Living in thailand working in us?

[digibum]

I've been doing quite a bit of reading about living and working in Thailand and it led me to the following question:

Can I live in Thailand but still work (derive income) from the US?  

Let me explain:  I work in IT.  Mostly internet related.  I'm an executive level person but still have my programming and technical chops.  I'm fairly sure I could set up an income stream of $3000 USD - $6000 USD a month thru a variety of enterprises such as consultanting that could be completed via email or logged into servers via the internet.  For instance, I'm mildly confident that I could work remotely as a consultant for my current employer for $3000 USD a month.  Even if I cut my workhours devoted to them in half it would still be a deal for them.  Or I could expand some of the website hosting deals I do that generate monthly revenue.  Or I could even secure one year retainer based contracts with US based companies for $1000 or so a month so that I had a solid revenue stream.  

But can that be done without either a work permit or registering my own company?  I don't want to have to put up $2 mil baht and pay several thousand US as I've read is the minimum to get everything set up.  All I need is a DSL or cable modem link and my computer.  No employees except if I were to need graphics or other work done that is a non-specialty for me and I wanted to get the labor cheap in order to land a contract by bidding below US rates (I would hire them as contractors and pay them from a US based banking account).  

So how long am I going to jail for?   :laugh:

What if I wanted to freelance in Thailand for some of the what seem to be numerous companies that do outsourced work from the US?  I know as someone who has outsourced work to India that I would pay more to have an experienced US project manager overseeing the work and to cut thru the cultural differences.  

Anyway, thanks in advance to anyone who has some insight they would be willint to share.

Bill

[singa-traz]

http://www.thaivisa.com/581.0.html

How long can you go to jail ?

Employers who violate the law face fines of up to 60,000 baht and/or jail terms of up to three years. Foreign employees found in breach of the law can be jailed for up to three months and/or fined up to 5,000 baht.

As for working remotely for US company, not really an issue, as long as you can get some type fo Visa to stay legally in Thailand. We had a post from someone "Working" from Sanklabury ...

Doing some local freelance, without a work permit, and depending on who you deal with, you take the risk of :

- not getting paid for your work ... (only cash basis ...)

- having one of your competitors who did not get the job, upset

- having one of the staff (of the company you provide services to) upset

So .... Good Luck ...

[mrvietnam2001]

You need to set up a thai company. My advice would be to get a good lawyer in BKK to do so. Look up [email protected] and write a note to Khun Ittipong and tell him the guy with the Vietnamese wife from samui sent ya ( Mr Tom)

He'll do the right thing for you. You're in IT? I really tried to retire there ( 22 months) but got ripped off by some slick operators in the web business. I have a penpal site in Vnam, http://www.loveofasiavietnam.com and it still needs work although is starting to get on track. I might be interested in a quasi-partnership and that might help with both our situations.

How can anybody like it here after living there?

Regrds

Tom

[digibum]

You need to set up a thai company.

Thanks Tom.  Did your above statement also refer to doing business only with US companies or would that be if I wished to do business with Thai companies as well?

[mrvietnam2001]

In order to live in thailand unless you want to be in a state of perpetually sending your visa across the border ( in samui, it was 8,000Bht) as well as accept that type of humiliation, then you need a company set up or be in a postion and desiring to invest quite a bit for a retirement type visa.

[bkk_mike]

<font color='#000000'>In order to live in thailand unless you want to be in a state of perpetually sending your visa across the border ( in samui, it was 8,000Bht) as well as accept that type of humiliation, then you need a company set up or be in a postion and desiring to invest quite a bit for a retirement type visa.</font>

Personally - I've never tried one of those Visa services but they are illegal, so I wouldn't recommend that.

Depending on age, there are different visas that you can get.

Obvious one is the Tourist Visa, valid for 60 days, and can be extended for 30. You would then have to do a visa run. (you can extend it by a few more days, but there's diminishing return on each trip to immigration)

If your wife is Thai or you have children with Thai nationality, you can get a one year multiple-entry visa (from the embassy in your own country), where they'll stamp it for 90 days on arrival, and you then just go to the immigration office when the stamp is about to expire and they'll extend it for a year (assuming you show you have a Thai bank account with enough in it or sufficient income...), and keep extending it when you go back each year. This has the advantage that you only have to leave the country when you want.

Similarly, if you're over 50, you can get in on a retiree visa which operates similarly to the marriage visa.

If you're under 50, and not married to a Thai, then you have to look at the business visa, and the requirements allowing you to set that up if you're not willing to do the visa runs.

Obviously if you're not in on a business visa, do not do ANY work for a local company. That is illegal.

Work done abroad, paid abroad, should be OK, although it's a greyish area. In that there would be no effective legal difference between you and a tourist logging in to check their office email. (and everyone knows that they'd lose some high-spending tourists if they announced that people would be arrested for working by logging into the office when they're here on holiday.)

[Indo-Siam]

I will concur with the comments that say that you can live in Thailand, and do whatever you want to do in your home - communicationg with parties outside Thailand via e-mail, and no Thai government officials will care. If, as a result, money flows into an overseas bank account, no one here will know or care. If you live via ATM withdrawals, or receive frequent incoming wire transfers of money from overseas, good for you - no one here cares.

If you employ Thais here to do work for you, and fail to withhold personal income taxes, and fail to collect and match social fund contributions, then you are breaking serious laws. But - I have seen no evidence that Thailand has developed any ability to enforce these laws - money flowing from overseas to Thai workrers is not a high priority for law enforcement officials.

If you perform work for clients who are inside Thailand, and collect money from them for that work, you are also breaking serious laws here - and this area is enforced - albeit fairly poorly. Risk of getting caught, short-term, is fairly low. Over a "carreer" of many years, your risk of getting caught probably rises well above 50%. Penalties are ugly - probably ending with you being expelled permanently from Thailand, and prohibited from reentering.

So - you may happily do what you propose. As noted, your main concern will be working out the Immigration side of the equation. Basically, as long as you are prepared to continually make visa runs, no problem.

Good luck!

Indo-Siam

[bkk_mike]

Work done abroad, paid abroad, should be OK, although it's a greyish area.

If you check the Thai immigration website there is a clarification of working in Thailand which basically says you don't need a B visa, or a work permit to telecommute to your job abroad.

http://www.thaiimmigration.com/inv/index.php?showtopic=46

So it's less of a grey area than I thought it was...

If you're living here on a non-O visa, you should have no issues so long as you can prove the offshore income. I don't have that problem myself normally as I have to travel back to my job in the UK regularly.