If i was to purchase a house/land via a Ltd co. (valued at around 1 million Baht) what would the running costs be ??

Very high. Your company has to submit all kinds of accounts to the government every month. VAT return, employee tax, then you have a 6 month statement, and the full year statement which must be audited.

In all it probably costs around 70-80k per year minimum. If you can find a cheaper way to do it, let me know!

I think it depends where you are in Chiang Mai it should cost 18-20,000 Bt

Count on about 15K, its what it costs me in Hua Hin.

VAT not necessary if the company trades below a certain figure each year and if its just for owning a house/land its not going to generate millions.

You need accounts and year-end audit, submission of tax return and newspaper advert giving notice of annual board meeting.

Please take a good look at following post, made by Arkady in this thread.

The article in today's (26 Oct 2009) paper - the other English paper that we are no longer permitted to quote directly - suggests that the Business Development Dept is about to get serious about investigating foreign controlled companies with nominee Thai shareholders that own land. The person quoted from that dept said they would looking at the sizes of plots and whether the land is used for business or residential purposes.

I imagine that any company with a foreign shareholder or director owning a plot in a newish residential development, especially in a resort area, would be an obvious place to start. Next off they could look at the filed accounts to see if the company appears to have any operations. Renting the property to a director doesn't count as operating income and would normally be classified as "other income" in the accounts, unless the company is clearly a property company. On the other hand, perhaps the emphasis will be on foreign developers, who are doubly evil as they are regarded as competing with Thai developers. In this case the errant companies are likely to have real operations and would be more difficult to spot from their financial statements. If they make money, then it will be also be more lucrative to go after them. Nevertheless, I would think that the low hanging fruit for the Business Development Dept, if it wants to get some easy busts to show it is doing something, would be the villas with infinity pools in Phuket and Samui, owned by foreigners who don't have Thai wives and blindly followed the self serving advice of the developers and their lawyers to set up Thai companies that have no operations and have their accounts qualified by the auditors every year (i.e. the auditors insert a disclaimer in Thai that they don't translate for their clients, saying they were unable to verify any of the information in the accounts because management refused to provide them with requested information and documents). I would think that any one owning clearly residential landed property through a shell company that has nominee Thai shareholders without any significant operations should accept the writing is on the wall and restructure as best they can, rather than risk being one of the first sacrificial lambs. Being successully prosecuted would almost certainly result ultimately in being deported and declared persona non grata in Thailand which would defeat the object of having the land in the first place.