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Thailand BOI, company structure and tax — in English
These are the questions foreign investors ask most often, published in English: 70 guides across 9 topics, 11 policy updates, 16 self-check sheets and 3 regional guides. Each page is written from the official Thai texts, dated, and linked to its Chinese twin.
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Visas & work permits
Getting in is the easy part — staying and working legally is not.Who to send,which route fits them,what documents to prepare,and how to renew before expir…
BOI incentives
BOI tax exemption decides how much this project savesCorporate income tax exemption and duty-free import of machinery are the single biggest p…
Company & shareholding
Who owns the company gets decided before you registerShareholding ratios,control,land rights. One wrong move in the structure,and every step a…
Tax compliance
Late filing means penalties — know the deadlines in advanceThailand's filing calendar and its rules differ a great deal from China's,and carrying ov…
VAT refunds
Getting back the VAT your exports have tied upPlenty of exporters have a sum of refundable tax sitting on their books that they have si…
CRS / CFC
How the owner arranges things in an age of information transparencyWhile the company goes overseas,the owner's own overseas accounts and shareholdings have…
Origin & imports
Bringing equipment and materials into Thailand without overpaying dutyShip equipment and materials over from China,and getting the classification and the route…
Employment & social security
Get the employment rules straight before you hireTermination costs,social security obligations and the rules for employing foreign staff i…
Choosing an adviser
Choosing the wrong adviser costs more than the adviser's feeA lot of what goes wrong for Chinese-invested companies in Thailand traces back to believ…
All guides (70)
Visas & work permits
- Business visa: fine for talks and site visits, not for hands-on work
- Resignation, role change, new employer: what happens to the visa
- Sending staff to Thailand: which visa route fits, in three questions
- Sending a Chinese employee to Thailand: four stages, who does what
- After arrival: the 90-day report, re-entry permit and extension
- The Long-Term Resident Visa: another route for plant managers and engineers
BOI incentives
- Can a 100% foreign-owned manufacturing project get BOI?
- Which Thailand BOI tier can a project reach, and how to go higher
- How long does Thailand BOI approval take, from filing to certificate?
- What to file after a Thailand BOI certificate, and what missing it costs
- Thailand BOI certificate: the benefits and deadlines to read first
- Does Thailand BOI exempt all taxes, and which ones still apply?
- What you must report after a BOI certificate, and what a miss costs
- The BOI 36-month deadline to start operations, and how to back-plan it
- BOI duty-free machinery import: the window and what if you miss it
- Thailand BOI raw material duty exemption: accounts, write-off, suspension
- When a BOI tax exemption starts: first revenue, not the certificate
- BOI company accounting: keeping exempt and taxable income apart
- Sending Chinese engineers to Thailand under BOI: visas and work permits
- Can Thailand BOI incentives be revoked and clawed back?
- Three BOI promoted activities now require majority Thai shareholding
- Is a plant sited in Chonburi automatically eligible for EEC incentives?
- Can BOI and EEC exemption years be added together?
- Siting in the EEC: what order should you check things in?
- Data centre BOI filings in Thailand: why a project screening comes first
- Selling BOI machinery? Write-off isn't disposal approval
- BOI CIT exemption already used up? A path back to new incentives
- High-tech BOI projects: Thai staffing ratio relief, capped at 3 years
- BOI expert leaving: notify BOI before hiring a replacement
- Changing a BOI-promoted project: which route your change takes
Company & shareholding
- Thailand's three restricted business lists for foreign investors
- Limited company, branch or representative office in Thailand
- Nominee shareholders in Thailand: which arrangements are off limits?
- Can a Chinese-invested factory in Thailand be 100% foreign-owned?
- Can foreign investors buy land in Thailand? What the new rule changed
- Three lawful routes past the foreign shareholding cap
- Registration is getting harder to pass: four new checks in the last year
- Locating in a Thai industrial estate: BOI promotion, IEAT, or both?
Tax compliance
- Paying an overseas service provider: withholding tax and VAT
- Sending profits from Thailand back to China: which taxes apply
- The five tax traps of a factory's first year in Thailand
- What taxes does a Thai company file each year, and when are they due?
- Is a Thailand tax health check worth doing, and what does it find?
- Thailand's annual corporate income tax filing: what comes first
- How the Revenue Department views service fees to a Thai subsidiary
- When must a company in Thailand register for VAT, and what if it does not?
- Settled: Thailand's VAT rate holds for one more year, to 30 September 2027
VAT refunds
- Export VAT refunds in Thailand: recovering the cash on your books
- Tax invoice defects that block input VAT credit in Thailand
- BOI-promoted companies: same VAT refund process, three things that differ
- Six months to carry forward, three years to claim: two VAT deadlines
CRS / CFC
- Can an owner still hide offshore accounts and shareholdings after CRS?
- Does BOI tax exemption trigger China's CFC rules on undistributed profit?
Origin & imports
- Can you cut import duty when shipping equipment from China to Thailand?
- Shipping from China to Thailand: three places FTA preference fails
- A wrong tariff code does not show at the border
- Which fields must agree across a shipment's documents
- Green line, red line, and where the BOI exempt number sits
- Filing the export entry is not the same as having exported
- Bonded warehouse resale: the duty rate follows the release date
- Why customs entries keep bouncing back before the filing is even reviewed
Employment & social security
- Hiring in Thailand: severance pay and social security costs
- Terminating an employee in Thailand: the costly traps beyond severance
- Thailand employment rules 2025–2026: three new costs and one new report
- Hiring in Thailand: the annual employment compliance calendar
- Are noncompete clauses in Thai employment contracts enforceable?
Choosing an adviser
Service lines
Services — the five lines side by side, and the order they have to happen in.
- Thailand BOI application: from tier analysis to certificate
- Thailand company structure and shareholding: decide before registering
- Monthly bookkeeping and tax filing for companies in Thailand
- Thailand export VAT refunds: recovering input tax on your books
- Thailand visas and work permits for posted staff
Toolkits (16)
Downloadable worksheets. The workbooks themselves are in Chinese; each landing page explains what is in them.
- Thailand filing deadline calendar for the full year (editable)
- BOI obligations after certification: a 36-month timeline
- BOI duty-free equipment import: per-shipment document checklist
- Export VAT refund: the document self-check before you file
- BOI tier self-check worksheet (line-by-line download)
- Foreign Business Act restricted list screening worksheet
- Limited company, branch or representative office: a comparison worksheet
- Cross-border withholding tax quick reference (editable workbook)
- First-year tax and compliance actions for a new Thai company
- BOI post-certificate reporting deadlines and what a late one locks
- Treaty preference self-check: run it before every shipment
- Employment and termination cost worksheet for Thailand
- Thailand visas and work permits: the process and document checklist
- Adviser selection checklist: six questions and a quote comparison
- CRS / CFC stocktake: take stock first, then decide whether to move
- Credit and refund deadline tracker: two separate clocks
Policy updates (11)
- Penalty and surcharge relief has a new discretionary standard
- BOI project progress reports move to quarterly, with a 30-day window
- Thai staff ratio eased for semiconductor and electronics projects
- Aluminium: only casting from externally sourced scrap is suspended
- Border special economic zones: corporate income tax cut from 20% to 10%
- PP.30 VAT return switches to a new form, refunds via PromptPay
- Data centre projects: contribution plans before the tax exemption
- Moving a whole supply chain to Thailand now has its own incentive route
- Nominee shareholder checks tighten, with look-through at registration
- Six manufacturing categories lose the BOI land ownership privilege
- Settled: the reduced VAT rate runs to 30 September 2027 (Decree No. 807)
Regional guides
About
Checked against the official texts by the CTAC Thailand advisory team. We track the gazettes of the BOI, the Revenue Department, the Department of Business Development and Thai Customs every week; when an official position changes, the affected pages are updated and dated.
Prefer to read the Chinese original?
Every page here links to its Chinese twin, and the workbook files behind the self-check sheets are published on the Chinese side.
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