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PattayaAddict

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    Are They Allowed To Copy My Photos?

    in Photography and the Arts

    Posted

    Photography and Copyright ::what the ((((UK))) internet law states currently

    Who owns the copyright on photographs?

    Under law, it is the photographer who will own copyright on any photos he/she has takenwith the following exceptions:

    If the photographer is an employee of the company the photos are taken for, or is an employee of a company instructed to take the photos, the photographer will be acting on behalf of his/her employer, and the company the photographer works for will own the copyright.

    If there is an agreement that assigns copyright to another party.

    In all other cases, the photographer will retain the copyright, if the photographer has been paid for his work, the payment will be for the photographer’s time and typically an allocated number of prints. The copyright to the photos will remain with the photographer, and therefore any reproduction without permission would be an infringement of copyright.

    Examples:

    If Bill Smith asks Peter Jones the photographer to photograph his wedding. Peter Jones will normally provide a single copy of the prints as part of the fee, but any additional prints Bill or his family and friend want must be ordered via Peter as he is the copyright owner and controls who can copy his work.

    If Bill Smith engages the services of XYZ-Photos for the same job, and Peter is an employee of XYZ-Photo who instruct Peter to take the photos, XYZ-Photos will be the copyright owner and control how they are used.

    Copyright registration

    Why register?

    The purpose of registration is to ensure that you have proper, independently verifiable, evidence of your work. This ensures that if another party steals your photos you have solid evidence to prove your claim.

    Without registration it can be very difficult, and often impossible, to prove your ownership if another person claims the photo belong to them.

    Protect whole collections for a single fee

    It is possible to submit a great many photos within a single registration, and only pay a single registration fee.

    If submitting online, then you can submit as many images as you wish within a single registration, although if there are many files, then it is usually better to create a single compressed archive of the work, (or several manageable chunks if the collection is considerably large, or you have a slow Internet connection), using a utility such as WinZip, WinRar/Rar, 7-Zip, StuffIt, or Tar.

    If submitting by post, then the most cost effective method is to submit your collection on a compact disc; as scanned images, files taken directly from a digital camera, or via a software editing package are all acceptable, (although .JPG files are generally considered the standard format).

    As each registration can only have a single title, (the ‘title of work’ on the application form), you should use a single overall title for the collection as a whole. (Typically this will reflect the ‘theme’ of the images, (i.e. ‘The Carter Wedding’, or ‘Visit To Austrailia’).

    Using the work of others

    As with all copyright work, you should first obtain permission from the copyright owner before you use someone else’s work.You should also be prepared to pay a fee, as many photographers will charge you for using their work.

    Only the copyright owner, (or his/her authorised representative), can give permission, so you should contact the photographer, or his/her company, directly for consent. For images published on the Internet, it is typical to contact the webmaster of the site in the first instance, unless the site provides contact details for the owner of the images.

    The copyright owner has no obligation to allow you to use their work, and can refuse permission for any reason.

    Marking your work

    The two primary reasons for marking your work are to ensure that those accessing your images are clear that copyright exists and that they know who to contact to obtain permission.

    Contact information

    We often receive enquiries from individuals and organisations wishing to use specific photos, but who are unable to trace the owner. It seems that many images are marked as ‘copyright image do not reproduce without permission’, but that the photographer omitted to include their contact details. This is frustrating to the person wishing to use the image and also means that the photographer may miss out on reproduction fees and exposure.

    Copyright notices

    We do recommended that you mark your work with a copyright notice, as this makes it clear that copyright exists, and helps to deter infringement. Please see our fact sheet P-03: Using copyright notices for information on wording you notices.

    For traditional prints, it is customary to use a stamp to mark the copyright notice and the copyright owners contact details on the back of the print

    If you display your photos online, you may choose to use photo editing software to place a simple copyright notice across the image, (typically this will appear in the bottom corner). Ideally it should include the address of the web site so that it is clear where to go to find contact details.

    For electronic images, it is also possible to include the copyright/contact details in the file properties. Under Windows for example, right clicking on a image will allow you to bring up the properties dialogue where you may enter details about the file, (though this will only work with certain file types). More typically, your image software will provide a way to insert comments into the file; this is preferred as these are harder to remove.

    Watermarking may be worth considering if you have a lot of valuable images on your site.

    Model release forms

    An individual has certain rights to control the use of their image. The specific details will vary from one country to another depending on national legislation, although the general rule seems to be to protect a person against defamatory or offensive use of their image.

    If you intend to sell or distribute images that include people, then it is worth getting your subjects to sign a model release form as this will protect you against any comeback.

    A search on Google for ‘Model Release Forms’ should reveal a number of example documents that you can use.

    Under The Current Climate Would You Buy A Condo?

    in Real Estate, Housing, House and Land Ownership

    Posted · Edited by PattayaAddict

    Personally i have been thinking about this for the past few months and what do i do ?I always go back to this idea with this dated document that you can find dated back to 2006 in this site ,have a look -to me it still makes a lot of sense to this day :

    Saturday, 23 December 2006

    Better rent than buy condominium in Thailand

    In recent weeks I have received several enquiries with regard to buying real estate property. These have inevitably been from a middle-aged (or older) expatriate who has decided to settle in Thailand with the girl of his dreams that he met last month or the month before, who loves him so much that she�s leaving her place of work in Soi 8 or Pattayaland Soi 2 to settle down in the nice little house she�s found for them somewhere along Jomtien Beach.

    Usually, the enquirer wants to find out why the property cannot be held in his own name, and if it�s okay to put it in his girlfriend�s name.

    Some of these enquirers are so na�ve that they even ask how they can obtain a mortgage on the property. �Oh dear,� I think when I hear these tales, �Not another one��

    For their own protection

    At the height of the currency crisis in 1997, Thailand had agreed with the IMF to liberalise its laws with regard to foreigners owning real estate in Thailand.

    The matter was debated in parliament and the press at great length, and the usual jingoistic (some would say xenophobic) statements were aired that if the protectionist laws were amended, we greedy farangs would sweep in and buy up all the land in Thailand and exploit the poor innocent Thais in our typical colonialist fashion.

    (I wonder why the fact that Thais or anyone else with money can buy any amount of landed property in the U.K. or U.S.A. is never aired as a counter-argument, and neither the British nor Americans seem terribly worried that their country is going to be taken over by colonising Asians ­ but that perhaps is another topic for another day.)

    So the debate went on and on, and announcements were eventually made that the law was going to be amended to allow foreigners to lease up to 1 rai of land for up to 30 years, on which to build a residential property ­ provided this was preceded by a remittance equivalent to 10 million baht of hard currency from overseas deposited in a bank in Thailand.

    However, like several other politically unpopular bills, this one also is still pending, as far as I�m aware.

    Nonetheless, some local real estate firms trumpet in their advertisements that foreigners can now own their own property. But this is just a clever ploy to get you through their doors. The mechanism which has been used for years to get around this protectionist law has not in fact changed.

    The facts

    An expatriate can own a condominium in his own name provided not more than 40% of the apartments in the condominium complex are owned by foreigners. That has been the case for a long time already.

    But if you want to buy a house or land, an expatriate can only do so through a legally registered company, of which a single expatriate cannot own more than 39% of the shares (recently amended from 33%), and collectively not more than 49%.

    You also need at least six Thai partners to hold the remaining shares (although you can go a long way to protect your interests by being the sole authorised signatory and ensuring these local partners sign their undated resignations and share transfer deeds at the time of setting up the company.)

    Of course, you could avoid the costs & hassle of setting up a company by putting the house in your wife/girlfriend�s name. This will undoubtedly make her very happy ­ even happier than the visits you made to her favourite gold shop and motorcycle shop (which are the usual precursors to visiting the real estate agency.)

    However, what happens a year or two down the road when you have a major disagreement about something, or her Thai �husband� shows up (they all seem to have them squirreled away somewhere)? You, like so many before you, may find yourself standing on Jomtien Beach with only your passport in one hand and a bag of clothes in the other�and your life savings gone.

    Getting a mortgage

    In U.K., U.S.A. or Europe, getting a mortgage on a property is almost taken for granted. Few people are in a position to buy a property for cash on the table.

    The relatively low price of property in Thailand means that many expatriates who decide to settle here are tempted to buy a residential property, or a shophouse for their girl-friend to run a travel agency, beauty salon, snooker hall or beer bar on the ground floor, while they love ­ I mean live ­ upstairs.

    Some of the more na�ve ones imagine that they can just march into a local bank and get a mortgage on the strength of the property and their "personal" guarantee on behalf of their girlfriend.

    Sorry, but that isn't going to happen.

    Unlike in the West, where the title to the property guarantees the bank in the event of default, and an endowment or insurance policy its money in the event of the borrower�s dying, laws in Thailand to help banks recoup bad debts were only implemented last year, and the efficiency of the court system is such that it could take up to 10 years to recoup defaulters� bad debts.

    Banks are not interested in holding real estate on their books, since this is a non-performing �dead� asset; they want to recover the money they lent, to lend it to someone else and earn interest on the loan.

    Understandable, since they're in the money business, not the real estate business.

    Look at the numbers of non-performing loans (still around 43% of total loans issued by local banks), and the high percentage of mortgage defaulters, and that might give you some inkling why banks here have virtually stopped offering new mortgages on real estate.

    In Europe, banks can seize collateral property and sell it on fairly quickly. Here, in a depressed property market, even auctions have proven less than totally successful in moving those real estate properties which banks have been able to repossess against defaulting loans. More often than not the few meagre bids have not reached the bank's reserve price, and the bank simply withdraws the property from the auction.

    Obtaining a mortgage anywhere will depend largely on the ability of the borrower to repay the loan. This will be evaluated by the lending institution on the basis of stability of employment income and past credit record.

    Nowadays, even local business people with good credit records are having great difficulty obtaining mortgages. Typically, they have to show they have at least the value of the mortgage on deposit in the bank already, and are prepared to keep it there as collateral.

    So if you're prepared to deposit the value of the property in the bank ­ in her name, of course ­ she might be able to get a mortgage if she has a good employment record and her regular salary is sufficient to repay the loan. And of course the property then has to be in her rather than your name.

    But to imagine that an expatriate boyfriend (who could leave the country any time) will be accepted by any bank as guarantor of a mortgage being applied for by a local lass whose employment record comprises working in a go-go bar for a year or two, and whose average bank balance has been perhaps 400 baht a month, is naive in the extreme.

    Part 2

    Last week I offered my opinion that the only reasonably secure way of protecting your interests if you're thinking of buying a residential property is by forming a company and making yourself sole authorised signatory of that company.

    Inevitably, some readers will disagree, and some will undoubtedly be writing vehement letters of protest to the Editor of this publication protesting that they�ve been married to a Thai lady for X number of months/years with no problems whatsoever, and that they're absolutely sure she will never do the dirty on them as regards the property which they've been living in so happily, and which is registered in her name.

    Well, if she married a farang some years back, Thai law precluded her continuing to own either land or a house in her name after that marriage was legally contracted. So that would tend to indicate that perhaps the "marriage" wasn't fully legal, or the land title slipped through a bureaucratic loophole somewhere�

    (More flurries of protesting letters will undoubtedly be spawned by those remarks!)

    Anyway, this unfair law was recently amended, so a Thai wife can now legally continue to own land or a house which she owned before the marriage, without fear that the authorities might negate the land title if ever she tried to sell it. Similarly, a Thai lady legally married to a farang can now own and ­ more importantly ­ register property in her own name.

    But like any other valuable investment, putting property in someone else's name ­ no matter how much you may trust them at the time ­ is fraught with danger, and leaves you potentially open to abuse.

    Would you rather trust your life-savings to a bank or your housekeeper? I know many of you cynics will say, � Depends on which bank.� But I think you get my drift.

    Similarly with your house. There have been far too many reports of gullible farangs being thrown out of the house they paid for ­ with no recourse in law ­ to ignore the fact that it happens. And far more frequently than most macho men would care to admit to their drinking buddies...

    Things to consider

    Potential property investors ­ here or anywhere ­ should look at five things: long-term demographics, supply, demand, tax, and inflation.

    First, let's look at the supply & demand situation in Pattaya. There are far more residential properties available than there are potential buyers. Some have stood empty for years. So, one could reasonably conclude that it is a buyer's market, right? Wrong.

    Most people don't like to lose money. And Thai property owners are no different. Having had to pay inordinately high interest rates to the banks if they had a mortgage on their property (which they may still be paying), or a substantial amount of pre-devaluation Baht if they paid cash, they are fundamentally averse to suffering a loss on the property ­ even, it seems, when they start running short of cash.

    I know of several cases where people prefer to borrow money on the street� for 4%-5% a month interest, using their property as collateral against the loan, rather than try to raise a loan from a bank (which these days is not only a difficult and lengthy process but might still be refused), let alone sell their property at a loss.

    Property prices were expected to drop by some 30% after the economic crisis in 1997. But real estate agents will tell you that property prices have fallen comparatively little in the past three years ­ unless the bank is beating on the owner's door demanding repayment of a non-performing loan. It seems Thai landlords prefer to leave a house vacant than suffer a capital loss on their investment.

    Rent or purchase?

    Then, look at the ratios between the purchase price being asked and the rental price for the same property.

    In the USA and UK, the "standard" rule-of-thumb for value/rental is around 100-120 times. In other words, if your house is worth $100,000 and in a prime location and good condition, you can expect to get

    perhaps $830-$1,000 a month rental income from it. (Of course, you have to pay taxes, rates, maintenance costs, insurance, agency fees, etc., so you may end up with only 5%-6% net return per annum on your investment property. In real terms, not a very good nor a very flexible investment. But that�s another subject for another day.)

    Here in Pattaya, however, the rule-of-thumb ratio seems to be more like 200 times.

    For instance, the "average" shophouse sells nowadays for Bt.1.3-1.8 million, depending on location. Those same shophouses would rent for perhaps Bt.6,500 to Bt.9,000 per month respectively. Which means the purchase price is about 200 times the rental price.

    In other words, you would have sunk an amount of capital into buying the property which would be equivalent to paying 200 months� rent (which for those who don�t have a calculator handy is 16 years and 8 months.)

    Alternatively, the same Bt.1.3-1.8 million wisely invested in secure medium-risk offshore investments could reasonably be expected to generate an income stream averaging 10% p.a. ­ or Bt.130,000-180,000 a year, while leaving the capital intact and securely yours.

    Renting that property for a year would have cost you only Bt.78,000-108,000 from this income-stream, so you would still have money left over for fun or whatever.

    Simple arithmetic tells you it makes better economic sense to rent rather than having your capital tied up in a property which is unlikely to appreciate much in value and almost certainly not beat inflation, if past history of the property market is any indication of future trends.

    Location, location, location

    Another point to consider is location. That property may be located in a "good" area now, but who knows whether that area will have become more popular or less popular 10 years hence?

    "Ah," you say, "But that's how I'll make a capital gain!" Yes, if the area improves. But you might have to swallow a capital loss if the area deteriorates ­ and that has happened many times in many "select" spots of Pattaya which are booming one year and deserted the next. (And, I freely admit, vice versa.)

    So as far as making a capital gain on an investment property is concerned, that is very much pot luck.

    Housing estates and even condominiums are subject to the same whims & fancies, it seems, although admittedly much less than commercial property.

    But consider whether you would be content living in the same house in the same location for the next 16 years. Because that's the rental equivalent of purchasing the property outright.

    It is more likely that you will want to move to another location ­perhaps quieter, cleaner, newer ­ sometime during that period.

    Then you've got the problem of finding a buyer for your house perhaps in a deteriorating neighbourhood� You could easily lose money on your investment if you move, not to mention the taxes you will have to pay either when you sell or buy the house.

    Even buying a brand-new condominium has its pitfalls. For instance, in Bangkok there are many blocks of condominiums which went up at the height of the building boom which are standing three-quarters empty, and the owners are now fearful that the lifts, security and maintenance services will be cut off because there is not enough income being generated from management fees to cover the operating costs. How are they going to sell or even rent their condos then?

    Fortunately, the situation is not that bad in Pattaya ­ although there are always plenty of condos, houses, commercial shophouses, bars and restaurants for sale to lucky buyers with cash to spend ­ just look at this week's Mail Market section... Or perhaps it's the sellers who are really the lucky ones?

    Part 3

    In the past couple of weeks I have offered my opinion on buying property in Pattaya, first with regard to protecting your interests, and secondly from the economics standpoint of cost-effectiveness of renting versus buying.

    Coincidentally in the interim, there have been a couple of articles in the national press about fraudulent practices that even I was unaware of.

    I have also received several enquiries from potential real-estate buyers, who are concerned not only about shady practices that might affect them, but also about the taxes they might be burdened with.

    Let's look first at just one of the shady practices that has apparently been going on ­ at least around Bangkok.

    Earth moving developments

    It has been reported that, in more than one instance, a piece of prime real-estate in a good location was shown to a prospective buyer, and a price agreed. When the land registration deed for the newly-acquired property was subsequently examined, however, the location of the land on the deed turned out to be in quite another area from what the buyer thought he was buying.

    Typically, that land was nowhere near the land shown, nor anywhere near its value.

    Let me hasten to add that I am not suggesting that this practice has been followed by any Pattaya real-estate firm or property developer, nor any individual seller.

    But it is curious that one enquiry I�ve received recently was from a couple (a farang married to a perfectly respectable and charming Thai lady ­ an exception to the typical relationship in Pattaya which I was warning against in the first of this series of articles) who were in the process of buying part of a local housing development, but were experiencing great difficulty getting straight answers from the Thai developer to quite reasonable and straightforward questions.

    One of these questions was why the developer was selling a piece of land which happened to have a house situated on it, but there would be no paperwork or deeds pertaining to the house itself.

    There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this apparently anomalous transaction. But not being in the real-estate business I have not as yet been able to discover the answer (which I suspect has to do with paying taxes ­ or rather not paying them.) I'm sure the Editor will receive a flurry of letters from local real-estate firms regarding this practice, and I look forward to their explanations.

    The development in question may indeed be perfectly legitimate, and the Thai developer merely a very shrewd businessman (or rather businesswoman in this case) who was looking to maximise her return from her investment. Or avoid taxes.

    However, why she would be unwilling or unable to show the clients a copy of the land title deed (which is a public document available from the Land Registry) is certainly cause for concern in light of the published case mentioned earlier.

    Taxing issues

    As I pointed out in the first of this series of articles, under the current land ownership laws foreigners cannot own land or houses in their own names. (This may change if a proposed bill is ever passed into law ­ but how long that may take is anyone's guess; the last time property laws changed here it took seven years�)

    Hence many foreigners by-pass the protectionist law by purchasing a house through a company. (I gather the Thai authorities are making noises about passing legislation to close this loophole also; but that may also take a long time ­ although when it comes to self-protection, laws seem to be passed here with greater alacrity than when granting concessions. But that's yet another example of TIT ­ "This is Thailand," to borrow Mr Trink�s favourite phrase.)

    What many buyers (especially foreigners) fail to take into account are the taxes that become due upon transfer of a property title,however the property is purchased, and no matter whether through a company or in their girl- or boy-friend's name.

    Three taxes will have to be paid when the property is bought or sold.

    But because of the peculiar local system of taxing property on a rather arbitrary assessed value rather than true market value, these could amount to as much as 30% of the purchase price.

    When a tax bill arrives ­ often some two or three months after the sale is completed ­ this could come as a nasty shock to a buyer, since the seller often neglects to mention this liability during the negotiations... (And after all, why should they tell you if you don't already know or ask? As in all business transactions here or indeed anywhere, caveat emptor is the rule: Let the buyer beware.)

    In addition, if the house is purchased through a company, one has to bear in mind that corporate tax is higher than personal tax, and the cost of setting up the company has to be considered as part of the initial investment outlay, even if this is a relatively modest additional cost ­ perhaps around $1,000 all told.

    An investment or a millstone?

    Buying a property to live in is one thing; buying it as an investment is another, whether in Thailand or indeed anywhere.

    In the depressed property market currently prevailing in Thailand, homeowners could suffer a considerable capital loss if they sell their properties for what many would regard as true market value. Naturally enough, they are reluctant to do so. This is one reason why property prices have not come down as much as was anticipated after the currency crisis of 1997.

    If the homeowner bought the property on a mortgage or financing rrangement, the loss will be compounded by the interest he or she will have paid in the meantime, which until very recently was inordinately high ­ not to mention the taxes that may have to be paid on the property, either by the seller or the buyer.

    Thus if you are looking at property purely from an investment perspective, it could take many years for the overall costs to be recovered. Even in developed markets, property values over the long term just about match inflation.

    In the meantime, there are all sorts of "charges" on the investment to be considered: local taxes; insurance; maintenance & repair ­ which could be a major expense should the tenants run amok and trash the place, as recently happened to some friends of mine right here in Pattaya!

    I know of other cases where a property was bought as a long-term investment, and has become a millstone round the owner�s neck. The property is sitting idle with no prospective buyers in sight, no rental income, but still incurring a tax liability each year. It is therefore a depreciating capital asset which is a drain on resources, rather than an income-generating investment.

    At the end of the day, it is entirely up to you whether you buy or rent your home, and this is often an emotive rather than rational decision.

    But after taking into consideration the significant capital outlay, bureaucratic complications, peripheral costs, taxes and inflexibility, my advice would have to be "Rent don�t buy."

    Opening A Massage Shop.

    in Jobs, Economy, Banking, Business, Investments

    Posted

    Hope this helps :o

    The laws in Thailand are pretty nationalistic. In the vast majority of cases, the company must be "majority owned" by Thais, in terms of shareholders. This means that the company can be no more that 49% foreign owned. Sometimes, it is a maximum of 39% foreign ownership, and occasionally even less. In most cases it's 49% foreign owned.

    This is by far the most serious issue for the largest number of foreigners.

    The exceptions -- majority foreign ownership -- require an Alien Business License a.k.a. a Foreign Business License from the Ministry of Commerce, normally granted with the blessings of the Board of Investment (BoI) on the basis of very large investments of money, very large numbers of Thais employed, and/or exceptionally strategic transfer of technology to Thais (such as in the energy field). There are also American Treaty Companies, which I will discuss later on this page. The ability to set up either kind of company depends on the sector of business you are in, and other factors.

    I have seen some advertisements saying that you CAN set up a majority foreign-owned company. Sure you can. You can file papers with all foreign shareholders, 100%. You just can't do business with that company unless and until you get an Alien Business License.

    However, control of a company, its money, property, decisions, etc., is not necessarily lost by not having "majority ownership". There are some simple measures whereby a foreigner can completely control the company. For example, let's say that you own just 39% of the stock, and the Thais 61%.

    You are the sole Managing Director

    Sole signatory authority -- the bylaws / Articles of Incorporation state that all decisions must be signed by this Managing Director

    You split the stock between "ordinary" and "preference" shares whereby your "ordinary" shares each have 2 times (or more) the voting power of the "preference" shares (preferred for dividend payments, not for voting) (Note: This is changing in 2007, whereby this is disallowed in many sectors, but the guidelines are not yet clear.)

    Notably, in addition, you should:

    Set a quorum of shareholders at 65% (and thus, if you don't attend, there is no quorum and there are no surprises) so that the bylaws cannot be changed nor can the Managing Director be changed.

    (Note: In Thailand, the definition of "ordinary" and "preference" shares varies from some other countries. Some give more voting power to preference shares. It's partly a matter of translation and definition, but there can be philosophical differences, too. In any case, in Thailand you clearly establish the different voting powers.)

    The foreign Managing Director can, of course, be the largest shareholder.

    Notably, with many law firms, it is common for foreigners to "pay off" the Thai shareholders whereby the Thai shareholders sign away their shares in an undated share transfer agreement right after setting up the company ... but for every Thai shareholder who "resigns" and makes available their share transfer deed, you must transfer the shares to someone else. Shares cannot just be left without an owner; they must be transferred, either to another Thai or else to yourself. If you transfer them to yourself, then you are violating the law by operating as an alien company, and subject to judgement. These law firms will point out that transferring the shares back to yourself "is a minor problem compared with other problems you could have". That depends ... However, in any case, if you go that route, you would just leave signed and undated share transfer agreements in your drawer untransferred and undated ... or in your safe, as that can be a huge risk. You must also report any share transfers in your Annual Report. You can give these shares to someone else as needed, but until someone else accepts these shares, the original shareholders still own them. Again, nobody can just sign away their shares without someone else accepting them.

    Another questionable tactic is to have the law firm provide promoters/shareholders who never meet you and don't even know you. This is sometimes presented as "if they don't even know, that's another level of safety". It's illegal. Further, if your company gets rich or acquires property, then if you subsequently have an "unfortunate accident" (or are just murdered), guess who gets all that wealth and property (or arranges to have those shares transferred to them)? Do you really trust these people?

    This is NOT to imply that others have such conspiratorial intentions. It is clear that they usually don't, and these things are rare. However, these things do happen occasionally, and these are risks you don't need to take. If you value a good night's sleep, then you might want to know and diversify your shareholders before they become shareholders.

    It's also best to state clearly where the wealth of a company goes in case of the demise of the Managing Director, such as in your will, and that everyone knows this. It's also good to make sure that you keep some of your information confidential and safe.

    Assigning the shares to your Thai wife and her family can be risky if you have problems with them later. Likewise, you don't want to assign shares to people who may want to take over your business or its assets, of course. It is best to assign these shares to a diversity of Thais who you think you can trust.

    Most Thais don't understand their liability by owning company shares. If the shares are paid for, then there is no shareholder liability, generally speaking. That's the whole purpose of a company. If someone owns 500,000 baht of shares, and those shares are paid up, then they are not liable if the company loses money. However, if they own 500,000 baht of shares but only 200,000 baht are paid up, then if the company loses a lawsuit and owes money, they could lose up to 300,000 baht (the unpaid shares they own).

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