Maestro

Based on your supplementary information, the good news is that after you get your new passport you don't have to travel with both passports. P.S. Also, you don't have to hold on to the printout of the DTV you currently have in your possession for the rest of the five years; you can print it out again any time and as often as you need it. Just hold on to that PDF file, perhaps keep copies of in some cloud storage.

@JoeyMac Is your DTV a stamp or sticker in your passport or did you receive it as a PDF document attached to an email from a Thai embassy which you then printed on a sheet of paper?

In your situation, go for it, the DTV, if you meet the criteria for it.

A wise decision, IMO.

What do you mean with "50J"?

What assumption? I made no assumption. I stated the fact that the TM.30 is not for the owner of a dwelling he rents out to a foreigner to apply to the immigration office for permission to allow the foreigner to stay in that dwelling. The TM.30 is not an application for anything at all.

Part of the confusion is that some people talk of the TM.30 as an application, as if the owner had to apply to the immigration office for permission to allow the foreigner to stay in his house. This is of course not the case.

I have misunderstood nothing. If I live in my condo in Thailand and invite a foreign friend to stay with me, I retain possession of the condo and thus continue to be the householder and it is my obligation to make the TM.30 notification of the arrival of my guest. If I rent out my condo to a foreigner and live somewhere else – currently in Switzerland – the tenant becomes the possessor and thus the householder and it is his obligation to make the TM.30 notification. I realise that the law and the rules posted on some immigration web pages can sometimes be confusing, even to immigration officials.

Well, the immigration office certainly won't give a red stamp in your passport for corruption money they received, because that's what your agent paid, not a fine. Anyway, that was an elegant solution for you.

Removed a troll post and the replies to it.

I have seen no exception of this kind mentioned anywhere.

It's not quite like that. When a tenant makes the TM.30 notification, he does not do so on behalf of the owner (whom you refer to as the landlord). He does it on his own behalf as the "householder", so defined by Section 4 of the Immigration Act. The immigration office may ask the foreigner to submit with the notification copies of some documents which he has to obtain from the owner, but this does not mean that he makes the notification on behalf of the owner. This is how Section 4 defines the householder (in some translations called the house-master or house master) in the case of a rented dwelling (highlighting in bold is mine): The rental agreement makes the tenant the chief possessor of the dwelling and thus the householder.

Correct, but handing down punishment under Section 77 of the Immigration Act can only be done by a court of law, not by an immigration official. Please take a look at Section 84 for clarification.

That's the information posted on the the website but it is not legally correct.

Removed some posts and the replies to them.

Removed an off-topic post (crossing to Malaysia)

Is it really technically the same when using a Cambodian crossing? Isn't it Cambodia that says you must stay in Cambodia at least one day?

It is not in the Ministerial announcement published in the Royal Gazette. Someone from the Consular Department of the Ministry of the Interior may have mentioned it in an interview.

How exactly does this work? Does the border immigration official say "don't come back earlier than in two days" (Chiang Khong) or "come back tomorrow" (Chiang Saen) without putting a stamp refusing entry into the passport?

Removed an off-topic post and the replies to it.

Thank you. Therefore, this new topic is not required. Discussion continued in this earlier topic: https://aseannow.com/topic/1336345-lao-borders-some-at-least-now-requiring-overnight-stay/page/2/#comment-19179539

That's interesting. So if you turn around the same day, what will Thai immigration do?

Thank you for your clarification. I'm sure not only I but also other readers will appreciate it if the names of immigration offices are written in full, not in two-letter acronyms or abbreviations.

Thank you for your guess.

That's very interesting. I wonder if the consular department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs whipped the visa section of the embassy in London into shape generally or just for the DTV.