Can we bring someone in on a tourist visa and change status afterwards?

There is an official route for changing visa type,but it states expressly that approval is at the immigration officer's discretion. It is a remedy,not a right you can schedule around. Getting the person in and hoping to convert on arrival means betting your whole staffing plan on an uncertain outcome.

We are not a promoted company. Are we stuck with the slowest route?

Not necessarily. The single window does require a certificate,but the specialist visas aimed at highly skilled people and investors turn on the person and the industry,not on whether the company holds promoted status. Check the intended people's background,salary band and industry against the list before concluding.

How long does it take?

It is timed by stage,and the official time limits are not the same thing as the actual queue:the employer-side letter,the embassy's processing,obtaining the permit after entry and extensions inside the country each run at their own pace,and a request for further documents restarts any of them. The applicable time limits are governed by the receiving authority's rules as currently published. We work backwards from your target start date and leave room in each stage for queries.

How is the fee calculated?

By headcount,by route,and by whether ongoing expiry tracking is included. The quote states what we do and what you receive. Government fees and our professional fees are listed separately,never quoted as one figure. Tell us the list and the circumstances first;scope and price follow.

Someone is already in Thailand and we have found a problem. What now?

First establish where the gap is between their current status and their actual work,and whether it is still inside a window in which it can be remedied;the order of steps follows from that. Some situations require leaving and starting again,others can be handled inside the country. This is not a good place to experiment — the consequences of the different routes differ considerably.

Service · Visas and work permits

Thailand visas and work permits for posted staff

Q: Could you also handle a retirement visa or a dependant for study?

Personal-status visas — retirement,accompanying a student,marriage and similar — are outside our scope. We handle only what arises from a company employing someone;the value of this line is that it connects to the company's registration documents,social security and tax filings,and personal visas connect to none of that,so someone who specialises in it is a better fit. Accompanying family members of posted staff are a different matter:they are handled together with the principal applicant and are within our scope.

Prepared by the CTAC Thailand advisory team · Updated 2026-08-27

In short

Posting someone to Thailand is not "getting a visa". It is four stages across four authorities, and the order cannot be reversed — the first link in the chain is done by the employer inside Thailand, not at an embassy. Once the person is in post there are four separate expiry dates to keep track of indefinitely. We pick this up at the point of sorting the list into groups and deciding the route, and stay with it through to tracking every date for every person.

01The three lines we handle, and what we do not

Ours is a service to companies, and this line is no different — everything we handle arises from the company employing someone:

The foreign-personnel channel for promoted companies — for companies already holding a promotion certificate, through the single window for visas and work permits, covering position approval, placement and extension.
Standard work visas and work permits — the ordinary route for a company without a promotion certificate posting staff from China, from the employer-side filing through to obtaining the permit after entry and the extensions that follow.
Business visas — short visits to discuss business, meet suppliers or inspect a plant. Note that these are not for taking up employment: working on one requires a work permit first.

Out of scope: personal-status visas. Retirement, accompanying a student, marriage, and the categories aimed at freelancers and remote workers have nothing to do with a company employing anyone, and we do not take them on. That is not a question of capability but of focus — the value of this line lies in the way it connects to the company's registration documents, social security and tax filings, and personal visas connect to none of those.

02Most of the rework happens at the very first step

The common approach is to treat a visa as the employee's own business and let them go and ask. But on a route whose purpose is employment, the first link is the employer filing with the labour authority inside Thailand for an approval letter; only once the employee holds that letter does applying at an embassy arise. Doing it the other way round — get the person in and work it out afterwards — usually means leaving the country and starting again, with the flights, accommodation and idle salary all wasted.

Something else that gets underestimated: most of what an embassy examines is company documents — company registration, the shareholder register, social security contributions and tax filings. Which is to say, if your own books are not in order, you cannot get people in. That is what joins this line to the tax and accounting one, and that happens to be work we already do.

03Where we pick it up

Not at "help us file the paperwork" but at deciding the route:

Group them. List everyone to be posted at once and sort them by length of stay and employing entity into short visits, project-period support, and long-term posting. One group, one route — that is what makes the documents and the timetable plannable as a whole. Asking "what can he get" person by person is slow and produces inconsistent answers.
Decide the route. The ordinary employment route, the promoted-company single window, and the specialist visas aimed at highly skilled people and investors do not have the same conditions or the same cost. The decision turns on the person's background and seniority, whether the industry falls within the official target list, and how much of the company's foreign-national allowance is left.
Then assemble documents. Once the route is settled, the document list is determinate. Doing it the other way round usually means assembling the wrong set.

04Why the form of a document causes more trouble than its content

A great many rejections on this line have nothing to do with whether the content was right:

Forms must be completed in Thai; documents in other languages must be translated into Thai and certified by a native Thai speaker holding an academic qualification.
Every page of a company document must be signed by an authorised person and bear the company seal; for copies submitted to an embassy, the applicant must also endorse each page.
Passports, photographs, the shareholder register, social security evidence and VAT returns each carry currency requirements — out of date is the same as absent.

These can be got right once, in advance. They are also where doing it yourself goes round in circles most often.

05The long part starts after they are in post

Getting the work permit is not the finish. Four independent clocks follow: visa extension (which requires a valid work permit), work permit extension (bound to the visa in turn), 90-day reporting (which arises from length of residence and has nothing to do with the company's status), and a re-entry permit before each departure.

The re-entry permit is the one that causes the most damage: leave without it and the current visa is void, and everything already completed has to be done again. The 90-day report also carries a counter-intuitive rule — online reporting can only be submitted within the last 15 days before it falls due, and the system will not take it earlier; a visa extension, by contrast, must be applied for at least 15 days in advance. Opposite directions, and easy to confuse.

We keep this as a rolling expiry table with one row per person and follow it up on your behalf. Things go wrong here almost never because they are difficult, but because they are spread across several authorities with nobody specifically responsible.

06Promoted companies have their own channel — with conditions that tightened recently

A company holding a promotion certificate uses the single window, where position approval, the visa, placement and extension each have defined time limits and the route is faster than the ordinary one. But two substantive changes took effect from 2025: a floor on the proportion of Thai employees for manufacturing projects, and a minimum income threshold for foreign positions for the first time, phased in by reference to when the certificate was obtained.

Filing positions and salaries on the basis of experience from a few years ago may leave a whole group unable to be placed. Both need checking before a promoted company plans its staffing.

07What you receive

Deliverables, not activity:

Grouping and route recommendation: for each person on the list, which route, on what basis, and where the obstacle is.
Document lists and follow-up by stage: one each for the employer side, the embassy side and after entry, marked with who provides each item and its currency requirement.
Filing and progress: handling queries for further documents and tracking the time limits.
Rolling expiry table: visa, work permit, 90-day reporting and re-entry permit for each person, followed up on your behalf on an ongoing basis.
Company-side pre-check: whether registration documents, the shareholder register, social security and tax filings meet the thresholds for an application to be accepted.

Common questions

Can we bring someone in on a tourist visa and change status afterwards?: There is an official route for changing visa type, but it states expressly that approval is at the immigration officer's discretion. It is a remedy, not a right you can schedule around. Getting the person in and hoping to convert on arrival means betting your whole staffing plan on an uncertain outcome.
We are not a promoted company. Are we stuck with the slowest route?: Not necessarily. The single window does require a certificate, but the specialist visas aimed at highly skilled people and investors turn on the person and the industry, not on whether the company holds promoted status. Check the intended people's background, salary band and industry against the list before concluding.
How long does it take?: It is timed by stage, and the official time limits are not the same thing as the actual queue: the employer-side letter, the embassy's processing, obtaining the permit after entry and extensions inside the country each run at their own pace, and a request for further documents restarts any of them. The applicable time limits are governed by the receiving authority's rules as currently published. We work backwards from your target start date and leave room in each stage for queries.
How is the fee calculated?: By headcount, by route, and by whether ongoing expiry tracking is included. The quote states what we do and what you receive. Government fees and our professional fees are listed separately, never quoted as one figure. Tell us the list and the circumstances first; scope and price follow.
Someone is already in Thailand and we have found a problem. What now?: First establish where the gap is between their current status and their actual work, and whether it is still inside a window in which it can be remedied; the order of steps follows from that. Some situations require leaving and starting again, others can be handled inside the country. This is not a good place to experiment — the consequences of the different routes differ considerably.
Could you also handle a retirement visa or a dependant for study?: Personal-status visas — retirement, accompanying a student, marriage and similar — are outside our scope. We handle only what arises from a company employing someone; the value of this line is that it connects to the company's registration documents, social security and tax filings, and personal visas connect to none of that, so someone who specialises in it is a better fit. Accompanying family members of posted staff are a different matter: they are handled together with the principal applicant and are within our scope.

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.

This page is general information based on the rules in force at the date shown. Thai BOI categories, incentive conditions and foreign-investment rules change often. Before acting on any specific project, check the latest official announcement and have a formal opinion issued on your own facts.

Send us the list and our advisers will set out the route

We quote by scope, stating what we do and what you receive, with government fees listed separately.

中文版 · Chinese version