Validity Of An Offshore Company.

[up2you2]

I quote from the current article from the Phuket Gazette 9-15,2011 - Low-down on offshore vehicles:

"It has become popular for property investors to acquire interest in land or property in Thailand under the name of an offshore company."

Of course the death nail of flouting the previously existing law, prohibiting the setting up of sham Thai companies with nominee shareholders but completely controlled by the "minority" foreign shareholders, was officially dusted down on 25th May 2006. And since then rigorously enforced.

Then the very expensive option of forming extra terrestrial offshore companies with foreign nominee shareholders, to purchase land and property gained favour.

The sole purpose of doing this is to circumvent these existing Thai laws, governing the ownership of land and property in the names of foreigners.

If this does not break the letter of the law, I certainly feel that it goes against the spirit of any existing laws on the subject.

So my questions are these:

1) Has there been any tests cases concerning the validity of such an offshore arrangement?

2) If so how long did they take, including any appeals?

3) Even though there is not a law of precedent in Thailand, what was the final verdict?

[thaiwanderer]

You totally misunderstand.

There was no death nail in 2006 and the use of offshore companies gained popularity long before then anyway.

Offshore companies are just as foreign as a foreigner's personal name.

They are equally illegal when used in the same illegal ways.

The only real difference in the approach is that the foreign shareholder/s in the thai land owning company is a foreign company or companies (and there may well be further layers of offshore companies controlling those first layer foreign companies). Really this just means the foreign shareholder/s in the Thai land owning company is 'Farang Company' as opposed to 'Mr Farang'.

There are tax, transfer and inheritance advantages to this approach that may well make it worthwhile but it doesn't make the landowning company any more or less Thai.

Further steps may be taken to reduce the foreign apperance or enhance the commercial appearance of the landowning company which typically utilise offshore companies but general principles remain the same.

Edited April 15, 2011 by thaiwanderer