Let’s go to visa number Three. And this is the long-term resident visa. So now let’s pick about the long-term resident visa and my specialty LTR. This is a 10 years visa designed for anyone retirees, professionals, or remote workers.
And let’s, let me just comment here. This is administered by the Board of investment. And the board of investment has a charter and that’s to drive economic growth in the kingdom. They report directly up to the prime minister of the country. This visa is also relatively new. That’s why we say it’s a pretty exciting time for those of us in the Thailand visa business.
This was started in September of 2022, and it was started in response to the economic downturn caused by the COVID pandemic. Many of you know that Thailand is dependent on tourist dollars, visitors to the kingdom. That obviously dropped off quite a bit during COVID. It’s come roaring back. Thank you very much.
But this is really to try to attract folks who have been successful or highly skilled in their professions to come live here for the long term and spend their money here. Let’s get into some of the benefits. The LTR visa offers various benefits with On other type of visa, you need to report your address every 90 days to immigration.
Under the LTR visa, this requirement is annual and the one year report is due after one year of continuously stay in Thailand. You can come and go as you please. The multiple re entry permit is included. Under other type of visa, Sometimes you have to buy a re entry permit. So you can also bring your family, your spouse, and your children up to 20 years old.
After 20 years old, they will have to switch to another type of visa. You can work on this visa. You can get a work permit. There’s no requirements to hire a Thai staff. to get a work permit, and the other type of visa, the work visa, you need to hire at least Thai, the employer needs to hire Thai, four Thai staff for one foreigner, and the marriage visa, it’s two Thai staff for one foreigner, so this can be benefited.
To be more attractive on the employment market. There’s no requirements to, to extend this visa every year. This is for five plus five years. And the big benefit is the tax exemption on the other type of visa. If you’re staying in Thailand for more than 180 days, You become a tax residence and you are required to file taxes and to pay taxes on the on your income from overseas.
And this is your tax exam. All your income from overseas that you transfer that you bring in then will be exempted from the foreign tax income. And that’s a big deal here. We’re going to go into taxation a little bit later but to have your foreign earnings either tax exempt or if you’re working here under the highly skilled category to have it capped can be a huge advantage.
Also for those of you who are on the webinar tonight who are under an annual visa and have tracked down to every year. As Tea mentioned, you’ll go five years, then you go back into the BOI, show the BOI that you still qualify for the visa, and you’re here for another five years. From a money and time savings, it’s a hugely advantaged visa.
The LTR visa, there’s four categories. The wealthy pensioner is the category for the retirees or people over 50 years old. You don’t have to be retired, actually. The wealthy global citizen is for those with investment in Thailand. The work from Thailand professional category is designed for the professional, professionals working remotely for substantial overseas company.
And lastly, the highly skilled professionals for applicant working in Thailand in specified industries, and there’s a list of industry that will be upset by the BOI. So I’m going to give you just a couple of numbers to remember, and there’s a lot of nuance to this. So these are just kind of high level numbers.
But if you can remember these two numbers, I think it’ll be helpful for the wealthy pensioner and the wealthy global citizen. Remember, $80,000. And for the pensioner category, that’s passive income. That could mean Social Security, interest, dividends, anything that’s not wage income. For the wealthy global citizen, it’s also $80,000, but that can be any kind of income. And then for the investment in the kingdom under the wealthy global citizen, It’s about 500,000. Now there are different kinds of ways to qualify, but if you can remember 80. And 500. That kind of is the bar that you’re looking for. And similarly, the 80,000 would be the remote worker as well.
And for the professional working remotely, as Tea mentioned, this is for large companies, and they either have to be publicly traded, think Meta, think Cathay Pacific Airlines, or they have to do 50 million in revenue per year for three years, 150 million total revenue, the difficulty if you’re working for a private company is most private companies don’t like to talk about their revenues with governments.
And so we’ve run into that. We’ve run into that issue. And the other issue is if you are a professional working remotely for one of these big companies tend to have a lot of subsidiaries. and you need to be working for the publicly held entity and not for one of the subsidiaries. So it gets a little bit complicated.
However, if you can qualify, your earnings overseas are tax exempt from Thai tax. So there’s a huge benefit there, and the juice may be worth the squeeze. Okay. So let’s talk about how somebody might qualify and what kind of documentation and this is an online application team. Yes, the application is online, but sometimes the BOI, the Board of Investment, may request additional documents or need to have clarification on your documents.
So it’s best to have someone here in Silent to represent you and to discuss your application and your documents with them. So mainly the most important is the proof of income. As Mark mentioned, you need to show in all the categories, at least $80,000 per year. This will be only passive income for the wealthy pensioner category, not the salary, not business income.
What is passive income will be all income from investments and any pension and benefit from the government. You need also on some category to invest in Thailand type of investment that will be upset will be mainly do and the most is the other really state. So if you buy a condo in Thailand, you can rent a land long term at least 10 years.
And you can also invest in shares in a Thai company or government does with a majority of at least five years. Under wealthy pensioner, the minimum investment is 9 million baht. And under wealthy global citizen, you need to invest at least 18 million baht in Thailand. And by the way, a lot of or have heard that foreigners are not able to buy land in Thailand.
Condo projects that are specifically reserved part of that project for foreign investment. However, a long term lease is permitted. Any lease over 10 years would qualify for under this investment category. Okay, so that’s the LTR.
