BOI tier self-check worksheet (line-by-line download)

01Why it has to be checked line by line

Tier assessments go wrong in specific ways, not in the vague sense of "nobody took it seriously enough". Three failure paths keep recurring in practice.

• Using the word "manufacturing" in place of an activity code. The same business often maps to several promoted activity codes, and where it lands changes both the applicable conditions and the tier. Pick the wrong code and the investment calculations and the structuring plan built on it may all have to be redone.
• Treating old material as the current conditions. The promotion conditions and the incentive list are usually revised every two or three years, with separate announcements for particular activities in between. The clearest example: for applications submitted from 1 September 2025, three activities - bags and cases of leather or artificial leather (footwear excluded), furniture and parts, and printed matter - added a requirement that Thai natural persons hold a majority of the shares, with projects inside the border special economic zones exempt. "Manufacturing can be wholly foreign-owned" still holds broadly, but it now has exceptions.
• Doing it in the wrong order. Registering the company first and only then thinking about promotion and the shareholding structure usually means amending the articles of association, changing the shareholder structure, or even setting up a different entity. Tier assessment is meant to be an input to the whole investment calculation and structuring work, not something you come back to.

What the three have in common is that the error is not one of judgement. Nobody laid the conditions out one by one and checked them. So this worksheet gives no conclusion. It gives cells.

02What each of the five groups tests

The worksheet breaks "which tier can we get" into five groups, each with a number of self-check items marked met, outstanding or not applicable, and each stating what material is needed to prove it.

• Activity code. Which specific code the business falls under, and every condition currently attached to that code - not only the incentives, but the add-ons: shareholding, investment amount, value added, technology requirements. The first column of the worksheet is reserved for the code; where there is more than one candidate, group by code and fill in a set for each.
• Investment size. The minimum investment is generally not below THB 1 million (excluding land and working capital); the debt-to-equity ratio of a new project may not exceed 3:1; a project with investment over THB 2 billion must also submit a feasibility study.
• Value added. Value added is generally not below 20% of revenue, and 10% for some categories. Which figure applies depends on the code.
• Machinery and technology conditions. New machinery must be used, and the stronger the technology, export and R&D orientation, the more incentives can be stacked. Qualifying expenditure on R&D, personnel training and local supplier development (counted as a proportion of sales over the preceding three years) can add exemption years on top of the base tier, and where R&D spending reaches the prescribed proportion the cap may become no cap at all. All of it needs verifiable evidence of the spending, not a statement of intent.
• Shareholding restrictions. Whether the code carries a Thai shareholding requirement, whether the project site falls within a scope that is exempt, and whether the existing shareholder structure is compatible with either.

03The cells left deliberately blank

The amber cells are blanks left on purpose, not omissions. The exemption years and cap percentage for each tier, and which tier your project ends up in, are all determined by the review against the list in force - they are not conclusions a self-check can produce. So the worksheet makes no tier prediction and lists no per-tier years or cap percentages. It asks only what evidence you need to prove the point. That is the difference between this worksheet and an answer: it is a working paper for the adviser and the client to fill in together.

There is also a column for measured values, so you can write down the actual investment amount, debt-to-equity ratio and value-added figures and check afterwards how a tick was arrived at. Rows with no number to enter are marked with a dash. Filling in the measured values still does not determine a tier - the two are not the same thing.

Two structural differences are worth watching while you fill it in. The top two tiers, A1+ and A1, have no cap on the exempt amount, while from A2 downwards the cumulative exemption may not exceed 100% of the approved investment (excluding land and working capital, as approved by the Board). And the exemption period and amount run from the date the promoted business first has revenue, not from the date the certificate is issued. Get either of these wrong and the whole investment calculation is on the wrong basis.

04How to use it

Four steps.

• List the candidate activity codes and pin them down to a specific code, then write it into the first column before filling in anything below.
• Take the code back to the official announcements in force and check every condition currently attached to it, keeping a record of the check.
• Turn each "outstanding" into one specific document, one named owner and one internal due date.
• Check the official announcements once more before filing. This step costs little time, and what it blocks is the kind of rework where the plan is finished before anyone notices the premise had changed.

The items you cannot tick off are the real problems. Which activity code your project actually falls under, what tier direction is worth pursuing, how much of the additional incentives can be stacked, and whether the new shareholding requirement reaches you all have to be checked item by item by the consulting team against the real business, the investment list and the shareholder structure, and re-checked against the official announcements in force before filing.

• Is every figure on this page traceable to the Chinese source page?
• Does the page avoid predicting any tier, exemption period or exemption amount?
• Are the shareholding rule and its 1 September 2025 start date stated exactly as the source states them?