BOI promotion in Thailand: eligibility, permissions and compliance

The Board of Investment publishes activity groups rather than industries, and the classification your project falls into determines everything that follows: the tax holiday length, the minimum investment, the technology or skill conditions and the reporting burden. Two software companies with similar revenue can land in different groups because one develops its own platform while the other resells and configures somebody else's. Getting the classification right at the start is the single highest-value decision in the whole application.

We begin by writing the project description the way the committee reads it — what is produced, what value is added inside Thailand, what proportion of staff are skilled, what equipment is imported and what the three-year revenue path looks like. If the actual operation falls outside a promoted classification, discuss a different lawful route before commissioning a business plan.

Activities that commonly succeed include software and digital services, manufacturing with genuine local value added, regional headquarters and trading support functions, research and development, logistics and warehousing with technology content, and some healthcare, education and hospitality projects with specific investment thresholds.

Corporate income tax exemption applies to income from the promoted activity only. That distinction sounds procedural until the first audit, when the Revenue Department asks the company to separate promoted income from non-promoted income across shared staff, shared premises and shared overheads. A promoted company therefore needs a chart of accounts designed on day one to keep the two streams apart, and an allocation policy that an auditor will accept. Use the certificate and tax guidance to establish which revenue and expenses belong to the eligible activity.

Duty relief on machinery and raw materials is granted against a specific list, and imports outside that list attract full duty. The privilege runs on deadlines: the machinery import period, the operation start date and the reporting cycle are all fixed in the certificate, and extensions must be requested before expiry rather than explained afterwards.

Foreign shareholding depends on the activity and the applicable Foreign Business Act permission or certificate. Land ownership under section 27 requires its own BOI approval for the authorised purpose; do not treat office, residence or project land as a blanket entitlement. Foreign personnel require the relevant position, immigration and employment approvals through the current channel for their category.

Promotion is not a certificate you frame. It is a set of yearly obligations: reporting operating results, evidencing the investment actually made, evidencing the skilled headcount, keeping the promoted and non-promoted books separate, and filing corporate income tax returns that claim the exemption correctly with the supporting schedules attached. Failure to meet reporting or certificate conditions may lead to corrective requirements or loss of privileges under the applicable process.

Because our office holds both the legal file and the accounting file, the annual BOI report and the audited financial statements are prepared from the same underlying records. Reconcile differences between the operating report, ledgers and financial statements before submission.

For companies that already hold promotion and are unsure whether their bookkeeping supports it, we run a focused review: a sample of promoted and non-promoted revenue, the allocation of shared costs, the machinery list against actual imports, and the skilled staff records against the certificate conditions. Where there are gaps we correct them before an auditor or the Revenue Department finds them.