Hi Guys hope everyone is keeping safe through this chaos.
Given the COVID situation one thing many of us have learnt is that if you have an internet connection and you're lucky enough to work in a certain field, you can pretty much do your job anywhere.
I've had a look at some apartments and some of the places you can get for under £1000 a month look awesome in Bangkok. The question I have though is regarding visas. Working in sales at least at my current company there are two ways you can get paid: Base salary with commission or commission only. With commission only you have to put yourself down as self employed.
In an ideal world the visa situation would be easy. I just show the Thai tax office my payslips and pay tax in Thailand but I know with these things it's never that easy.
If I was to work remotely in Thailand with my UK base salary how would the visa situation work then? And if I was working commission only I imagine I would be on a different visa since I would technically be self employed? (Will be interesting to see if new types of visa's are created post COVID since many people may relocate abroad and it would be a benefit to these other countries since we would be paying tax there...)
Aside from that my option would be to teach English and work commission only when I'm not teaching, would rather avoid that however.
Your advice is very much appreciated.
Visa Options for Remote Workers
You don't state your age.
If you are over 50, a retirement visa would be your easiest solution. Online work for an overseas company isn't technically considered working in Thailand and would not affect your retired status. There will always be someone who claims differently based on a literal interpretation of the Thai rules, but honestly the Thai government has no jurisdiction over what you do for people outside of Thailand as long as you aren't breaking the law. They are only concerned with work product for or to be used by someone inside Thailand.
If you are not over 50, your options are limited. The easiest solution would be to pay 500,000 baht for a 5 year elite visa. You would need to balance that cost against the £1000 a month rent. A simple averaging over 60 months would mean your £1000 rent suddenly became a £1220 per month rent, with £13,000 of that paid up front. Also, do not forget to include the cost of health insurance in your calculations. There is no NHS service here, and health care costs can be costly for some kinds of problems.
You can not be self employed. There is no visa option for that. To get a work permit and a visa based on that you will need to set up a company and hire 4 Thai staff. You also can't work out of your home, so you'll need an office, along with all associated accounting and legal costs. Overall, this solution will cost you around £2500/month as operating costs for the company. Unless you really want to run a business, it is not a very practical option.
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