Key Takeaways
- There is exactly one credential you can independently check: your company’s appointed bookkeeper must be registered with the Federation of Accounting Professions, and must hold an accounting degree once your company crosses a size threshold, not just a vocational certificate.
- A lawyer, a corporate services provider and an accounting firm do three different jobs. Most quotes bundle all three, and the reader is often buying a package without knowing which fee covers which job.
- Professional fees for incorporation span roughly THB 18,000 to 350,000. That range is mostly about scope, not quality, and the government’s own share of it is a flat THB 5,500 regardless of who you hire.
- The strongest test needs no legal training: any adviser who offers to arrange a Thai shareholder for you is offering a criminal arrangement, not a service. See the beneficial ownership question.
In Detail
The one credential the law actually gives you
A Thai limited company must appoint a bookkeeper, ผู้ทำบัญชี. That person, in-house or outsourced, must have a registered address in Thailand, must have sufficient command of Thai to prepare the accounts, must never have been imprisoned for an accounting-law offence, and must be registered with the Federation of Accounting Professions as an accounting professional.1
The minimum qualification scales with the company’s size. Above a threshold set by Ministerial Regulation, tied to registered capital, assets or revenue, the appointed bookkeeper needs a bachelor’s degree in accounting. Below it, a high vocational certificate or diploma is acceptable.2 We could not confirm the exact baht figure that separates the two tiers, so ask your adviser directly which tier your company falls into and why, rather than taking a title on a business card as proof of qualification.
This is also the only credential this guide can hand you a clean way to verify. “Lawyer” and “consultant” are not protected titles in the way “TFAC-registered accountant” is. Ask for the bookkeeper’s TFAC registration number and check it yourself before you check anything else about the firm.
Why the accountant is not optional
Every Thai company limited must have its annual financial statements audited by a Thailand-licensed CPA, every year, with no exemption for small size, low turnover, or a dormant company that has not yet traded.3 A Singapore owner used to Singapore’s small-company audit exemption tends to assume the same relief exists here. It does not. Whoever you engage for accounting is not a discretionary add-on. They are a standing compliance requirement from year one, and their fee is a recurring cost, not a one-off setup charge.
Three jobs, one invoice
A Thai lawyer, a corporate services provider and an accounting firm are frequently the same business development contact, and frequently the same invoice. They are not the same job.
A lawyer’s work is legal risk: drafting and reviewing the shareholders’ agreement and commercial contracts, advising on the Foreign Business Act position of your activity, and representing you if a dispute or a DBD objection has to be argued rather than just filed. A corporate services provider’s work is the paperwork: drafting the Memorandum of Association, filing it and the company registration with the Department of Business Development, and handling the registered-office and company-secretarial trail afterward. An accounting firm’s work is the bookkeeper appointment described above, the monthly filings, and the annual audit.
Bundling is not itself a problem. Not knowing which of the three jobs your quote actually covers is. Ask the firm to break the invoice into those three buckets before you sign anything.
What THB 18,000 to 350,000 actually buys
Marketing pages from incorporation agents and law firms put a basic registration package at roughly THB 18,000 to 50,000, a mid-range package adding VAT registration, a company seal and bank-account assistance at THB 30,000 to 80,000, and complex joint-venture, BOI or Foreign Business Licence work upward of THB 350,000. These are unaudited price-list figures, not a government schedule, so treat the range as an order of magnitude rather than a quote you can hold a firm to.
What is fixed, and what every quote should let you subtract out, is the government’s own share. The Department of Business Development’s company registration fee is a flat THB 5,000 regardless of your registered capital, and the Memorandum of Association filing fee is a flat THB 500. That is a combined THB 5,500 in pass-through government fees, however much the professional fee on top of it turns out to be.4 Some firms still advertise the registration fee as a percentage of capital, most recently as 0.1 percent effective from January 2025.5 It is not a percentage. It has not been one at any point this registry could verify. If a quote itemises the government fee as anything other than a flat THB 5,000 plus THB 500, that line item is wrong, whatever the total ends up being.
A comparable quote answers five questions plainly, and a good adviser answers all five without flinching. What exactly is included, and what is scoped out as an extra. What portion is the flat THB 5,500 government fee you would pay no matter who files for you, and what portion is the firm’s own charge for the work. Who at the firm actually signs the application, and whether that person is a foreign director whose signing authority would put your company inside DBD Order 2/2569’s scrutiny, which the beneficial ownership question covers in full. What happens, in fee terms, if the DBD objects to the filing rather than approving it: DBD’s own service standard is roughly one hour 25 minutes for a straightforward case, two business days where another agency has to sign off, and 37 business days if the filing is objected to, and your contract should say whether that delay costs you anything extra.6 And what you will pay next year, once the bookkeeper, the monthly filings and the annual audit turn from a setup cost into a recurring one.
The red flag that ends the conversation
the beneficial ownership question set out why the 49 percent question is really a beneficial-ownership question. The same fact makes this the cleanest vetting test available. Since 1 August 2026, DBD Order 2/2569 catches a company where foreign shareholders hold less than 50 percent of registered capital, or where a wholly Thai-held company has a foreign director with sole or joint signing authority.789 Nominee shareholding, a Thai person holding shares on a foreigner’s behalf, is a criminal offence under the Foreign Business Act. Section 36 fines the Thai nominee THB 100,000 to 1,000,000 with up to three years imprisonment. Section 37 adds a penalty of THB 10,000 to 50,000 per day for the foreign principal who arranged it, on top of the Section 36 range.1011
An adviser who tells you finding a Thai shareholder to hold the balance is “no problem” is either unaware that this is a settled criminal offence being actively enforced, or aware and offering to arrange it anyway. Neither is someone you want structuring your company. This is not a judgment call that needs legal training to make. It is a single sentence you can listen for.
Two competence tests you can run by email, before you meet anyone
Both of these come directly from this guide’s own verification work, not from general commentary, which is exactly why they are useful: they are specific enough that a real adviser gets them right and a careless one does not.
Ask what BOI activity code applies to a typical services business seeking Trade and Investment Support Office, TISO, promotion. The current code is 10.1.1. Software development and modification sit under 8.1.1 and 8.1.2.12 An adviser who answers “7.7” is reading from BOI’s own live FAQ page, which still shows the superseded code,13 or from an older PDF that separately shows 7.15.14 Either answer means they have not re-checked the current activity list, which has been renumbered twice already.
Ask whether the DBD company registration fee is a flat amount or a percentage of capital. The correct answer, as above, is a flat THB 5,000. An adviser who quotes a percentage is repeating a figure that circulates widely and is wrong.
A third test: does the answer distinguish rule from practice
work permits covers the four-to-one Thai-staff-to-foreign-work-permit ratio in full. It is worth raising here too, because it is the best available test of whether an adviser will tell you the honest, less tidy answer. The ratio is genuinely widely quoted as administrative guidance.15 It is also, on an exhaustive search of the Emergency Decree and the Department of Employment’s own regulation, not stated in any law or regulation this guide could find. Ask an adviser whether it is a legal requirement or a practice immigration officers tend to apply. A good one says practice, and says so without hedging. One who states it as settled law either has not checked, or is happy to let you believe something firmer than what the law actually says.
**The exact size threshold** that moves a company's bookkeeper qualification requirement from a vocational certificate to a bachelor's degree in accounting is not stated in any source this guide could reach. We can confirm the tiering exists, not the number that divides it.
**The substance of the 2026 change** to accountant qualification requirements under the Accounting Professions Act is confirmed to be coming, but what the new requirement actually says could not be pulled from the source describing it.16 Ask any accounting firm you are vetting what the change is. If they know, that is itself a useful signal.
**The four-to-one work-permit ratio** has no traceable legal basis despite an extensive search across the Emergency Decree and the Department of Employment's regulation. That is a negative finding from this guide's own research, not a citable claim from an external source, which is why it appears here rather than with a reference. [work permits](/insights/posts/2026-09-02-do-you-need-four-thai-staff-per-work-permit/) carries the full account of how hard we looked.
What good looks like
A written scope you can hold the firm to, not a verbal estimate. A named individual on your file, not just a firm name and a shared inbox. A willingness to say “I do not know, I will check” rather than guessing to sound authoritative. And, when you ask about something like the work permit ratio, an answer that tells you plainly whether you are hearing the law or the practice built up around it. None of that requires you to know Thai law. It only requires you to listen for the difference between an adviser who checks and one who recites.
Before you sign an engagement letter
- Is the scope in writing, itemised so you can see which fee is the flat THB 5,500 government charge and which is the firm’s own price for the work?
- Is there a named individual handling your file, and did you ask for their TFAC registration number if they are your accountant?
- What BOI activity code do they quote for a TISO application? 10.1.1 is current. 7.7 or 7.15 means they have not re-checked.
- Do they quote the DBD registration fee as a flat THB 5,000, or as a percentage of your capital? Only the first is correct.
- Asked about the four-to-one work-permit ratio, do they say law or practice? Practice is the honest answer.
- Has anyone offered to arrange a Thai shareholder for you? If so, the conversation is over. That is a criminal nominee arrangement, not a service.
This article is one of twenty-four chapters. The complete guide adds six working tools: a registered-capital worksheet, an annual compliance calendar, an incorporation document checklist, a partner due-diligence checklist, a setup cost and timeline comparison, and a decision tree for choosing your structure.
Sources
16 sources for this article, 7 of them primary. Where we could not verify something, the article says so rather than estimating.
- Acclime Thailand, thailand.acclime.com
- Company Thailand, www.companythailand.net
- Samui For Sale (primary), www.samuiforsale.com
- Department of Business Development (primary), www.dbd.go.th
- SF Consulting, www.sfconsultingbd.com
- Department of Business Development (primary), www.dbd.go.th
- Department of Business Development (primary), www.dbd.go.th
- DFDL, www.dfdl.com
- Chandler MHM, chandler.morihamada.com
- Lexology, www.lexology.com
- LawPlus, www.lawplusltd.com
- Thailand Board of Investment (primary), www.boi.go.th
- Thailand Board of Investment (primary), www.boi.go.th
- Thailand Board of Investment (primary), www.boi.go.th
- ASEAN Briefing, www.aseanbriefing.com
- Forvis Mazars, www.forvismazars.com
This article is general information about doing business in Thailand and is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Every figure is cited with its source and its date. Thai regulation is changing quickly and rules current at publication may change without notice. Confirm anything you intend to act on with qualified Thai counsel.