A couple of years ago I had a Thai company registered as I intended manufacturing some of my inventions here.

Time marches on and that has not happened unfortunately.

My lawyer informs me that it will cost 20k baht to close the company down!

As I am moving on from Thailand after 25 interesting years my thought is why not just move on and let it go and save the money.

Is the company worth anything?

It cost a heap to establish.

It has never traded so is a clean skin.

Sole Falang director.

Anyone have experience or thoughts on this?

All helpful comments would be much appreciated.

MOVED to Business forum

Myself for 20k I'd rather do the right thing and tie the lose ends up. You never know when something comes back to bite you in some way in Thailand. You haven't complied with a regulation or filed this that or the other, or someone unscrupulously forges something and abuses it or does something illegal in your name. The lawyer who set it up, person who opened your bank account etc, you never know. You may not think you're coming back to Thailand, but life is full of twists and turns.

Probably unlikely anything untoward would happen, but always a possibility no matter how small.

Or you could have a quick go at selling it and at least try and get something back. Might be worth a few thousand - but not much.

Just walking away would probably be 3rd choice for me after the 2 above

Often property agents (especially in Pattaya / Phuket) have potential buyers who want to buy property using a Thai company, which they don't have.

So you might tell a few property agents that you have a 'clean' company (meaning that everything is up to date with lodgement of Thai annual company return / company tax finalized and up to date), and your interested for somebody to take over the company.

Change of shareholders names etc., can be done very easily and very quickly on line, just a few minutes and many property agents know the website address and how to use it.

Change of shareholders does have small fees.

You could tell the agents:

- Your prepared to allow another farang to take over the 49% shareholding at no cost as long as the new farang pays the change of name fees etc.

- Your prepared to 'sell' the company for XXXBaht using the same process.

But in either case ethically you should say that all shareholders names have to be changed to ensure there is no possibility of anything bouncing back on the other original shareholders.

On the other hand there are probably property agents who don't want to know about this appraoch because they get a 'commission' when an accountant of whatever sets up a completely new company for the potential buyer.

Good luck.

I registered a Thai company about 20 years ago but never used and just abandoned it. Can't even remember the name. It was a shady setup with shareholders that I did not even know just extremely poor photocopies of local ID cards all arranged by the lawyer office.

No idea if it still exist.