Who this guide is for
Most guides on work permits are written for foreigners. They explain what the individual has to prepare, where to go and what to bring. In practice, however, a work permit is issued by reference to the employer no less than the employee, and almost everything that makes an application stall sits on the company side, not the employee side.
This guide is therefore written for HR teams, executive managers and business owners who are responsible for making sure a foreign employee can start on the date agreed. It follows the order in which the work actually happens, beginning with checking how many people the company can support, before it turns to the employee’s own documents.
If you are looking for an overview of the whole visa system, including routes for retirees, spouses and long-term residents, read the complete guide to visas and work permits alongside this one. This guide leaves all of that out in order to focus on the employer’s side.
Disclaimer: This document is general information for planning and is not legal advice. Criteria, figures and document lists are updated from time to time and differ by type of business. Please confirm the criteria currently in force against your company’s own circumstances before taking action.
Why applications stall at the company, not the employee
The pattern we see again and again is this. A company interviews a foreign candidate, agrees a salary, issues an offer letter and sets a start date, and only then passes the matter on for the paperwork. At that point it discovers that it has not filed last year’s financial statements, or that the number of insured Thai employees is not enough to support one more permit.
Both problems can be solved, but not in time for the start date that has already been announced. The company is then forced to choose between postponing the start date, which embarrasses it in front of the candidate and sometimes loses the candidate altogether, and letting the person start work without a permit, which turns a scheduling problem into employer liability.
The correct order is the reverse. Check how many permits the company can actually support before making a commitment to anyone. This check uses only documents the company already has, does not wait on any authority, and takes far less time than fixing the problem afterwards.
How many foreign employees can our company support?
This is the first question to answer, and it can be answered from the documents you already hold.
Paid-up registered capital: not the registered capital shown on the company affidavit, but the portion actually paid up. Many companies register high capital but call up only part of it, which is a different figure from the one used in the assessment.
Number of Thai employees actually reported to social security: the most common error in this entire guide. HR usually counts from the payroll, but the criteria look at the list of insured persons for whom contributions were actually paid. Staff who have just started and are not yet registered, daily-paid workers for whom no contributions are paid, and people who have resigned but have not yet been reported as leaving mean the two sets of figures never match. Check against the most recent contribution report, not the payroll file.
Continuity of filings and financial statements: filed financial statements, tax returns submitted in full, and no month missing from social security contributions. A gap here does not always lead to rejection, but it means additional explanations are needed, and that means lost time.
The company’s objects must cover the work to be done: a company whose registered objects are narrow, and which wants to hire for a position outside them, must first amend its memorandum of association. That is a separate piece of work with its own timeline.
The general practice for an ordinary Thai limited company is to consider paid-up capital of about THB 2 million and about 4 Thai employees for each foreigner’s work permit. These figures do not apply in every case. Companies with investment promotion, businesses in industrial estates, representative offices, branches of foreign companies and cases where a foreigner is married to a Thai national each use a different set of criteria. For the first two routes, see the BOI work permit guide and the guide to visas and work permits in industrial estates.
The position to be filled: how to word the title so it does not cause trouble
The law sets out certain types of work that foreigners are prohibited from doing, and another group that they may do only under conditions. The list is updated from time to time, so the version in force on the filing date must be checked.
In practice, however, what leads to requests for amendment more often than the prohibited list is the job title the company chooses for itself. Titles such as “general manager” or “coordinator” are so broad that they can be read several ways, and some readings overlap with reserved work. The route that costs less time is to choose a specific title that matches the real duties, together with a job description that is consistent with the company’s objects and with what the employee will actually do.
This matters more than many companies think, because the job title and workplace stated become the boundary of what the employee may lawfully do throughout the life of the permit. A title set too narrowly today means a fresh application when the company restructures six months from now.
The sequence of work that gets the employee started on the right day
- Check the company’s standing: paid-up capital, the most recent social security contribution report, filed financial statements and tax returns, and the registered objects. Do this before discussing a start date with the candidate.
- Define the position and workplace: word the title to match the real duties, and list every workplace the employee will need to attend, including factories, warehouses and client sites.
- Handle the visa side first, or in parallel: the employee must be in a proper status before the work permit is applied for. In many cases the employer must obtain a supporting document from the labour authority in advance to support the visa application.
- File the work permit application: together with the latest company document set and the employee’s documents.
- Set up a calendar after approval: the permit expiry date, the expiry of the permission to stay in the Kingdom, the 90-day reporting cycle, and notification of the residence address. These three have different deadlines and do not remind one another.
Item 5 is the one companies neglect most. Once the permit is in hand the matter seems finished, yet the obligations that follow recur every year and often fall on a single employee, with nobody taking over when that person resigns.
Company documents to prepare
This is the set requested almost every time, and the one that costs the most time when it is not ready.
- Latest company affidavit and memorandum of association
- List of shareholders
- Filed financial statements for the latest year
- Tax returns already submitted
- Social security contribution report for Thai employees for the latest month
- VAT registration certificate, if the company is registered
- Map and evidence of the place of business
- Employment contract and job description for the position applied for
- Business-specific licences, if any, such as a factory operating licence
The employee’s part consists of a passport with sufficient validity remaining, education documents and experience certificates authenticated as required, photographs in the prescribed format, and a medical certificate meeting the conditions currently in force.
Be careful with education documents and experience certificates issued abroad. They usually have to go through a document authentication process first, which has its own timeline and is outside the company’s control. This is the item to start earliest of all. To find out which documents need authentication, read documents that require notarisation.
Renewal: why you should start earlier than you think
Renewal looks like routine work repeated from the previous year, but what changes every year is the company-side documents. The financial statements must be those of the latest year filed, the social security report must be for the latest month, and the Thai-employee ratio must still meet the criteria on the filing date.
A company that has lost several Thai employees during the year may find that the ratio that passed last year does not pass this year, even though the number of foreign employees is unchanged. This can be fixed if you know in advance, and cannot be fixed in time if you learn of it when the permit has only a few days left.
Checking the ratio twice a year, rather than only when renewal is near, is the cheapest change in working method and prevents almost all of this problem.
Changing position, moving branch or moving to an affiliated company
This is covered in a separate guide because it is the cause of the most frequent problems in companies with several foreign employees. In short, a work permit is tied to the employer, the position and the workplace stated. Changing any of the three is not an amendment of information; in many cases it must be done before the change takes effect in reality.
The pattern to avoid is announcing an internal restructuring first and fixing the documents afterwards. The details are in the guide to changing employer, changing position and adding workplaces.
When to bring in a lawyer
Routine filing, where the company has a team that has done it for years and the company’s standing is sound, usually does not need a lawyer. The situations that differ are:
- The company is newly formed, does not yet have full-year financial statements, or the employee ratio does not yet meet the criteria
- The position sits close to the boundary of reserved work
- The company holds investment promotion privileges or is in an industrial estate and is unsure which employee should use which route
- There is a restructuring, merger or transfer of employees between affiliated companies
- A previous application was rejected, or there is a history of working outside the stated conditions that must be put in order before applying again
- There is an inspection by an authority and the whole list of employees must be explained
We handle both case-by-case matters and ongoing management of a company’s entire foreign-employee register. For the scope of our work on the company side, see visa and work permit services for employers, or if you want the whole employment system reviewed at the same time, see the labour law compliance review.
If your company would like an assessment of how many foreign employees it can support under its current standing, call 092-254-2045. The assessment uses only documents the company already has.
