Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Representative Offices here in Thailand. I don't know why this is going around but kind of one of these unfortunate misnomers, myths that get sort of bandied about out there. I have had a lot of people contact me asking me about utilizing offshore structures and then utilizing a Representative Office in Thailand as some sort of workaround against various costs associated with maintaining a Company here in Thailand; that is a really bad way to look at things. 

Now there may be circumstances where a Representative Office may be very useful to certain types of businesses. In the past, where we have seen Representative Offices the most commonly utilized are in sort of quality control circumstances where you have for example a manufacturing concern in the United States or China or Europe somewhere and then they are exporting things, for example vehicles or tractors or something to Thailand but they need someone on the ground in Thailand to provide for example like quality control. Under those circumstances and we have assisted with this in the past. A Representative Office can be very useful. That said, as some sort of workaround against setting up like a standard Thai Company in order to maintain Work Permit and visa status long term in Thailand, it is a really bad idea for a bunch of different reasons most notably there is a ton of administrative scrutiny that is associated with a Representative Office because they have limited tax liability in Thailand. For that reason, the tax authorities alone really overly scrutinize Representative Offices. On top of that, and we have talked about this in the past, there's kind of a catch 22 wherein they make it "easier" with regard to rep. offices insofar as Work Permits are not necessarily required per se for all personnel working in a rep. office, specifically foreign personnel. The downside of that is notwithstanding the fact that work authorization may not be required, it makes it very difficult to maintain things like work or excuse me Immigration status specifically Business Visa status; we have seen this many times in the past. For this reason, those folks out there who are looking at the rep. office as some sort of like magic bullet work around for the standard way of coming to Thailand, if you are looking to be a working expat in Thailand, our opinion and what has worked throughout the last 15 years that we have been assisting people is standard Thai business setup; go ahead and obtain Work Permit and Business Visa. On top of that, it puts one on the track to Thai Permanent Residence. Again rep. office status it has been our experience does not do that. 

So again, for a lot of different reasons yeah rep. offices can be very useful under certain circumstances but if it is simply being looked at as some way to circumvent various taxes and fees associated with maintaining one's status here in Thailand, that is a bad way to look at it. Also, it has been our experience, the administrative fees associated with just our services or anyone's services associated with maintaining tax compliance and things associated with rep. offices are higher. So at the end of the day if you are looking at this as some sort of cost saving mechanism, that's probably going to backfire and you are going to be looking at a situation where you paying more to maintain that type of structure here in the Kingdom of Thailand.