K2938

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

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

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 So a significant part of those should really be in rejected or withdrawn.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

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

Yes, if I remember correctly based on some previous data released over 50% of applications were from people already in Thailand anyway. And since the shortfall between the official goal of 1 million visas in 5 years and the real number of visas issued is now so huge that it is clear to everybody that this will never ever be reached, this goal now allegedly was never really meant seriously anyway. The visa is attractive for a very small group of people who happen to meet its criteria. But to expect huge numbers of visas to be issued just seems to be based on the fallacious idea that all the world's wealthy are just dying to move to Thailand. They are not.

The application experience of other people

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

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

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

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?

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.

Another advantage of the LTR-WP visa is that assuming you have the income you have no requirement for a security deposit in a Thai bank or the pain and expense of monthly money transfers like with a Non-O. And those who use agents to circumvent this will pay even higher agent fees

I do not think that the introduction of agents will cause a step change in the number of LTR visas. The fundamental problem of the LTR visa is NOT that the application process is technically too difficult, but that the criteria are set such that very very few people fit. So at the margin, there might be a few more applications and visas issued with agents, but the huge embarrassing shortfall compared with the target of 1 million in five years will not disappear thereby.

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