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Public Health and Safety Certificates for Restaurants in Thailand

Transcript of the above video:

In this video today, it is going to be a little bit redundant, somewhat, as we are discussing so called “Restaurant Licenses or Public Health Licenses” pertaining to restaurants. I did another video some time ago where I discussed Alcohol Licenses, Tobacco Licenses and Restaurant Licenses all sort of briefly within that video. In this video we are going to be specifically discussing Restaurant Licenses and I made another two videos which discuss specifically, Alcohol Licenses and Tobacco Licenses. So folks that are interested in those topics can check out all three of those other videos.

That being said, what’s colloquially referred to as a “Restaurant License” here in Thailand, actually is more akin to a Health and Safety Certificate. It’s basically like the Health Inspector comes round and makes sure that the premises are clean, the food preparation area and the areas for service are in good order and basically upon and after inspection by the Public Health Administrators here in the Kingdom, one of these certificates is going to go ahead and be issued. Some things to take away from this video is these certifications aren’t just, you know.   I find it kind of interesting dealing with foreign nationals doing business or just living here in the Kingdom as some people take a rather cavalier attitude toward government licensing, government certifications etc. and sort of take the attitude, “Oh, it’s all just paper work; it doesn’t matter!” These things matter, most notably with respect to a Public Health License or a so called Restaurant License. Once an establishment has such certification, it is then possible to mitigate certain tax liabilities or deduct, make certain tax deductions, on one’s Thai tax returns. Therefore, this  kind of licensing can be exceptionally beneficial with respect to someone operating here in the Kingdom. So basically the point I am trying to get at is the restaurant license is a very important document. It is something that an F&B establishment is definitely going to need, especially those establishments whose primary vocation is the service of food, so a Restaurant License, aka  Public Safety, Health and Safety Certificate is important for those kinds of folks and as I said, tax mitigation comes into this because if one is not able to present a Public Health Certificate pertaining to a restaurant then with tax authorities, there are going to be certain deductions that are probably not going to be made. For instance just being able to write off a significant portion of one’s food bill without a so called Restaurant License, it’s not going to be possible to make that kind of write off, in most cases at least and for that reason it can create serious complications for Food and Beverage businesses looking prospectively. So the thing to take away from this video is, it’s important, it’s not necessarily a Restaurant License per se, it’s a Health Certificate but it is an important certificate for tax mitigation and tax deductions purposes.