I am an individual tax resident (not a company) and I sell software online (I don't have any contracts with clients). Can you please recommend to me what documents I should submit. My situation: I make a piece of software similar to a wordpress plugin, and I sell it from my website. All of my customers make a $25 payment that is processed through Paypal. I do over 1000 sales a year, and I transfer the money from Paypal to my New Zealand bank account. I pay tax in New Zealand as an individual , not as a registered company.

I can submit these documents:

*My website info

*My Paypal summary of sales

*My tax return

*My bank account showing the income from Paypal

Is there anything else I should submit?

Hello everyone! I'm brand new to this group and in the early stages of looking into relocating to Thailand!

I'm looking to relocate with my mother and myself. She's of retirement age, so any information regarding visa options for retirees would be so super helpful.

I currently work virtually as a nutritionist and am looking into starting my own business.

Thanks in advance for your help!

DTV as a remote worker - weekly minimum hours required?

Hi All, sorry if this has already been covered elsewhere but I did a search here and couldn't find an answer, also on the Thai Embassy Canberra website this question isn't specifically addressed.

If applying for a DTV as a remote worker, is there a minimum number of hours you are required to work a week/minimum income required per week?

I have more than the required savings of 500,000 TBH in my bank account.

Does anyone also know if you haven't got a remote work contract in place at the time of application, it would be recommended to apply through the soft power route, and then try to secure online work while in Thailand (with an Australian company) and swap over the category of the DTV? I would be applying from Australia, and would preferably like to be earning some income via remote work while in Thailand.

Any advice on this would be very much appreciated! 🙂

Is anyone else on a DTV here feeling that Thailand isn’t for them? Where are you planning to go next?

Here is my story on how I applied for DTV through Royal Thai Embassy in Colombo (Sri Lanka) : [members only]

This is how I applied for Thailand Destination Visa (DTV) From Sri Lanka under Workcation category: Refer [members only] for more info.

I’m a Sri Lankan living in Chiang Mai. I got an ED visa last year, which I can use until this December. I wanted to apply for the DTV soon, so I came back to Sri Lanka on 31st October. I gathered the following documents and submitted them on the eVisa portal.

Financial Proof:

• Bank balance confirmation letter: Final balance as of 3rd November.

• Pay slips: Last 6 months.

• Bank statements (salary account): Last 6 months.

• Bank statements (savings account): I only had the 500,000 THB+ balance for the last 2 months. There was no money there before.

Work Profile:

• I wrote a cover letter about my situation (I’m a software developer working remotely for a foreign company, and I’ve been to other Southeast Asian countries as a digital nomad).

• Attached my professional agreement letter with my employer and included their contact emails for verification if needed.

Payment:

• The fee is 120,000 LKR, equivalent to 14,000 THB. (Not sure why it’s higher than usual.)

Timeline:

• Application Submission: 5th Nov, 6:30 p.m. (IST)

• Document Request: Received email on 6th Nov, 3:30 p.m., asking to upload all pages of my passport.

• Passport Upload: Uploaded on 6th Nov, 11:30 p.m. (Creating a PDF under 3MB while retaining image quality for 33 images was tricky.)

• Interview Request: Received email on 7th Nov, 11:00 a.m., asking to visit the Royal Thai Embassy in Colombo for an interview on 8th Nov, 10:00 a.m.

• Interview: I went with hardcopies of all my documents (bank statements, offer letter, etc.). (It was a casual conversation — I think they just wanted to confirm I was in the country.)

• Visa Approval: Received on 8th Nov, 11:30 a.m.

Interview Summary:

There was no one else at the embassy. The officer asked me why I wanted this visa. I explained that I’m a digital nomad and have been traveling in Southeast Asia for the past few years. I mentioned I’d wanted this visa since it was announced.

• He asked how long I’d been in Thailand; I said 15 months on a student visa.

• He asked what I was doing there, and I explained I was learning Thai and living there.

• He asked about where I stayed, and I said mostly in Chiang Mai, though I’d visited the south as well.

• He reminded me I’m not allowed to earn money in Thailand, to which I replied that I understood.

• He asked if I had any family there, and I said no.

He took all the hardcopies and informed me that I’d receive the result via email.

Everything was pretty fast, with no major issues.

#srilanka #colombo #dtv

This is my experience on moving to Thailand on a DTV. I feel like someone may find this useful, and thus decided to share.**

Introduction**

- I'm a digital nomad and have been interested in moving to Thailand for a long time because the cost of living seemed low, the weather is ideal, and I could easily conduct my business from there. Ever since 2020 I've been looking at apartments in Thailand through ddproperty, propertyhub and other websites, and had been impressed by the cheap prices for incredibly nice looking condos. Now I just needed a Visa.

- I applied for a workcation DTV online, right after it was announced. The visa was granted to me within 1 week. My embassy asked me some follow-up questions regarding my business and asked for some extra documents, but overall the process was simple.

Finding an apartment

- I went to Thailand for the first time in August, in order to find a long term rental apartment. I quickly noticed that all of the listings at ddproperty.com and other property websites are fakes, and the apartments don't really exist. Around 50% of the time I would get no response, and the other 50% of the time they would get back to me, offering another, significantly more expensive apartment.

- I managed to book a temporary apartment in Bangkok for 2 months, while I continued to look for a permanent condo to live in. I learned that the way to find condos in Bangkok is to join various facebook groups, and message the "agents" there. The same thing would continue in the facebook groups; whenever I found something interesting, the "agent" would get back to me saying that the place is no longer available, and they would offer something more expensive. This even happened on listings that were posted just 2 minutes ago. It felt quite bad that the only way to find an apartment here is to deal with dishonest people who you don't know (they never post with their real names), and who could be scammers. In Thailand anyone can call themselves a real-estate agent, and there's almost no way to check if someone is legitimate or not in these facebook groups.

- Eventually I managed to set up a meeting with someone from a facebook group, at a building I was interested in. I had accepted that the prices on the property websites were false, and I would have to pay more than I initially thought. Upon arriving there, the person told me that they aren't able to come, and someone else will come instead. Eventually I met with a 20-30 year old Thai guy at the lobby of an apartment building, where he asked me to pay 1 months rent, 2 months deposit and 1 months "reservation fee" beforehand. They told me this is how it works in Thailand, and if I wanted to reserve the apartment in advance, I would have to also pay this 1 month "reservation fee".

As I wanted to have an apartment ready before my 2 month contract in my old condo ended, and I especially wanted to rent in this particular building, I felt like I had no choice but to pay. I wasn't going to find anyone better from these facebook groups. He did show me a unit in the building, but he wouldn't give me a rental contract before I had paid everything. I didn't know the guys name, and it seemed that the name of the real-estate company he worked for was made up (didn't find anything online), but I paid him a lot of money in cash and hoped for the best. Luckily he didn't run off with my money, and I was able to move into the apartment as promised after my old lease ended.

Bank account and rent payments

- After moving in, I began to pay my monthly rent payments to the agent through bank transfers. I quess the agent then sends the money to the landlord. After my first payment though, they complained that I had not paid enough. I had double checked that the sum was correct, and I also sent them some payment confirmation slips. I knew that my bank charged me a fee for an international payment, and I had accounted for this in my payments. Next I sent them the extra amount they were asking for, but they still said they didn't receive enough money. It turned out that on top of my fees, their bank was also charging them a fee for receiving international payments. This fee was significantly higher than my bank's fee. Of course, they made me pay for this too, and now I pay even more every month than I was prepared for.

Opening a bank account in Thailand would solve this issue, but it's not possible on a DTV. I have tried this at many different banks in Bangkok, and they require a work permit or a long term student visa in order to open a bank account for you.

Because you can't open a bank account, it also means that you pay a fee for withdrawing money from an ATM. In my case however, the cheapest way to pay my rent is to withdraw the money from an ATM, take the cash to a Thai bank in person, and pay my rent there. I will do this every month, as this is cheaper than paying through an international bank transfer to the agent's account.

I recommend anyone coming to Thailand on a DTV to bring as much cash as possible with you, and try to survive on that money for as long as possible in order to avoid ATM fees.

Overall I'm still happy, even though the DTV has some limitations and even though I ended up paying a lot more for a condo than I was prepared for. Thailand is a nice country to live in, and to do your work, even though knowing the language would help a lot.

The embassy requested that I provide a business registration with the government as well as certification from my employer. I'm a self employed digital artist who sells directly to computer gamers. Any members out there run into this problem who can suggest a solution?

I would like to ask for everyone’s opinions on this. I know there will be many different answers,but I am interested in hearing about what everyone thinks about this.

Do you guys think it is a realistic and good decision to move to Thailand, I mean pack up all your things and go on a DTV visa? Or do you think that this visa is still too new and can’t be trusted this much. I mean at least to move to Thailand for the next 5 years, obviously will be doing the boarder bounce every 180 days. I am sure many are wondering about this. Has anyone made the big move to stay for 5 years coming in and out?

Regarding DTV visa for Digital Nomad. I am currently applying and I was wondering if the bank statement is required to show a proof of income based on the employment contract provided ? This remote work contract is new and my current bank statement would not show it.

Hi, I applied in Hanoi through e visa this morning and they requested additional documents this evening. But I don’t understand what they’re asking for or how to ask them for clarification. Anybody have any ideas? Thank you in advance.