Which Thai visa actually lets you run your own business?

Key Takeaways

• Two of the visas most often pitched to Singapore owners as a way to live in Thailand while running a business explicitly forbid working for a Thai company: the DTV and the Singapore passport exemption.
• The visa that actually lets you work for your own Thai company is the Non-Immigrant B, and it has to be obtained at a Thai embassy or consulate outside Thailand before you arrive, not after.
• SMART Visa’s founder route, Smart S, is live. The Talent, Investor and Executive categories still sit on one BOI page in full detail, but the live application portal has quietly dropped them.
• LTR gives four categories a 5 plus 5 year visa, but one of the four, Work-from-Thailand Professional, cannot work for a Thai employer either.

In Detail

The question that matters is narrower than “which visa”

Thailand offers a long list of visas that let a Singapore owner stay for months or years at a time. That is not the question you need answered. The question is whether the visa lets you work for the Thai company you set up, sign for it, draw a salary from it, or manage it day to day. Several of the most heavily marketed long-stay visas answer no, and owners routinely find that out only once they try to get a work permit under one, or once immigration asks what they are actually doing in Thailand.

Non-Immigrant B: the one that actually works, obtained the hard way

A first-time Non-Immigrant B has to be applied for at a Royal Thai Embassy or Consulate-General abroad, Singapore’s included. In most cases it cannot be obtained from inside Thailand.¹ It is typically issued for entry within 90 days and grants an initial 90-day permitted stay from the date you enter.¹ The visa itself does not authorize work. The work permit is a separate approval you apply for after arrival, through the Thai company that sponsors you.¹

Two obligations catch people out after that. First, anyone staying more than 90 consecutive days on a Non-Immigrant visa has to report their current address to Immigration every 90 days, and the filing window runs from 15 days before the due date to 7 days after it, not on the day itself.² Second, leaving Thailand during your period of stay without a re-entry permit voids the visa outright. A single re-entry permit and a multiple re-entry permit are commonly quoted at THB 1,000 and THB 3,800 respectively, and you get one before you fly, not after.³ An owner who leaves for a weekend in Singapore without one can come back to find the visa they built their business on no longer exists.

SMART Visa: S is live, T, I and E are stuck in limbo

SMART Visa historically ran five categories: T for Talent, I for Investors, E for Senior Executives, S for Startup entrepreneurs, and O for dependants.⁴ As of a direct fetch of the live BOI SMART Visa portal, only Smart S and Smart O show as active, applicable categories.⁵

The two BOI-run pages disagree with each other. BOI’s own One Start One Stop page still describes T, I and E in full detail. The live SMART Visa portal shows only S and O. Some commentary reports that BOI stopped accepting new T, I and E applications in 2025 and redirects those applicants to the LTR visa instead, but no formal BOI announcement closing the categories was found anywhere.⁴⁵ The honest way to put this: T, I and E appear inactive based on the live portal. It would be overstating the evidence to say BOI has closed them.

If you are a founder, Smart S is the category that applies. It needs a minimum THB 600,000 deposit held for at least three months, health insurance, and the applicant must be a director or hold at least 25 percent equity in a certified startup in a BOI-targeted industry based in Thailand.⁵ The visa runs 6 months, 1 year or 2 years initially and renews up to a maximum of 2 years at a time.⁵ A Smart S holder does not need a separate work permit to work at the endorsed company.⁵ The fee is THB 10,000 per visa-year, processing runs roughly 30 working days, and renewal should be filed at least 60 days before expiry.⁵

LTR: four categories, a 5 plus 5 year structure, one exception

The Long-Term Resident visa launched in September 2022, run by BOI together with the Immigration Bureau and the Department of Employment.⁶ It has four categories: Wealthy Global Citizen, Wealthy Pensioner, Work-from-Thailand Professional, and Highly-Skilled Professional.⁶ It is an initial 5-year visa, renewable for a further 5 years, up to 10 years total, multiple-entry.⁶

Three of the four categories, Wealthy Global Citizen, Wealthy Pensioner and Highly-Skilled Professional, may work in Thailand and access a streamlined digital work permit through the One Stop Service Center in Bangkok, reported at THB 3,000 per year.⁶ The fourth does not. Work-from-Thailand Professional is for remote employees of an established overseas company, and it does not authorize working for or earning income from a Thai employer.⁶ If your plan is to run your own Thai company, this is the one LTR category that cannot get you there, however comfortable the rest of its terms look.

Other reported LTR benefits include a reduced flat 17 percent personal income tax rate on qualifying income for Highly-Skilled Professionals, annual rather than 90-day immigration reporting, and fast-track airport lanes.⁶ BOI broadened the list of target industries eligible under the Highly-Skilled Professional category through 2025 and into 2026, widening who can qualify.⁷ The visa fee is reported at THB 50,000 per person, with processing benchmarked at 4 to 8 weeks.⁸

DTV: five years to live here, no permission to work for a Thai company

The Destination Thailand Visa launched in 2024 as a five-year, multiple-entry visa. Each individual stay runs up to 180 days, extendable once for a further 180 days at an Immigration office inside Thailand.⁹ The eligibility routes are remote work for an employer or clients based outside Thailand, participation in “soft power” activities such as Muay Thai training or Thai cooking courses, and dependants of a DTV holder.⁹ The financial bar is commonly reported at around THB 500,000 in a bank account, alongside evidence of foreign-sourced income or engagement.⁹

Here is the part that matters most for this chapter. The DTV is not a work permit. It does not authorize employment with a Thai company, freelance work for Thai clients, or operating a Thailand-registered business, without a separate work permit on top of it. It covers only remote work for employers or clients outside Thailand, and even small local jobs are described as a breach of the visa’s conditions.⁹ A lot of published guidance frames the DTV as a way to base a business in Thailand. Read plainly, it is a way to live in Thailand while your income keeps coming from outside it. Processing has also tightened through 2025 and 2026, with higher rejection rates and stricter checks on how long funds have sat in the applicant’s account before submission.¹⁰¹¹

The Singapore passport exemption is not a business visa

This changed on 15 September 2026, and the day count is the smaller half of the change. The scheme that gave Singapore passport holders 60 days came from a Ministry of Interior notification of 15 July 2024, whose own title covered entry “for Tourism, Short-term Work, or Business”. That notification was revoked. The instrument replacing it was published in the Royal Gazette on 31 August 2026, Volume 143, Special Issue 207 Ngor, and takes effect fifteen days after publication, on 15 September 2026. It grants not more than 30 days, and its title covers entry “for Tourism”.¹⁵¹⁶

So two things moved together, and the second is the one that gets missed. The stay halved, and “Short-term Work, or Business” came out of the stated purpose. If you are flying to Bangkok for meetings, the exemption you arrive on no longer names what you are there to do.

Singapore keeps two advantages in the new package. It is on the 30-day list, which runs to 60 countries and territories where the old one ran to 93. And it is exempt from the new cap of two land-border entries a year, alongside Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.¹⁶ Anyone admitted before 15 September keeps the stay they were granted on entry; the change does not shorten a stay already running.

Some sites still publish 60 days, and others published 30 long before it was true. Neither is evidence of a conflicting rule. Both are content written against a different version of the exemption, which is the exact risk of quoting a day count without checking the date on the page it came from.¹⁴

One thing genuinely has not moved: no version of this exemption has ever authorized taking up employment or holding a work permit in Thailand, at 60 days or at 30.¹² What did move is worth stating plainly, because every guide written before 15 September 2026, including earlier versions of this page, describes the exemption as covering short business visits: “business” was in the old instrument’s stated purpose and is not in the new one’s.

Match your situation to a visa

What this means for you

If you are going to be hands-on in your own Thai company, the visa question has one right answer: Non-Immigrant B, applied for at a Thai embassy before you arrive, followed by a work permit sponsored by the company itself. Everything else on this page is a visa that lets you live in Thailand, not one that lets you work for a business you own here.

The DTV and the Singapore exemption both look, from the outside, like they solve the same problem the Non-B solves. They do not. They solve a different problem, staying in Thailand while your income and your legal working relationship stay outside it. Confusing the two is the mistake this chapter exists to prevent.

Before you settle on a visa route

• Will you actually work inside your Thai company, day to day, not just own it? If yes, you need Non-Immigrant B and a work permit, not a long-stay visa.
• Have you arranged your first Non-B visa at a Thai embassy or consulate outside Thailand? In most cases it cannot be obtained once you have already arrived.
• Is your 90-day address report diarised, with the 15-day-before to 7-day-after filing window, so you are not caught out at the counter?
• Do you hold a re-entry permit before any trip out of Thailand, so a short visit home does not void the visa your business runs on?
• If someone has pitched the DTV or the Singapore passport exemption as a way to run your business from Thailand, have you confirmed neither one actually permits it?
• Before relying on SMART Visa Talent, Investor or Executive, have you called BOI directly? The live portal has quietly dropped all three, with no closure ever announced.

Sources

16 sources for this article, 7 of them primary. Where we could not verify something, the article says so rather than estimating.

1. Royal Thai Embassy (primary), www.thaiembassy.at
2. ISSA Compass, www.issacompass.com
3. Thai Co, www.thai-co.com
4. BOI One Start One Stop (primary), osos.boi.go.th
5. Thailand Board of Investment (primary), smart-visa.boi.go.th
6. Thailand Board of Investment (primary), ltr.boi.go.th
7. KPMG, kpmg.com
8. Thailand Board of Investment (primary), www.boi.go.th
9. Emerhub, emerhub.com
10. MBMG Group, mbmg-group.com
11. Thai Visa Services, www.thai-visa-services.com
12. The Thaiger, thethaiger.com
13. GEOS Thailand, geosthai.com
14. Vina Visas, www.vinavisas.com
15. Royal Gazette (primary), ratchakitcha.soc.go.th
16. Royal Gazette (primary), ratchakitcha.soc.go.th

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.