Self Employment In Thailand

[painter]

My wife and I are decorative painters. We hand paint high end wall finishes- for example a gold leaf finish in a hotel lobby shop or home. In Australia we are a self employed partnership. We would like to know the simplest way to relocate our business in Thailand. A company structure is too complex. In Australia we have not hired anyone on a regular basis. Any advise would be appriciated

[pluto_manibo]

Good luck

[Indo-Siam]

For your protection, you need to be employed by a Thai Private or Thai Public company here.

You need to work with a work permit - otherwise your clients could simply not pay you for completed work - and you could do nothing about it.

Sole proprietorships or limited partnerships would be risky - you would have personal liability, and working for entities such as hotels could place you at too great a risk of claims (for damage, theft, etc.).

This is possibly not a good place to come, with your plan. Thailand has a very developed industry of frescoe painters - have you seen a high-end Buddhist temple here? You are basically talking about performing personal labor (which is forbidden employment for non-Thais), and although specialist artisans just might be able to scrape by as an exception, you might encounter substantial hostiility here.

Good luck!

Steve Sykes

Managing Director

Indo-Siam Group

Bangkok

[email protected]

www.thaistartup.com

[painter]

Thanks for your reply

We already have public liability insurance for aud 10 mil under our current structure

We did not realise that personal labour was forbidden employment. We would qualify as specalist artisans. Would it still be difficult to get a work permit?

Does you know of anybody who is in a similar situation. we are comming to Thailand in the next couple of months to investigate.

We source 98% of our work through high end interior designers and architects.