Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing an oft discussed topic here amongst expats. The Thai Government, the Cabinet at least has promulgated in principle a statement regarding some new visa categories for lack of a better term that are being brought online to try to attract wealthy expats, wealthy folks to spend time here in Thailand. What we are talking about here is just well “what are the financial criteria that are going to be associated with this?” I will preface this video by saying the threshold is not low. 

A recent article from the Bangkok Post print edition, this was published Wednesday September 15th, 2021, the article is titled: Government to Entice Rich Expats. They note four categories of folks they are trying to entice. One is wealthy global citizens, the other is wealthy pensioners, the third is work-from-Thailand professionals and highly skilled professionals. We have done other videos on this channel back when this was still being proposed. We got into some details about that but apparently there is some more clarity being provided here. Quoting directly for wealthy global citizens the requirement for this one: “Required as part of long-term visa application to invest at least US$ 500,000 in Thai Government bonds or real estate and required to prove you have earned at least $80,000 annually in the past 2 years.” So that is the wealthy global citizen category. 

For wealthy pensioners you have got to be at least 50, so it is kind of like a Retirement Visa: “Required to invest at least $250,000 directly in Government bonds or real estate and earn at least S40,000 a year.”

Then you have got number three, this work-from-home. This one is a little bit, at least from the announcement it is a little bit more vague. From what we saw in the past, the work-from-home and the highly skilled professionals both seemed to have the same sort of financial criteria. Don't quote me on that that ends up being what happens here but let's hope for the best, plan for the worst and presume both of these categories have this requirement: so you have to have earned at least $80,000 in the past 2 years or $40,000 per year. That seems to be a hard and fast criterion that this $80,000 be able to show you have earned that in the past two years. So I think that will probably apply to both work-from-Thailand professionals or highly skilled professionals. The other thing we saw when we described the Work-from-Thailand professionals category is you are working for a large multinational company and that seemed to be part of it. 

Again, we don't know exactly how this is going to look when the regulations are ultimately promulgated and we can see this actually hammered out and the finer points. For now, safe to presume that these categories have a pretty high level relative to what we have been used to in times past; have a pretty high financial threshold you have to hit in order to be in one of these Visa categories.