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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing working online and work authorization here in Thailand. So this is a topic that comes up on a lot of people's lips especially would be expats as well as other expats living here.

One thing that constantly comes up is "Well I'm here on a Retirement Visa. Can I work?" Well strictly speaking, Retirement Visas are not work authorized. Another popular question I get amongst visa category holders on work authorization is “am I authorized to work on an ED Visa, Education Visa?” and the answer is most assuredly NO, in the vast majority of cases. There are limited subsets where a Work Permit could be issued if you are like working for your University or something but candidly I have never seen one of those; no I take that back, I have but it's very exceedingly rare. Meanwhile a lot of people don't understand standard Business Visas do not have inherent work authorization associated with them. The work authorization is separate and apart.

Now we have seen new visas created here recently that may pertain to online workers, so-called Digital Nomads, the so-called Long-term Residence Visa which not to sound like a broken record again, is not actually a Resident Visa, it's just sort of a long-stay visa. They claim it has work authorization. I have never been able to figure out where they cite the authority that they are able to issue work authorization; that's a BOI endeavour. Yes BOI has specifically designated delegated authority to issue Visas per the Immigration Act of '79 - they have their own category - but the Immigration Act of '79 does not pertain to labour authorization; that operates under the Ministry of Labour. I've never seen where anybody has given BOI the ability to issue labour authorization per se.  Now concessions to get labour authorization on certain kinds of companies are one thing, but to grant it to an individual person, I don't get where they get that Authority, it just doesn't make any sense to me. So there are some visas out there. Smart Visa is another good example - that one was created with the inherent work authority associated within it, whereas again I don't see where LTR got that authority. 

Long story short there are options. I think moving forward especially with the way that we are seeing this so-called harmonization occurring with regard to tax, that I think long term having a corporation with a Work Permit may be the most optimal but again it remains to be seen and we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.