What should I know about customs when moving furniture from Penang to Phuket, and can you recommend a moving company?

If you happen to have a Thai partner then do it in their name, a lot easier and no duty.

Depends on the visa you enter on. For a long term visa like a Non O then personal effects are supposedly “duty free”.

That said what happens in reality is usually customs will come up with an arbitrary figure that you need to pay based on the bill of lading.

You can contest that figure, but you almost certainly won’t want to because all that will happen is they’ll then go through the items one by one with a fine tooth comb and assign a fee. You can bet your bottom dollar the bill will be higher than if you just paid their figure plucked from the air.

As for a company we’ve used Asian Tigers before and we’ll pleased with them. Find a company in Penang that will use them as the import agent.