Is A Work Permit Needed If You Are Buying Product

[happymanme]

hi every one, i am interested to find out if a person coming into thailand on a non imm b visa requires a work permit to buy products in thailand for export back to home country.

all funds would originate outside thailand and no products would be sold on within thailand.

thanks

allan

[Khun Bob]

The post Work Permit Needed If I Do Remote Work?

has some comments on this, both by Steve, Indo-Siam

First :

As I understand the law, in practical terms, you are not considered to be working in Thailand if:

1) You have no organizational entity in Thailand for whom you are employed

2) No money/payment changes hands in Thailand

3) Your activity does not involve buying or selling anything to individuals or busineses in Thailand, and you do not interact with buyers, sellers, or others in Thailand.

so this basiacally says you do need a work permit, as point three means you will be working.

However a further quote :

I do not have the energy at the moment to pitch the full pitch here - it is in the message archives on this board, from maybe a year ago - but it was a description of a mythical court appearance in Thailand by a farang accused of illegally "working" in Thailand. It was a description of the prosecutor presenting the evidence against the accused to the judges - actual photos and videotapes of the defendant "working". A few examples:

Photo #1 - The defendant is the fourth farang in line in this photo of a queue at an ATM machine (or western union office), where he was retrieving his pay.

Photo #2 - The defendant is the second farang from the left, in the red shirt, in this photo of an Internet shop (with 15 farangs in the photo).

Photo #3 - In this photo from the FEDEX office, the defendant is the eighth farang in the queue, waiting to ship the merchandise that he is exporting from Thailand.

Photo #4 - This is the farang picking up a business-related FAX message from some company in Finland - and here is that FAX (in Finnish) showing what we believe is a process flow for some software program.

etc., etc. Thailand is a nation of laws, and if they want to arrest yand convict you, they have to try you - and someone would have to prove you were guilty of a crime by presenting evidence, and no judges I know would tolerate such ridiculous evidence being presented in court.

Reduce the argument to absurdity, and it goes away.

It would seem that in point (photo) three above that by shipping something from Thailand by FEDEX, it would be hard to prove that a person is working in Thailand.

Be interested to hear further comments and insight on this....

[Indo-Siam]

My feeling is that you do not need to be concerned about a work permit, but you do lose a bit of protection here - if you prepay a vendor, and that vendor fails to deliver, you lose some ability to use the full range of legal recourse.

You are basically a tourist who claims to have been cheated - as opposed to a legal corporate entity in Thailand, that can claim a business-to-business dispute.

That is probably not a very significant distinction.

You also lose your most of your ability to recover VAT for items that you export - but the VAT recovery system doesn't work too well for businesses either, so maybe no real loss.

Good luck!

Steve

Indo-Siam

[LivinLOS]

but the VAT recovery system doesn't work too well for businesses either

Ha from what one of my friends with a largish export setup goes thats an understatement...

VAT seems to be a one way street in Thailand, instead of just the end user paying each tier pays.

[happymanme]

This is kinda what i thought steve, i thought that was what a business visa was for to enable a person to buy and export product from thailand to another country legally,otherwise i can't see much of a benefit of a non b over a tourist visa,other than the chance of a work permit which at this stage i dont want ........

still thanks a lot for all the replys

allan

[chuchok]

I know a few people that come to Chiang Mai to buy goods..container loads.They have been doing it for years and wouldn't know what a work permit looked like.

[yuyi]

case 1:

There is a company outside of thailand, whose representative you are, and for whom you do look for suppliers.

These suppliers then export the products to this company outside of thailand, and invoice this company outside of thailand.

(I even think that then there would be no VAT needed to be paid here, but that's just based on common sense, here it could very well be different I just can't imagine Thai companies have to add VAT to export invoices )

Then I think nobody will ask you for a work permit. At least not for some time, only if you live here permanently, for years, then I think they would want you do pay some taxes here, meaning register a business for your work here.

case 2:

You buy the products from companies here, and you export the products to your home country.

Then you are just a tourist, buying some "souvenirs" here. Again, if you are such a tourist for many years, buying and exporting all the time, and even living here most of the time, then I think they would want you do pay some taxes here, meaning register a business for your work here.

But this is only what I think how it works, the Thai law might say otherwise