ต่างชาติดูดเงินไทย ไทยได้อะไร? ธุรกิจศูนย์เหรียญยุคดิจิทัล
Summary
The "zero-dollar business" originally described tour operations where none of the money reached local people; the same shape now appears in the digital economy.
The first channel is Chinese online sellers moving cheap goods into Thailand through e-commerce platforms while paying no Thai tax.
The second is foreign social and AI platforms collecting enormous advertising and subscription revenue from Thai users without incorporating or paying tax here.
The third is foreign data centres that genuinely build in Thailand but staff remotely from abroad, so Thai workers get almost none of the jobs.
Key points
An old pattern in a new medium
The mechanism matches zero-dollar tourism: revenue passes through the country without settling.
Cross-border e-commerce disadvantages domestic sellers
Thai sellers pay full tax; sellers based abroad pay almost none.
Platforms have no legal presence here
Without a local entity, taxing actual revenue is very hard.
Data centres build structures, not jobs
The investment figure looks large, but the skilled hiring happens offshore.
Investment headlines are not benefit
What matters is where revenue, tax and jobs land — not the size of the project.