OPINION

Tiny tax welcome

Re: "Govt defends ending SET shares tax waiver", (BP, Dec 4).

With 30-plus years as an advocate of responsible Thai stock investing and with a professional background working in US securities, I wholeheartedly support this long-overdue mini-transaction tax.

It will mostly only affect day traders, speculators and punters. These often distort markets and create havoc, often to the detriment of devoted investors.

Many other countries have implemented similar measures in past decades, despite outcries from brokers, only to find out later that it did not dent their stock markets, as brokers claimed.

In the bulk of cases, it only hit prolific stock speculators, who contribute the most to this small 0.11% tax on transactions.

Re: "Point system can deter bad drivers", (Editorial, Dec 4).

So the Royal Thai Police have clarified that new e-tickets are indeed genuine and not fake as thought by Dr Thiravat Hemachudha. Unfortunately, the e-ticket is going to prove a golden opportunity for scammers. All that a scammer has to do is produce fake e-tickets with fake QR codes, not exactly rocket science for anyone who has an original e-ticket to work from. The QR code would then lead to a site which looks genuine but is not. The fake e-ticket is then left under the victim's windscreen wiper.

Personally, unless I am there when the ticket is issued by a policeman, I will not trust it. In which case I guess I will have to go to the police station to get it confirmed.

Re: "Fresh concerns over Covid", (Business, Dec 5).

While I mean no disrespect whatsoever and am sure both of these executives have excellent credentials, I think something should be said about the comments published by Mr Sanan Angubolkul (Chairman of the Thai Chamber of Commerce) as well as Mr Kriengkrai Thiennukul, Chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI).

Politely, when Mr Sanan claimed that the sight of millions of Thais wearing face masks inspires confidence in foreign tourists, he could not be more wrong. Many Westerners no longer wear masks and the Covid situation is fairly stable in their countries, so when they arrive here and see this mask mania, well, I've spoken to many Western tourists who respond by frequently spending less money, complain they didn't have a good time, sometimes were even pressured to wear masks, regret coming and don't intend to come back for a long time.

And as for Mr Kriengkrai, while he is correct that [many] "foreign tourists do not wear masks", his remaining comments reek of all but blaming the foreigners again for all of Thailand's Covid woes. He all but insinuated our recent Covid spike is because of maskless foreigners and also because "some Thais began to [not wear masks]", offering only bigotry as evidence and not a shred of data.

Foreign tourists can often be spotted reading the local papers and media as a curiosity. If comments like Mr Kreingkrai's are what they see from powerful Thai people (again), then Thailand's shaky tourist recovery may only be one BBC editorial away from dead in the water.