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ResourcesCorporate and Tax AdvisoryThailand Tax LawRestaurant Ownership in Thailand for Foreigners: Yearly Audits

Restaurant Ownership in Thailand for Foreigners: Yearly Audits

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing restaurant ownership specifically for foreigners here in the Kingdom and we are specifically discussing this in the context of audited financial statements. 

Now these are audits that occur on a yearly basis. There also is a semi-annual component to the yearly audit but for purposes of this video let's just think of it is a yearly audit. Unlike the United States system where an audit from the Internal Revenue Service for example, occurs when there is at least a presumption or the rebuttable presumption of some sort of discrepancy with respect to tax filing. In the Thai system, the audited financial statement is sort of built-in to the corporation if you will from a legal standpoint; it is sort of baked in the cake if you will. So you have to do an audit on a yearly basis on a company. By the way whether or not it's operational, whether or not it is dormant or not, it is accruing income etc., a company has to go ahead and undertaken audit. This is no different for restaurants and the audit is exceptionally important for restaurants especially those that are owned or maintained by foreigners or where foreigners are maintaining work permits and visas because the audit, especially once a new company has grown to be over a year old, the audit will be an integral component of an application for a Thai Work Permit and/or a Thai Visa; specifically a B Visa extension in Thailand.

So an audit although in and of itself is important, and failure to maintain audited financial statements especially for a prolonged period of time may even result in criminal sanctions with respect to non-maintenance of corporate bookkeeping. That being stated, it is really important from a foreign national's standpoint, especially where they are the owner or an employee of a restaurant, failure to file the audit could result in a lack of documentation especially documentation that is considered very pertinent to the extension of Work Permit status and Business Visa status. 

So the thing to take away from this video is the audit in and of itself is important but it is also important in sort of a tangential way for foreigners maintaining a restaurant here in the Kingdom because failure to maintain that audit can result in revocation or failure to renew a Business Visa and/or Work Permit.