Insights

A foreigner can register a Thai company and hold all its shares. Whether it can then operate turns on the Foreign Business Act lists, not on a Thai nominee.

Who needs a Foreign Business Licence in Thailand, the faster BOI and treaty routes, the government fees, the minimum capital and the time limits in the Act.

Suing a Thai company: which court hears the claim, the court fee, what a foreign plaintiff prepares, the defence deadline, default judgment and appeals.

A BOI-promoted foreign company that exports everything may still need a Foreign Business Certificate if it earns fees for manufacturing others' materials. The test and the section 12 steps.

A bounced cheque from a Thai customer: the one-year civil claim, the three-month criminal complaint under the Cheque Act, and cheques it does not cover.

How a foreign creditor recovers a debt from a Thai company: time limits, default interest, demand letters, suing from abroad, bankruptcy and arbitration.

Why a supplier's claim against a Thai company is often five years, not two: section 193/34(1), section 193/33(5) and the Supreme Court cases that apply them.

Petitioning a Thai company into bankruptcy: the two-million-baht threshold, two demands to prove insolvency, and two months to prove the debt.

What a creditor can rely on when a Thai company's director guarantees its debt: form, the 2015 ban on joint-debtor terms, and the guarantor's defences.

The main steps in setting up a limited company in Thailand, in order: name reservation, the memorandum and objects, registration with the Department of Business Development, VAT and social security registration. And how the shareholding on the day of registration decides whether a foreign business licence is needed and how many work permits the company can support.

Visas and work permits are issued by different authorities under different laws, in a fixed order. What the company must have before applying, the yearly extension and renewal cycle, ninety-day reporting and re-entry permits, and what working without a permit means for the worker and for the employer.

A promoted project can be wholly foreign-owned without a foreign business licence, using a section 12 certificate the Department of Business Development must issue within 30 days. The shareholding and staffing that come with promotion, the order of application and interview, and the conditions to keep after the certificate.

Adverse possession under section 1382 needs land another person owns, so untitled land is outside it under judgment 8393/2540, and the ten years run from the deed.

The same acknowledgment yields ten years or two, depending only on whether it was signed before or after the claim expired: judgments 4507/2547 and 12264/2555.

Section 692 carries an interruption from debtor to guarantor, but not back the other way and not across between co-guarantors, as judgment 6403/2561 shows.

Section 654 says the rate comes down to fifteen per cent, but judgment 1452/2511 holds the interest wholly void, not merely the excess, while the principal stands.

Severance and unfair dismissal damages are different money under Supreme Court judgment 1392/2544, but both must be claimed in one action.

In judgment 3622/2568 two transfers in the same chat went opposite ways: a thank-you sticker counted as a signature but did not make the message mean a loan.

The second paragraph of section 686 frees a guarantor from interest and accessories arising after sixty days, but judgment 220/2562 holds the principal obligation survives.

Section 302 of the Civil Procedure Code protects an amount, not a percentage: government pay is wholly exempt, private pay up to twenty thousand baht a month.