K2938

8 hours ago, al valio said:

What are Malaysia and Vietnam doing differently?

Malaysia still has a lot of rain forests, so no farmer there wants to burn something.  Also in parts now rainy season and flooding

24 minutes ago, Startmeup said:

Phramongkutklao hospital. Any reason why he would have chosen this one, has it got a good reputation?

Military hospital for military guy

In spite of the less than stellar performance of the LTR visa in terms of applications and visas issued, the BOI is apparently still maintaining its '1 million LTR visas issued in 5 years' goal ...

https://thethaiger.com/hot-news/visa/thailand-still-pushing-its-unattractive-ltr-10-year-visa

2 hours ago, cruzin4me said:

So, I finally got dengue... my case was severe,

Do you know where you got it?  It is currently far out of the rainy season which is why I am asking.

21 hours ago, soi3eddie said:

DTAC prepaid SIM card with roaming activated for UK

So you will NOT be able to get SMS abroad if you have not activated roaming abroad prior to leaving Thailand?  And are SMS received abroad then free of charge to receive, please?

The climate is really only truly pleasant in Thailand during the cold season which is about four months from Nov to the end of February and now the pollution further reduces this by about a third.  Not great for a tourist destination...

8 hours ago, Wombo1 said:

Yeah I expected something like this, that is not clear enough for my company.

To many ways for the Thai government to read it and way they want

Yes, the written statement certainly sounds much different from the prior verbal statement somebody reported above that 'with an employee using the LTR-WFT visa to work from Thailand, there is no liability for the employer for PE or taxes.' 

1 hour ago, eddyod said:

Has anyone gone from a Non-O visa to one of these successfully? I'm already in Thailand with a Non-O that will expire in late March and would like to get one of these.

 

Thanks

If your Non-O is expiring in late March and you want to go down the LTR route, then it would be most urgent time to apply .  The 20 working days processing time mentioned by the BOI is largely a myth and even if you apply right now, you might run into timing problems.

3 hours ago, MicroB said:

I was advised to check this topic, but having searched it,Thailand, but if a company doesn't knw  it seems my question has not been raised before. For those working from Thailand, for a non-Thai entity, how has the question of Permanent Establishment been dealt with.

 

I work for a UK Plc, in the financial sector. Based on company revenue, my salary and my qualifications, I seem to qualify for this LTR visa. My employer is in multiple different industries, and in 2020 purchased a UK company concerned with the automotive sector, which came with a significant Bangkok business that is now 49% owned by my employer. However, its not a part of the company I work with or ever work with (I work in the healthcare sector).

 

While Permanent Establishment does have a UN definition, it seems countries have their own view. Essentially it considers if a company is subject to Corporation Tax because it has established some sort of presence in that country that is to do with deriving revenue from that country. Thai corporation tax is 20% of revenues earned from business with Thailand. If the comapany doesn't know how much revenue it gets from Thailand, corporation tax is 5% of total revenues (I think), which would amount to about £10 million a year to the Thai finance ministry. If that happened, I don't think I will be doing the move. Also, it will cost the company a significant amount of effort/expenditure to figure which Thai incomes are not currently taxed according to Thai law, which are subject to tax treaty etc..

 

BUT PE isn't an issue if the presence in country is not "directly" related to revenue generation. ie. If I was in sales, doing deals with Thai clients, or if I was involved in contract agreements (signing off contracts), I would be considered establishing a PE. However, my role is Director of Research, within out healthcare entity; essentially I direct the creation of content that the sales people go out and sell. Nothing I do is specific to Thailand, but I do know Thai entities do purchase our healthcare data. At least, this is how I understand it.

 

So, does the fact the company already has a subsidiary in Thailand, albeit at some distance from the work I do, mean nothing changes for the company's status if I choose to move to Thailand?

 

I would add this is something I want to do for personal reasons, not because my company wants to relocate me. The company has recently introduced new working policies, which includes a conditional approval to work in places other than my home country. So far, within the company, I know of one employee who chose to work in Poland, but was put on Polish wages, another who relocated from Canada to Japan, and who was retained on Canadian wages, some who have gone from UK to New York and San Francisco, and are pretty much on the same salary deal as London. In theory, I could be put on Thai wages, and still be UK taxed (but I suspect if it came to it, they'd agree to maintain a UK level salary).

1) You need to get some professional tax advice, ideally from one of the Big 4.  And this includes both Thai and UK tax consequences.
2) If I remember correctly, somebody else above also had a related query on this, so you might want to link up with that person. 

3) My gut feel when reading through some of the questions also posed above by other people is that nobody has really thought through all the tax issues here.  So you are bound to risk getting some nasty surprises if you do not investigate in advance.  And asking the BOI is probably not really going to help you very much either because while they are nice and polite, what they say might not necessarily be true.
4) You might want to check before all this if your company really will maintain your UK level salary because you certainly would not want to make this move on a Thai salary (and would also hardly qualify for the LTR visa with such a Thai salary).

7 hours ago, Karma80 said:

Yes, but how many of these are just existing retirement visas converted? Seems to make up most of this thread contribution. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not really much benefit to the country.

If I remember correctly, previous numbers disclosed indicated more than half were conversions. 

As the number of people eligible for a conversion is limited and many of those who can have already done so, their relative share is however likely to decline.  And with this the number of overall applications will most likely also further slow down.

 

13 minutes ago, at15 said:

I just had trouble getting into DMK with a tourist visa from penang and I had been out of the country for a full month too in two different countries. But still taken away for questioning and providing documents. Ultimately I got in, but its really unsettling.

How long have you been in Thailand before this over the last one or two years?

4 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

and make Thailand more appealing for tourists.

...oh, of course, that is why they now want to introduce the 300 THB tourist entry levy.  Now I understand????

21 minutes ago, aublumberg said:

A slow drip with a lot of WIP.

I would suspect the WIP is so big not only because the processing is so slow, but also because it contains a lot of in reality "dead" applications.  So a significant part of those should really be in rejected or withdrawn.  And by including dependent visas which account for over 20% of all visas issued the figures also get embellished.  So in reality the numbers look even less favorably. 

But hey, things could be even worse.  Indonesia's also newly introduced second home visa apparently got exactly zero applications so far in Bali

9 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Americans at the top of both nationality lists...

And Chinese and Russians on place 2 and 3 of the LTR visa.  Among these are probably a lot of Chinese fleeing the (at that time) zero-covid policies and Russians fleeing from the repercussions of the Ukraine war, so their number and relative share will probably strongly decline in the future when these two special factors do not exist any longer

12 minutes ago, Pib said:

Such as? 

The application experience of other people

24 minutes ago, Pib said:

According to the primary BoI spokeman for the LTR program (the lady in below post/video) you would just need to prove your "total" investments would cover a 10 year period, like at least 800K USD which would provide 80K USD per year.   And those investments would need to be in under a pension or annuity type fund to qualify.  And with so many different types of investment funds called different names in different different countries I expect there is flexibility in your investment fund type.   

Real life data points were the basis for my above comment.  Common sense would dictate what you said, but that is unfortunately not true

1 hour ago, OneMoreFarang said:

If I would be married in Thailand without any pre-nup and if I would have money in my personal bank account in Europe, how would my theoretical Thai ex-wife be able to get 1/2 of that money? Somehow I guess that would be difficult, especially if this is only about a divorce and not child support. 

If you continue living in Thailand, then it is very easy.  If not, then it depends on what conventions about support in family law the country you are then living in and the country where the assets are held has signed.  So it is not as difficult as you imagine, but as it costs a lot of money, somebody would only pursue this for big amounts

1 hour ago, Pib said:

Since you are not drawing a pension/Individual Retirement Account (IRA) type income where a stable/fixed x-amount is being paid to you monthly/quarterly/annually but instead you are drawing X-amount from an investment account the BoI will need to see you have enough in that investment account(s) to cover 10 years of 80K.....that is, you would need at least 800K USD in the investment account......10 divided into 800K equals 80K/year.

The BOI does not accept if you just have the money, but they want "income".  So given that stocks have a dividend yield of about 1-2%, you would need to have a stock portfolio of 4 to 8 million USD to get to 80k USD.  And if you have this amount of money, you should very carefully think about if it is really sensible to disclose this unless you then also want to have to hire some body guards for your protection

5 hours ago, bmanly said:

I stay in the same serviced apartment year after year with receipts. They do everything correctly including submitting details of arrival for TM 30 card.

The point is not the filing of the TM30, but having a LONG-TERM rental contract (like 12 months) for getting the Non-O extension which I assume you will not have.  The precise policy of Jomtien I do not know, but other immigration offices require this as a mandatory condition for getting a 1 year extension

I assume you will not have a long-term rental contract if you only stay in Thailand for four months.  This could be a problem for the Non-O extension at least for some immigration offices

Are digital vaccination certificates acceptable?

1 hour ago, khunjeff said:

Assuming they're still using the same system at that time, though - and that's a big if - they should be able to just change the status of each case to "documents requested", exactly as they've been doing each time they want more information during the initial adjudication phase. Once the status changes, the case will be open for additional uploads.

They should remove all the original uploads once a case is decided.  Just a huge security risk to have all the confidential financial information continually posted on the internet with just a simple password, not even 2-factor authorization.