K2938

I would assume some key issues for the situation described include 1) if the dividend is not really a disguised salary payment and income from work does not count for the WP qualification, 2) how sustainable that is and 3) to what extent related party transactions are acceptable

Based on some data points the BOI currently does not seem to be set up to process much which is not standardised and does not fit their standard pattern. So basically they seem to want to tick certain boxes they are familiar with and if you are slightly different, even if a deeper analysis would show that this is absolutely no problem, then this tends to cause great problems. So it is certainly worthwhile trying, but do not get your hopes up too high and maybe better apply in 6-12 months than right now. By analogy just read what some people higher up wrote about health care insurance which does not have an expiry date which should actually be better, not worse than one with a time-limitation, but has repeatedly been rejected for various people. Re the taxation please note that you can get nearly the same tax benefits as under the LTR-WP with any other visa as long as you do not submit overseas earnings to Thailand in the year they were earned so that tax benefit on a relative basis is really more smart marketing than reality.

@PibTwo questions I would like to ask you if I may: 1) Did you try to explain this to the BOI supporting your statements about the open-endedness of the policy with appropriate documentation and this was futile or you did not really bother to further go down this route since you had the bank deposit alternative? 2) I think you called the BOI several times. So I take it you never actually managed to talk to the person doing your case, but just generic people who really do not know much more than what is shown on their process status screen?

Record short time, but amazing how uneven processing times are. There are people who do not hear anything for several months and there are others where everything gets done in record time. So the "pensioner visa get processed very slowly, Work-from-Thailand professionals have it better" theory also does not seem to be valid any longer. Just seems to be pretty unpredictable.

I am sure that is the reason. Also maybe not only "hand-walk", but also more "advanced" services... And since the target group is more wealthy it can be charged more so this probably can be quite a profitable business for whoever is doing it.

Coronavirus: Japan to limit China flights, with mainland, HK, Taiwan visitors restricted to certain airports Japan PM also says all visitors from China will need negative Covid-19 tests upon arrival from Friday, amid reports virus is ‘rapidly spreading’ there Meanwhile, travellers from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong can reportedly only enter Japan via four airports starting from Friday https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3204657/coronavirus-japan-limit-china-flight-increase-test-travellers-upon-arrival

Congratulations! 2.5 months. Did you have some intermediate communications with the BOI or they only got back to you in the middle December for the first time when they told you about your approval?

FYI

Congratulations on your approval! Re the self-insurance: Did they accept brokerage accounts (like in some other cases above) or did you use a bank deposit?

I am not aware of any big bank in Thailand offering "proper" non-OTP 2FA. Which is why my personal conclusion in these imperfect circumstances was that using the app is better than going via the internet as I wrote above. But if there is any bank with "proper" non-OTP 2FA, this would of course be the best

OTP is a very very weak level of protection which is very easy to get around and has therefore generally been discarded because of this in many Western countries as mentioned above. So "proper" in this means an actually well-working method of 2FA, not OTP

Given that there is no proper 2FA in Thailand, app seems safer than "online with a pc" because for the latter anybody can enter passwords in the internet from anywhere while to do the same with your app they would need to have your phone which is much more difficult. Also, it is generally much easier now for somebody to hack into a PC than remotely access an up-to-date phone

Nearly everything cheaper at local market. The odd exception for some strange reason seem to be tomatoes where Makro sometimes has cheaper prices

Indeed! The application process is really a big disappointment and the number of people who are saying that if they had known up front how all this would really work out in practice, they would not have bothered to apply appears to be growing. Adding this to the fact that the number of applicants is already hugely below the official goal, does not really bode too well for the future. And with the virtually endless and unpredictable delays it is just very easy as an applicant to reach a mental state where one does not really care much about the outcome any longer and rather starts work on a plan B. It seems that a lot of goodwill which such a program could generate is wasted. From a recent reddit post I read. People appear to get increasingly frustrated:

As far as I know other government agencies are involved in Step 3, like checking if you are an internationally wanted terrorist, have grossly violated immigration rules in Thailand in the past, are otherwise 'undesirable' etc.

So I take it you got approved. Congratulations! May I ask when you originally applied? Asking because apart from some positive exceptions the delays seem to be getting longer and longer

Are you already approved for LTR now in principle? Otherwise best just to wait with health insurance to avoid potentially wasting your money because who knows if you will actually get approved.

... and just imagine what would have happened to the processing speed of applications which already now is very far below the promised 20 business days if the expected application rate had materialised

The number of people who invested 100k or more in cash at least a year ago when the corresponding interest rates in many Western countries where most applicants come from were negative or zero must be extremely limited. There seems to be a certain lack of understanding of market realities by whoever defined these criteria. So one can only hope that in view of the hugely underwhelming demand for this visa, the BOI changes this. Maybe the people who were approved based on investments also benefited from this.

Earlier on in this thread there was also at least one other person where they accepted investment accounts. So seems to depend on the mood of the screener. But if your screener did not like the investment account, then you could just sell 100k USD of your investments, show them you have 100k USD in cash and done. So easy to circumvent. Or you could even take a margin loan for a day which would spare you from having to temporarily sell part of your investments.

The social media are full of people complaining they were rejected for not meeting this. So this very much does not appear to be optional. The only exception from this as per the published terms would be if your employer is publicly listed. And the triangle next to the audited financials item is not defined as optional, but as "if applicable" which perfectly fits with "unless your employer is publicly listed". The LTR Work-from-Thailand visa is not for the typical digital nomad, but only for people working for large established organisations unfortunately.

Not sure I understand. You need to meet all the criteria for your LTR type Explain the situation and provide the next best thing instead

Slightly broadening the question by Pib re the new "Consideration by Govt Agencies" status: Is there anybody at all with a pending application - regardless of application time - where the status has NOT now changed from "Pending" to "Consideration by Govt Agencies"? If there is nobody without the change, then "Consideration by Govt Agencies" would indeed appear to be only a renaming of "Pending" and not an indication of progress.

As far as I remember that article contained a 14% success rate for Work-from-Thailand professionals which is extremely low. And a few days later there was somebody who was told that he got the xth LTR visa from which one can work out an estimate of the overall success rate. From other published data it is also known what the breakdown is between the different LTR categories, so with all this you can come up with a pretty good guess of the Wealthy Pensioner LTR visa. As none of these figures come directly from the BOI, they could theoretically of course all be wrong, but prudence would dictate to be very careful with your investment decisions

If you scroll up in the thread, you will find the sources of the statistics. If I remember correctly, about a week or two ago.