Is The US/Thai Amity Treaty Really This Simple

[stratocaster]

Posting this out of curiosity. In the last three weeks I have met Americans who propose starting businesses in Thailand under the Amity laws. First guy will rent a shophouse and install 4 washing machines with two dryers and open as a laundromat under the amity treaty. He is doing this to get a work permit plus non B and no 4 employees rule. Second guy has a hole in the wall restaurant he is selling for 200,000 baht in which he claims if you are American you can run under amity as a sole proprietor. Third guy is starting a real estate business from "his" home under the amity concession, again to get a work permit and non B. Is it really that simple? Before I burst their bubble, I would have thought that there would be minimum financial requirements at the very least.

[QuantumQuandry]

Following with interest.  The big limitation, for my purposes, with the Amity treaty, is that it doesn't let you own land.

 

Would love to hear more about startup costs and the work visa thing, though :)

 

Other than being able to work, is a work visa better than a retirement visa?  Obviously has downsides in terms of paperwork and investment.

Edited December 10, 2023 by QuantumQuandry

[The Theory]

On 12/10/2023 at 1:20 PM, QuantumQuandry said:

Other than being able to work, is a work visa better than a retirement visa? 

I did read any regarding their age !!!! 🤔

[judokrab]

On 12/10/2023 at 1:20 PM, QuantumQuandry said:

Following with interest.  The big limitation, for my purposes, with the Amity treaty, is that it doesn't let you own land.

 

Would love to hear more about startup costs and the work visa thing, though :)

 

Other than being able to work, is a work visa better than a retirement visa?  Obviously has downsides in terms of paperwork and investment.

 

 

Working will give you a path to citizenship.

[timendres]

The Amity treaty does not change the 1 WP = 4 Thai employees requirement.

What it does allow is for an American to own 100% of their company (minus a tiny percentage for the other required shareholders).

In the case of my company, I owned 99.5% of the company, and my brother and a friend (both American) owned 0.25% each.

 

[timendres]

On 12/10/2023 at 1:20 PM, QuantumQuandry said:

Other than being able to work, is a work visa better than a retirement visa?  Obviously has downsides in terms of paperwork and investment.

 

Unless you have a real need to work, the retirement extension is vastly superior to a work permit extension.

The work permit does provide some small advantages, for instance in terms of opening bank accounts or qualifying for a real credit card.

But the cost and hassle is hardly worth those small perks.

[timendres]

2 hours ago, judokrab said:

Working will give you a path to citizenship.

 

Working provides a path to permanent residence. The path is very expensive, in my opinion, for its limited benefits.

You have to be sure that your salary meets the minimum (I believe 60k per month), and you need that for three years.

Then you will likely part with somewhere between 300k and 1M baht to complete the process, depending on how you do it.

The one big benefit for permanent residence is the ability to purchase land, if I recall correctly.

As for citizenship, I am not sure, as I have never looked into it.

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

4 hours ago, timendres said:

 

Working provides a path to permanent residence. The path is very expensive, in my opinion, for its limited benefits.

You have to be sure that your salary meets the minimum (I believe 60k per month), and you need that for three years.

Then you will likely part with somewhere between 300k and 1M baht to complete the process, depending on how you do it.

The one big benefit for permanent residence is the ability to purchase land, if I recall correctly.

As for citizenship, I am not sure, as I have never looked into it.

 

PR holders aren't able to own land.

[timendres]

6 hours ago, Etaoin Shrdlu said:

PR holders aren't able to own land.

 

Right. I was confusing that with the privilege of being able to purchase a condo without showing the funds came from outside the country.

Thank you for setting that straight.

[SbuxPlease]

I own a treaty of amity business. Initially it is set up just like any other Thai limited company, but then the Treaty approval takes about a year() and lot of additional documentation. My lawyer charged about 40k for this component and I've heard some charge upwards of 100k to get the treaty of amity approval completed. It's possible that the more they charge the more they know what they are doing but you can never be sure.

 

Once you have the business, you still run into all the typical issues with running a Thai company. There is a lot of ongoing filing work to keep a company alive in Thailand which is often not exactly transparent before you start. Unless your Thai partner is an accountant or experienced admin, you'll hire an accountant to do this for you for like 8-15k baht a month even if you have no business activities at all. 

 

The rules for getting a work permit include hiring 2-4 thai people and paying their SSO and handling their taxes. Perhaps between your nanny, your maid, your GF and/or their friends, you can find 4 people to work with you. I say 2-4 despite the most often quoted rule being 4 because my work permit was accepted with just 2 Thai employees initially. Overall maintaining these employees means maintaining all their records of employment. This is not trivial - the accountant will create several filings for you to sign and submit monthly. Maybe they can do it and sign for you - if so great because it will save you time. All in you'll likely spend 50-100k to set up the company and at least 150k a year to hang on to it.

 

Every year when it's time to renew your work permit and your B visa, you or someone who works for you will need to go around to several government offices collecting official receipts/copies that prove you're filing your annual return, your business financials, your audit, paying taxes for employees, and official/updated copies of business location, a hand drawn map to the office, photos of you and all the staff at "work" and in front of the company official sign.

 

When this is finished you'll have 100 sheets of paper evidence that you should qualify for a B visa, that you take to Chaeng Wattana at 6am so you can be the first in line, only to find that you're the 100th in line already. The immigration officer will find a strange looking signature on page 32, 44, at 65 and reject those pages making you sign again, so you physically must be there. Then they'll find you forgot to include a letter about why you stopped working at your last job, which despite not being anywhere in any list of required documents, is being asked of you today. So you leave, write the letter, and do it all again the next day. The next immigration officer doesn't care about that letter and finally stamps your passport at 7:48pm on a Friday night, and now you get to fight Bangkok traffic back to your condo.

 

All in, using a Thai company to maintain a visa in Thailand isn't as easy at it first sounds.

 

 

[scottiejohn]

42 minutes ago, SbuxPlease said:

The rules for getting a work permit include hiring 2-4 thai people and paying their SSO and handling their taxes. Perhaps between your nanny, your maid, your GF and/or their friends, you can find 4 people to work with you. I say 2-4 despite the most often quoted rule being 4 because my work permit was accepted with just 2 Thai employees initially.

In CM the "norm" seems to be just 2 Thai people!  I do not know about other Provinces! 

Is not also the case that you can only either liquidate your company or sell it on to a fellow US citizen that meets the Amity requirements rather than to a non US citizen?

[SbuxPlease]

14 hours ago, scottiejohn said:

Is not also the case that you can only either liquidate your company or sell it on to a fellow US citizen that meets the Amity requirements rather than to a non US citizen?

 

That's a great question, and would the new owner need to jump through all the hoops of re-qualifying as well. These cases may be so rare that few have ever attempted to do it.