Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, I am discussing, look if you're an American looking to come live in Thailand and you want to work here, and let's not play around with all this nebulous "well I'm not really going to work, I'm just going to be hanging around", if you are really looking at possibly working here and be honest with yourself coming in, because you'll set yourself up a lot better in the long term if you have a sort of structure in your mind as to how to proceed. 

But the point I'm trying to make with this video is for Americans looking to work and live in Thailand, I would look seriously at the US-Thai Treaty of Amity. Most notably because look you can set up a business here and notwithstanding all the restrictions of the Foreign Business Act, you can own it outright in Thailand. There's no other procedure that I can see that is as straightforward and quite honestly cost-effective as The Amity Treaty set up for those who are actually looking to come live and work here. On top of that, as I've discussed in other videos and I've written extensively about over on our resources section at legal.co.th, one of our main websites for the firm, there also are tax benefits to The Amity Treaty mostly because it operates as a massive loophole insofar as the Double Tax Agreement and the way the Constitution is written and the way that ratification of Treaties operates and how that colours the definition if you will of what we would call a domestic corporation in the United States. 

Also on top of that, the Amity Treaty's provisions allows Americans to do business with "national treatment" meaning it can be 100% owned by Americans in the same way that a Thai company could be 100% Thai owned; it's treated as if it's a Thai national company, that's the point of the Treaty. So a lot of major benefits under that. It's the latest iteration in a Treaty relationship that goes back almost over, in fact over 200 years; the Treaty relationship is 191 years, the relationship itself is over 200 years communicating diplomatically. 

That being said, again Americans can benefit they hugely by this, not least again they can have a company to hub their operation up here in Southeast Asia to set up having Work Permits to be able to use that Work Permit - if it's just one person - put themselves on track for Permanent Residence, possible citizenship out here. Again also if you have a family and you are looking to do business here, you can utilize that type of structure in order to allow derivative Spousal Visa benefits as well as benefits for children of somebody that is setting up an Amity company.  

Again as we have discussed in other videos, there are new formality requirements associated with incorporations of business here in Thailand that have to be met and more and more, we're dealing with more compliance formalities that can make the process a little more cumbersome than it once was, but it's still very possible to set up a company and own it outright as an American here in the Kingdom of Thailand.