Tag: Southeast Asia

Three different roles get collapsed into one question, and that is where most of the confusion comes from. Shareholder, director, and employee attract different treatment under Thai law.

The 4 Thai staff to 1 foreign work permit ratio is applied at the counter, but we could not find it written in any law, regulation or notification, after a genuinely thorough search.

Forty occupations are closed or restricted to foreigners: 27 under absolute prohibition, and 13 conditional, split 3 needing a treaty basis, 8 conditional on skill or registration, and 2 open only to CLMV nationals under bilateral labour deals.

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.

"Foreign" under the Act is a test of who owns the shares, not where the company is managed from or who runs it. A Singapore-owned company is treated the same as a company owned from anywhere else.

A Foreign Business Licence is not one document. List 2 activities need the Minister's approval, List 3 need the Director-General's. Most ordinary services land in List 3.1

Every Thai company must state a registered office address in Thailand at incorporation. That part has not changed.

A Singapore court judgment cannot be enforced in Thailand. There is no treaty and no procedure for it. You would have to sue again, from scratch, in a Thai court under Thai law, with your Singapore judgment admitted only as evidence.123 A foreign arbitral award does not have this problem. That...

The government registration fee is a flat THB 5,000, not a percentage of capital. The Memorandum of Association filing fee is a flat THB 500. Both formulas that circulate online, tied to your registered capital, are wrong.

Thailand has no small-company audit exemption. Every Thai company limited needs a statutory audit by a Thailand-licensed CPA every year, whatever its turnover, headcount or activity. A Singapore owner used to the ACRA exemption will not expect this.

The Singapore-Thailand tax treaty caps Thai withholding at 10 percent on dividends, 10 or 15 percent on interest depending on who receives it, and 5, 8 or 10 percent on royalties depending on what is being licensed.1

Foreigners cannot generally own land in Thailand, so buying it through a Thai company looks like the obvious workaround. It is also the most heavily marketed structure covered anywhere in this guide.

Corporate income tax is 20 percent. A qualifying small company pays 0, 15 and 20 percent across three bands, under a decree from 2015 that the Revenue Department's own website has not caught up with.

Four separate rules can set a minimum capital figure for a Thai company. Most published guidance quotes exactly one of them and presents it as the answer.

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.

Filing has run entirely through DBD Biz Regist since 1 January 2026. Walk-in counters at the Department of Business Development are gone.

Shareholding percentage, board composition, voting rights and signing authority are four separate levers. A minority shareholder can hold real control through the other three.

Foreign ownership above 49 percent in a restricted business still needs a licence or BOI promotion. That part has not changed.

Every sector below sits on one of the Foreign Business Act's three lists, and that placement decides everything else: List 1 closed to foreigners, List 2 needs Ministerial approval, List 3 needs the Director-General's.1

Only two things about this process are actually codified law: the USD 50,000 threshold for reporting an inward remittance, and the standard KYC document set. Almost everything else you will be told at the branch is bank practice, not statute.

This chapter is for a narrow audience: software, SaaS and e-commerce sellers who bill Thai customers without opening a Thai company. If you already have, or plan to have, a Thai entity, the rest of this guide covers you and you can skip ahead.

Company registration went online only from 1 January 2026. Walk-in counters are gone, and foreign applicants face a narrower identity-verification path than Thai nationals.

BOI promotion lets a foreign owner apply for a Foreign Business Certificate instead of a Foreign Business Licence, which is how a services company reaches 100 percent foreign ownership inside its promoted activity.1

A Thai Limited Company needs two shareholders now, not three. The rule changed on 7 February 2023, and at least one widely used Singapore government resource has not caught up.