit Wisetsuwannaphum, deputy director-general of the Department said on Sunday that the Department did not plan to impose the departure tax." I state that again: "Said on Sunday that the department did not plan to impose the departure tax." Notice it is "did not plan to" so for now maybe. Again I am really not wanting this video to come off as something that would be viewed as fear mongering and let me get to the rest of this quote. "Mr. Winit said although a ministerial regulation has waived the departure tax since 1991, the Constitution required the department to assess the suitability of the old Executive Decree." Well okay fair enough, makes sense that yeah they have got some protocol where they have to go in and review this thing because it is technically on the books. 

I have done videos in the past on what are called tax clearances. There was this regime and as noted in '91 they suspended it and they stopped using it. At the time, it was my understanding and again I wasn't here then, but it's my understanding based on what I have read that it was phased out as the VAT was brought in. When they brought in Value Added Tax to Thailand they said 'yeah okay we are going to go ahead and get rid of that so-called exit tax.' It was something else. I know some old hands here, I won't name any names in fact I would really like to because I think credit where credit is due but I don't want to do that to somebody without their permission, but I know someone specifically who had a lot to do with tax clearances back in the '80s and it wasn't fun. In fact it really was in my opinion pretty bad policy especially for a country that takes a lot of revenue in from tourism, not a good look. As we could see with the immediate response to them even bringing this up sort of even academically if you will at this time, I think as you can see the news cycle moved pretty fast on this. Departure Tax proposed article and then boom like on a weekend a government official came out and said” no, no, no, we are not doing this.” 

So again let's be clear about what they are doing here procedurally. What they are doing is discussing a rule that technically was on the books and has been waived in an ongoing manner since 1991. I don't see any reason to believe this is going to come back. What I do think is probably happening is yes indeed procedurally they brought this up. What I also can see and as we will get into in other videos I am making contemporaneously with this one over the course of this coming week, please stay tuned, yeah there is a little bit of a trend going on right now wherein essentially Government here in Thailand specifically the Revenue Department, is looking for ways to drum up more revenue and this may have been sort of in line with that theme. They just kind of were looking at it as perhaps one possibility. The ongoing discussion of a possible Tourist Tax has been bandied about and then meanwhile as we will get into in other videos, the Revenue Department itself has announced that they are basically looking at other methodologies including digital to up tax revenues. 

I would go ahead and say that perhaps one of the reasons that revenue is down from a tax perspective, kind of the fact that for two and a half years the entire economy was effectively moribund and that we were under a constant lockdown where people couldn’t open their businesses, they couldn't do business and it was difficult if not impossible in some circumstances for tourism to even exist. Now I want to be clear, I am really proud of the way Thailand took on that whole situation and did the best they could with a bad situation but if we are being honest moving forward, if you really want to keep tax revenues up, let people do business. That is probably your best bet rather than looking for ways to tax people on their way out or tax people coming in, maybe just leave tourism alone because it's a proven money getter and just let people do their business and maybe, I hate to say it, there might be lower revenues for the government which means the government is not going to be able to do all the things that they love to do for the next forthcoming few months, perhaps years. I am here to tell you, small business owners here in Thailand had put up with that for two and a half years, a situation where they didn't exactly get to spend the money that they wanted to spend because they couldn't do business. So the thing to take away from this video is first to understand this proposal it's not happening, this this is simply it's almost like a call for comment, like a comment period, it's not even really that. It's more informal even than that but it is somewhat analogous to that in the context of for example American Federal Law like call for comment for like Federal Regulation changes or something like that. It is not even that formal, it's just kind of like an opinion survey or whatever. In any event though this underlying theme, and we will get into it further in other videos again as I am making contemporaneously with this one, there is this kind of underlying theme that yeah clearly I can see that the Revenue Department is concerned about revenue in Thailand. Well you know what? If you want more tax revenue, let's let people do business.