Most guides to Thai work permits explain the two famous numbers and stop there. Four Thai employees per foreign hire, two million baht of registered capital. Both are correct, and both are where the explanation usually ends.
The part that actually catches companies out is not qualifying in the first place. It is that you have to keep qualifying, every year.
The two tests
Before any discussion of the candidate, the question is whether your entity can support a work permit at all.
The staffing ratio. A Thai limited company needs four permanent Thai employees for every one foreign national on a work permit.
Registered capital. THB 2 million per foreign employee. Not two million in total. Two million for the first, four million for the second, and so on.
There is also a practical ceiling. A single company can generally obtain up to ten work permits, with the number tiered against capital.
The part most companies miss
These are not a hurdle you clear once at first approval.
The capital and ratio tests are re-applied at every annual renewal, assessed against your registered capital and your actual payroll records at that moment. Which means a company that qualified comfortably in year one can fail in year three without doing anything unusual.
Three ways that happens, all of them ordinary:
Thai headcount drifts down. You had twelve Thai staff supporting three foreign work permits. Attrition takes you to ten and nobody connects that to immigration. At renewal you are two short of the ratio for your third permit.
You add a foreign hire without adding capital. The fourth foreign employee needs the capital to have grown to eight million. Registered capital does not increase by itself.
Payroll records do not match the headcount you believe you have. The test looks at actual payroll records. Staff on unpaid leave, recent leavers still on the org chart, or people engaged on something other than an employment contract may not count the way you assume.
None of these are dramatic. They are the kind of thing that surfaces three weeks before a pass expires, which is the worst possible moment to discover you need to raise capital or hire.
Where the rules are different
Representative, regional and branch offices get meaningful relief. They are exempted from the capital and financial-statement tests, and the staffing ratio relaxes to one Thai employee per foreign employee. This reflects the fact that these structures are foreign-capital-intensive by design. If you are only establishing a presence rather than trading, this route is worth understanding before defaulting to a limited company.
BOI-promoted companies operate under a separate framework altogether. The standard quota and capital tests do not apply. Approval runs off the promotion certificate and the approved staff list rather than the usual documentation.
Worth being precise about what that does and does not mean. If your company already holds BOI promotion, the work permit route is different and generally faster. Obtaining BOI promotion is a separate exercise applied for directly with the Board of Investment, and it is not a shortcut you can reach for because a work permit application is marginal.
A foreigner married to a Thai national may benefit from reduced requirements. The position is worth checking case by case rather than assumed, since the relief depends on circumstances.
The reporting obligations nobody owns
Two separate filings exist, they are constantly confused, and neither is legally the employer’s.
TM30 is the property owner’s duty, not the foreign employee’s and not yours. It is triggered when a foreigner takes up residence at an address, and again every time they return to Thailand from a trip abroad. The deadline is 24 hours. The fine runs to THB 2,000 for an ordinary landlord, and THB 2,000 to 10,000 for a hotel.
The practical problem is obvious. Your employee cannot force their landlord to file, and cannot file it themselves, but they are the one who suffers when an immigration appointment surfaces a gap in the address record.
The 90-day report, form TM47, is the foreign national’s own obligation. It is triggered by remaining in Thailand beyond 90 days on a single permission of stay. The filing window opens 15 days before the due date and closes 7 days after it. Late filing attracts a fine of roughly THB 2,000, more if no report was filed at all.
One detail that trips people up repeatedly: the 90-day clock resets every time they leave and re-enter Thailand, regardless of how much time was left in the previous cycle. Frequent regional travellers rarely need to file at all, and then get caught out the one quarter they stay put.
Neither obligation is yours as employer. Both will affect your employee’s visa extension and re-entry permit appointments, which makes them your problem in practice even though they are not your duty in law. Employers who tell new foreign hires about these two things at onboarding have noticeably fewer problems at renewal than those who assume someone else has explained them.
What to actually do
Diarise the ratio and capital check for ninety days before each renewal, not thirty. If the answer is that you need to raise registered capital or add Thai headcount, ninety days is enough time and thirty is not.
Track Thai headcount against work permits as a single number. Whoever owns HR should know what the current ratio is at any time, not reconstruct it at renewal.
Check your structure before defaulting to a limited company. If you are establishing a presence rather than trading, a representative office carries a 1:1 ratio and no capital test.
Tell foreign hires about TM30 and TM47 on day one. They are not your legal obligations. They will become your problem anyway.
Where this sits in our work
People Profilers Thailand files work permits and coordinates visas for employers hiring here, through People Profilers Bangkok Recruitment Co., Ltd., licensed by the Department of Employment under Licence น.1830/2565.
What we commit to is filing quality: an honest eligibility check against the ratio and capital position before anything is submitted, complete documentation, and substantive responses to authority queries. Approval decisions themselves always rest with the authorities.
If you want the position checked before you make an offer, or before a renewal gets close, that is what our work permit and visa service in Thailand is for. If the conclusion is that your entity cannot support another permit yet, employer of record solves the employment relationship but does not by itself solve a work permit requirement for a foreign national. Our article on what it really costs to employ someone in Thailand covers the statutory side.
Sources
Verified September 2026. Immigration requirements change, so confirm before relying on any of this for a live application.
- The four-to-one Thai staffing ratio and THB 2 million registered capital per foreign employee: Belaws, cross-checked against DeeMED Consulting
- The capital and ratio tests being re-applied at each annual renewal against current registered capital and actual payroll records, the approximate ten work permit ceiling tiered against capital, the 1:1 ratio and capital exemption for representative, regional and branch offices, and the separate BOI framework: DeeMED Consulting
- TM30 as the property owner’s obligation with a 24 hour deadline and fines to THB 2,000, or THB 2,000 to 10,000 for hotels; TM47 as the foreign national’s own 90-day obligation, the filing window of 15 days before to 7 days after, the approximate THB 2,000 late fine, and the clock resetting on each re-entry: DeeMED Consulting
