Bit of a strange one. bkk as work "homebase"?

[chacker]

Hi fellow forum readers...

1st of all, GREAT forum...always enjoy reading it and it has helped many times.

I'm in a bit of a precarious situation and I hope some of you have some ideas.  I have been staying in Thailand for quite some time now, really just using it as my Asian "home base", as I travel extensively and frequently throughout the region.  My company is fine with this, as it is a much cheaper place to live than HK or Singapore (and ofcourse I love it a whole lot more anyway, as we all do!)

Because I travel so much, I have never had an issue with overstaying a tourist visa, so I've just taken that route.  I do not produce work product here in Thailand, so I have certainly broken no laws there by not having a work permit.  Though my company does have an office here, it is quite small.

My question is this:  Is there someway to apply for an appropriate non-immigrant B visa, given the circumstances that I am still employed out of the US, and paid out of the US, but am working almost exclusively in APO and utilizing BKK as my "home" while here.  I'd obviously like to start moving towards 3 years of non-immigrant visas to apply for residency and the like.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

[Indo-Siam]

Chacker -

From 2000-2002, I was in almost the same situation as you.  The local Thai company office that I informally "'satellited" off while in town did not have enough Thai employees to justify my employment, in addition to the one non-Thai already running that office (they did have the capitalization).

As I am married to a Thai, I had a Class O visa - but I travelled so many times each month that I never even declared it.  With four sets of page extensions in my passport, Immigration rarely noticed it.

I wanted to pay taxes here, but there was really no way.

One way you could achieve your goal would be to set up as a Regional Headquarters here, in addition to your company having a country office here.   In all likelihood, this would be entirely possible - and out of it, you could get both a work permit and a Class B visa status.   But - someone woud have to fund the requirements:

Alien Business License (42,000 baht, plus fee from service company - 8,000 from my firm)

Work permit, entry permit extension, personal income tax registration - Maybe another 25,000 baht

Office location/address - maybe 5,000 baht per month, two months advance rent deposit.

Inbound remittance of two million baht first year, one million baht each of next three years (but your salary, travel expenses, etc. could be paid from this).

Let's say 90,000 baht that would be just for getting set up - then everything else might be a wash.

That's a lot for you to personally pay one time just to prepare for residency.  If your company agreed to fund this - at least partially - then it might be worth considering.

There would also be some bureacratic work required back at parent company HQ - including interface with local Thai embassy to obtain necessary authentication/certification.

Here's a nice summary:  

Regional Office

See Branch, Representative of Regional Office about halfway down the page.

If this ever sounds attractive, we can do it for you.

'Hope this was useful.

Regards,

Steve Sykes

Managing Director

Indo-Siam Group

Bangkok

[email protected]