Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the so-called Long-Term Residence Visa which as I have discussed in a number of other videos, does not really provide all that much long-term status let alone residency status. It does not provide Permanent Residence here in Thailand. It is billed as a 10-year Visa, in reality it's kind of like a 5-year Visa which is sort of constantly under review. For various reasons I think this could be a very useful Visa but I think it is a useful visa to a very narrow bandwidth, a very narrow subset if you will of people, again for multiple reasons. One that factors into this, I'm going to get into here.

I thought of making this video after reading recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: The ever-changing world of Thai work permits for foreigners. Quoting directly: "In late 2022, the 10-year Long-Term Residence (LTR) Visa was launched by the Board of Investment. Although wealthy retirees and rich global travellers are welcome, the thrust has been to attract digital nomads working for international companies listed on the stock market and professional workers and executives looking for tax breaks and freedom from the rigid quota system whereby one foreign work permit must be supported by four Thai employees." Well I haven't seen anybody really that has had a massive issue with the quota thing. I don't think that is a big deal. 

Tax break - that is kind of an interesting one. As we have discussed in other videos, in a sense getting into the LTR system results in sort of volunteering for sort of a Revenue Department audit if you will depending on the circumstances, which we have discussed in other videos at length. I am not going to get into that here in detail. Quoting further: "A digital work permit from it is automatically provided which does not require adherence to traditional employment rules." Yeah again, how the rubber hits the road on that remains to be seen. Quoting further: "About 2,000 applications have so far been lodged with the Board of Investment", (and this line is key I think), quote, "but there are no published statistics on completions or withdrawals." 

We have dealt with some folks that have been looking into the LTR Visa. It has been our experience a lot of folks don't actually meet the criteria and there's a lot of, as we said in one video "the devil is in the documentation details" and that is certainly the case with respect to the LTR. Again I think it's very useful; it's not dissimilar to the so called Smart Visa which again was very useful for a very narrow set of people but in a broad sense, this hasn't been a visa that I think has produced any real broad appeal as of the time of this video.