Pib

I just surveyed the 10 richest billionaires (USD) in the world.....and 10 out of 10 said they plan to take Thailand up on this offer since Bt40M (a little over 1M USD) is pocket change. They can then build their dream home on 1 rai of land in Khon Kaen. So, it sounds like Thailand got this one just right.

Yeap...the article says all that's needed is 130K USD equivalent deposited in an Indonesian state-owned bank (not any old bank of your choosing), 4x6cm photo, CV, and a passport with at least 3 years remaining. No mention of a medical insurance requirement.

Yea...."today" mine is only a 3 digit also (004)....but yesterday when I submitted the application it was 1128. Guess that means the application has moved from one BOI staff member to another. But the status still shows Pending just as yesterday.

Well, that gives me hope for my LTR application where I have listed as my medical coverage Tricare, a U.S. military health coverage plan for active duty troops, dependents, and retirees. I'm a military retire and have been using Tricare while retired to Thailand....works great...world coverage. From looking at the type of insurance you have (United Nations After Service Health Insurance) which you mentioned in one of your earlier posts and above posts it seems to be similar to the U.S. military "Tricare" medical coverage. And for military retirees 65 and over it's called "Tricare for Life" which provides worldwide coverage but you must have Medicare Part B....must be paying Part B premium (which I am) to retain Tricare for Life. I think that is similar to your UN insurance. There is no expiration date on the Tricare for Life health coverage and is basically unlimited coverage. Guess I set back now and wait and see what happens.

Congratulations. How long did the whole process take for you....that is, when did you first submit your application? Edit: Never mind....from scanning back thru this entire thread I found posts where you said you submitted your application on 4 Sep with the BOI notifying your of approval on 5 Oct.

Yea...the only place I did significant fine tuning was in the income and medical docs to be uploaded and a couple of memos. They got uploaded this morning with my new draft application...and those attachments had never been uploaded before.

And just for those who haven't created a LTR online acct the completion of the "basic" online application form is easy. Most of your time spent on completing the LTR application will be "putting together the supporting docs to upload like proof of income, medical, etc."

The LTR application website is really slow, glitchy today (25 Oct/Tueday morning) when completing/editing/viewing your application. When hitting Save between pages it can sometimes take 30 seconds before moving to the next page....one time I got a time-out notice. I'm right here in Bangkok on an AIS Fibre 500Mb speed connection. And when I first logged on today it didn't show my Draft Application which I had been tweaking for a week....in fact, no application was showing. So, I log off and log back on again and now the application is showing. Then while working on the application it created a duplicated application but with missing data. And then by mistake I deleted my original draft instead of the duplicate draft...and that duplicate draft was missing a lot of data. So, I delete that remaining draft and started from ground zero and reentered the application from scratch but the system was very slow during that process. I've got it reentered with all the attachments/uploads and I've double/tripled checked it, but will wait until later today to submit if the their system seems to be back to normal speed. Yeap, I've never seen it this slow, glitchy as this Tuesday morning.....maybe overloaded with people checking on status.

Congrats. You have now been officially recognized by the U. S. government as an "Old Geezer." A recognition I also received years back. And if you have your last SS annual statement handy take a look at the area which shows the total amount of SS tax "you" paid-in over your work life (disregard the amounts/entries about Medicare tax paid as that a separate benefit and Medicare/SS taxes your employer(s) paid-in on your behalf). Divide whatever gross amount your monthly SS pension is going to be into that total SS Taxes You Paid Amount....and I think you will see you will recover all of that money around 4 years of SS pension payments. It will vary from individual to individual as to the payback time....but bottom line the SS taxes you paid over your work life was a very good investment (assuming you live around 4 more years). P.S. standby for the probably comments from those who will say if you could have instead invested those "SS Taxes You Paid" into the stock market, gold, cryptocurrencies, etc., you would have a much bigger next egg of money. We won't talk about "if" you would have actually made those investments (many people would not have) and picked the right investments versus spending the money on bills, vacations, a new iPhone, a new car, etc.

Just to supplement the statement I bolded above regarding the SMART Visa program that kicked off in 2018 from a 21 Aug 2022 Bangkok Bank news article I just stumbled across it said since 2018 there have been approx 1,200 SMART Visas issued. Now, I don't know how many zillion the govt was initially estimating to apply for the SMART visa when announcing it 4 years ago but business day-wise over 4 years that works out to a little over 1 SMART Visa (or 1.2 more accurately) approved per BOI business day. I wonder if the LTR Visa program will do any better. IMO I think it will not get anywhere close to the 1 million over 5 years (200K per year) the govt has estimated mostly due to the income requirement being too high and the insurance requirement which isn't very flexible (most likely due to the insurance mafia lobbying). If the govt wants to reach a 1 million LTR visa issued they need to lower the income requirement and add much more flexibility in acceptable medical insurance.

What would be the difference with your current 1 year visa/extension of stay. Say you have to leave at the 10 month point before you could apply for another 1 year extension and then you couldn't get back until say 1 or 2 months after your extension expired. You would have to start all over with a new visa/extension. Expiration dates suck. But I do hope since this LTR is 5 + 5 visa that they would allow some leniency/special handling on renewing at the mid point....but then again maybe not.

What I'm providing is a passport type picture which shows my upper chest and hansum face. Now at the photo shop I just wore a tee-shirt, but I had them magically finalized the photo with me in a suit and tie. I got some hard copy photos and the shop sent the file image via LINE. The file image is now uploaded to the application....one hansum devil I am.

Regarding folks who do want to see the actual online application you can signup which is easy and fast. Then surf around an application....even start a draft. BUT, DO NOT upload any docs until you are ready to really apply/submit an application because you may not be able to delete "some" docs you upload.

Initially I'm not going to upload my tax return unless I gotta....like they come back later and ask for it. But for the pensions statements/letters I'm uploading I'm including a memo that briefly explains I'm a govt retiree, receive X-amount of lifetime govt pensions, fixed income, etc. That memo will also included a table listing each pension, the amount, and some remarks that some are 100% tax free, not reportable on a tax return, etc.

But aren't all of the LTRs "approved" (or maybe you can even say "issued") by the BOI regardless of whether the actual visa may be issued/stamped into your passport like at BOI immigration or a Thai embassy/consulate? The BOI basically approves/directs/tells the immigration section at BOI or Thai embassy/consulate that issue of a LTR visa is approved...the applicant now only needs to fork out the $50K payment to get the visa stamped into his passport.

When filling out the online application for Pension/Fixed Income you just enter amounts at that stage of the application.,.see snapshot 1 below. But at the very end of the application (Snapshot 2) where the main area for upload of docs is located I can only see two places where a person should upload income related docs like pension statements and that is Number 11 and possibly Number 16. And there are various disconnects/conflicts/head-scratchers between the general info on the public LTR website and the actual online application. Snapshot 1 Snapshot 2

For those of you which have been following this new LTR Visa much closer than I, do you have any intel/knowledge of how many LTR Visa's have been "approved/issued" so far? When you log into your LTR acct the first pages shows a running count of SMART visas approved over the last few years and that count is only 625. But I don't see anything talking the number LTR Visas approved. I expect the BOI is still far, far short of the 1 million over 5 years which started 1 Sep 2022. The Thai govt has stated they hope to issue one million LTR visas over 5 years which stated 1 Sep 2022. That's 200K LTR visas per year. Since there is around 250 business days in every 365 day calendar year then 200,000 divided by 250 this means the BOI would have receive and approve on average 800 LTR visas "per business day." I'd be surprised if they are approving more than a 5 to 10 per day.

Regarding doc upload when the BOI has initially reviewed your application with docs you submitted at the BOI LTR website and then the BOI wants more....like upload of XYZ document you didn't initially include. Do they send you an email asking for the upload OR do they call you asking for the doc OR are you prompted in some way when checking your online application for status OR ??????

That's because U.S. institutions know what they are...are use to viewing/reviewing the "IRSise" the transcript is written in.....and it proves you did file an income tax return. I don't have a warm, fuzzy feeling a BOI rep would understand the transcript.

I think I remember someone submitting their IRS tax transcript....and those transcripts come with the SSN redacted (only last 4 digits shown), name redacted (only part of the first and last name shown), and address redacted (on the first part of the street address. I know for sure as I have an IRS online acct and have downloaded my transcript numerous times to include just a day ago. And for those who have seen your IRS transcript is a long doc in IRS language where some data field are in geek/tax man talk, etc.; does not look like the layman's return you submit. Not quite sure a lot of it would make a lot of sense to a non-U.S. person like a BOI rep; but then again the BOI probably sees all types of business/personal financial docs they get from applicants who apply for the many different "setting up a business in Thailand" authorizations foreign businesses and people apply for. Now if you submit your paper or efiled tax return you are going to have to manually redact such data.

Couldn't agree more. But does the BOI know or even care how a tax return could greatly under reflect a person's income. If the BOI is hardcore in using a tax return as the key document in proof of income then those with fully or partially non-taxable/non-reportable pension and/or fixed income could fall short in meeting the BOI minimum income requirement.

For any of you who used "pension/annuity" letters from the pension payer saying you received X-amount per month/year and these letters meet the 80K USD requirement "Did you also upload your annual tax return or just use the pension letters?" Was those pension letters enough for the BOI to prove req'd 80K USD income; the BOI didn't require a tax return also? A tax return which may not have even reflected the certain pension amounts partially or even not at all depending on the taxable status of those pensions. Like one of my U.S. govt pension (VA pension) is 100% non-taxable...no 1099 tax form is provided by the the govt since the pension is non-taxable....non-reportable on the tax return. And one of my other pensions (Social Security) is only partially taxable which is non-taxable on the tax return....it is reported in a round about way on a tax return worksheet which ends up showing on the taxable amount that is then transferred to the main tax form. When all of this non-taxable/non-reportable pension and tax dust settles a person has a tax return which shows a significantly lower total annual income than what your actual income is. Tax returns are complicated beasts with the various rules/laws as to what is reportable, what is taxable, etc. I plan to include a short memo with my pension letters identifying which pension amounts are fully or partially tax free which means they are non-reportable/non taxable on a person's annual return. Plus, I would rather not submit my tax return for security/identify theft reasons....but if I do have to submit one certain info like SSN will be redacted.

Just some "administrative" comments on completing the online application which I started today in earnest. When you start the a new application a checklist is shows what is "Mandatory and Optional" data/inputs. Now we know having insurance or 100K USD deposit is mandatory for Wealthy Pension but the checklist shows it as Optional. For the passport upload it begins by saying just upload the "main" page in jpg or pdf file format so it can be OCR'ed. OK, if doing that it uploads and shows that main page OK. OK, now I wonder about upload the entire passport which I have in pdf format. When I select Edit to upload that pdf version I guess it uploads but then the LTR application no longer shows a clear image of my passport main page but just a cartoon type image. For medical insurance since I'm going to try the "social security" benefits type coverage which has no expiration date you still "must" enter some date. So, for now I will just enter a date 30 years out...hopefully I have 30 years left on my clock Then when I go to the end of the application where you can hit the "Summarize" button which is suppose to show all the data you entered but a lot of the data does not show....like my address does not show. And although I selected martial status of Married it shows Widowed. I go back into the application to make sure my address is still entered and I did check the Married vs Widowed block and my address and marital status is correctly shown. But go back to the Summarize page and it doesn't show or is wrong. I'll just assume the Summarize is not working/displaying properly. I expect I'll find more administrative/glitches as I continue to complete the application.

I understand where you are coming from....I have the same concerns especially when providing certain detailed financial data like found on income tax returns, financial accounts, etc., Identity theft can be made easier when the bad guys get detailed data like this....and it could just be enough for them to pull-off an identity theft event. Sure we have all provided copies of this and that at Thai immigration, Thai banks, etc., like copy of your passport, copy of our Thai bank passbooks, and a variety of other stuff as Thai government office and banks are "hooked on paperwork....wants a copy of everything." Lord knows where all the paper copies end-up. Whatever financial data I provide during the LTR process will have redactions where I feel uncomfortable (like social security number, bank acct numbers) with certain data being given and will only provide it later if the BOI says "they gotta have an unredacted copy of document so-and-so." I will just bite the bullet then and submit the unredacted doc. But, yea I understand your concerns....I have them also for some docs.

Good to hear you did get a belated reply. For many people the insurance nut is going to be a hard to crack....hard to thread the needle because of the expiration date issue. Needing an expiration date which is at least 10 months down the road especially for those folks who have government/social security/military retiree medical insurance policies that "do not" have an expiration date. Example: the U.S. govt Tricare for Life (TFL) which U.S. military retirees 65 and older have and provides worldwide coverage....there is no expiration date....just continue to stay enrolled by maintaining enrollment in Medicare Part B via monthly Medicare premium automatically taken from your social security pension. Or, if not drawing a social security pension then pay the Medicare Part B premium manually by direct debit from your bank acct. Yes, Medicare does not provide coverage outside the U.S. (except in some rare cases) but having Medicare Part B is required to have/maintain the TFL coverage which does provide worldwide coverage. Basically TFL and Medicare are jointed at the hip. And when I set foot in the U.S. for say a one day visit or move back permanently I'm instantly coverage by both Medicare and Tricare....leave the U.S. and it's back just to Tricare coverage. Outstanding coverage whether outside or inside the U.S., but coverage with no expiration date....no policy statement....get all your coverage info online/via downloadable handbooks.....just a Medicare pocket membership card and with Tricare no membership card but instead you can get a Tricare Verification Letter that pretty much just says, "Yes you are enrolled in Tricare, have been for X-amount of years, etc." but there is no expiration/end date. Basically typical government/social security-type medical coverage that does not come with a policy sheet defining coverage amounts like $100K, $1M, etc., (since the coverage is basically unlimited)...nor does it reflect an expiration/end date.....the only things that would cause an "end" to your policy is your death, failing to pay the monthly premium, or disenrolling. I'm going to be applying over the next week or so for a LTR Wealthy Pensioner Visa and will be applying using the medical insurance option of: "...or evidence of social security benefits insuring medical expenses in Thailand..." TFL will be my coverage (and has been since living in Thailand for many years) as that is a government/social security-type medical coverage. Then see what happens. I sure hope the BOI understands most/all "social security-type insurance policies do "not" have policy end/expiration dates...continue to pay the monthly premium and you are covered until you croak or stop paying the monthly premium. But if they are hard core about expecting to see a commercial/private insurance type policy that shows coverage amounts, like coverage up to $100K, "and" a policy expiration date then I'll be SOL. And it will also show trying to qualified under ????their "or evidence of social security benefits insuring medical expenses in Thailand..." is basically an option probably no one will be able to use and the BOI knew this from the get-go of devolving the requirements (probably with the insurance mafia assistance)....which then forces a person to buy a redundant commercial policy or go the self-insure option or just not apply. Ah, I need to now go find some cheese after above whine.