If you want to work in your own Thai company, the rule that trips up almost everyone is the staff quota: four Thai employees on payroll for every foreigner who holds a work permit, plus THB2,000,000 of paid-up capital behind each one. For a founder who has just landed with a laptop and a plan, that is a wall. BOI promotion is the main legal way through it, but since late 2025 it stopped being a free pass. Here is how the quota works, how promotion changes it, and what the newer conditions mean for you.
This is one of the biggest reasons founders choose BOI promotion in the first place. The tax holiday gets the headlines, but the ability to bring yourself and your team in without hiring a small Thai workforce first is often what makes the company workable at all.
Key Takeaways
- A normal Thai company needs THB2,000,000 in paid-up capital and four Thai staff for every foreigner it sponsors for a work permit.
- A BOI-promoted company skips that test. Foreign experts come in under the Investment Promotion Act through BOI’s Single Window instead of the immigration ratio.
- The skip is no longer unconditional. Since Por.8/2568, large manufacturers face a 70% Thai-staff floor, and every promoted foreigner has to clear a minimum salary tier.
- Executives need at least THB150,000 a month, management at least THB75,000 (or THB50,000 with a degree), and operations staff at least THB50,000.
- Work permits and visas for promoted companies are handled at BOI’s one-stop center at One Bangkok, not at a normal labour office.
- The DOE’s e-Work Permit platform is announced to become the mandatory filing route from 28 July 2026. Confirm the current cutoff before you file.
- Some jobs stay off-limits to every foreigner, BOI or not, including tour guiding and most clerical and legal work.
The Standard Rule, and Why It’s a Wall
To work legally in Thailand you need two documents that go together: a Non-Immigrant B visa and a work permit. The visa lets you stay for the purpose of work; the permit lets you actually do the job.
One without the other is not enough, and getting them is the company’s job as much as yours.
For an ordinary Thai limited company, sponsoring a foreigner comes with two hard numbers:
- The company needs THB2,000,000 in paid-up capital for each foreigner.
- It has to employ four Thai nationals for every one of those foreigners.
This means two foreign directors need eight Thai staff and THB4,000,000 in registered, paid-up capital. Trade, regional, and branch representative offices get an easier 1:1 ratio, but a normal operating company does not.
You can see why this stops people.
A two-founder software startup does not need eight Thai employees to function, but the immigration math says hire them anyway or one founder goes unpermitted. Paying salaries to staff you do not yet need, purely to unlock your own work permit, is the kind of cost that kills an early company.
This is the same immigration rule that applies whether or not you get promoted; the difference is that promotion gives you a separate door.
How BOI Changes the Math
A BOI-promoted company is still a normal Thai limited company. It just holds a promotion certificate that adds a set of privileges on top, and one of the most useful is the way it handles foreign staff.
Instead of proving the 4:1 ratio and the THB2,000,000-per-head capital, a promoted company can bring in foreign employees, as long as it gets approval from the Board of Investment. This makes hiring foreign employees much easier. It’s one of the non-tax BOI incentives, and for a lot of service and digital businesses it matters more than the duty exemptions.
What this doesn’t mean: promotion doesn’t hand out unlimited work permits. BOI approves a specific number of foreign positions for your project based on what the business actually needs, and you bring people in against that approved allocation. It’s generous compared to 4:1, but it’s still a defined quota, not a blank cheque.
The New Conditions You Can’t Ignore
For years the BOI work-permit route really was close to a free pass. That changed with BOI Office Announcement Por.8/2568, issued on 5 June 2025, which set fresh conditions on foreign personnel brought in under the promotion. If you are planning a promoted company now, these are the numbers to plan around.
A Thai-staff floor for large manufacturers
If you run a manufacturing project with more than 100 total employees, at least 70% of your workforce has to be Thai. This one is aimed squarely at big factories. If you are building a plant that will scale past 100 people, though, build the Thai ratio into your hiring plan from the start.
Service businesses are exempt, and so are manufacturers with fewer than 100 staff, so most digital, consulting, and early-stage companies never touch it.
Minimum salaries for every foreign hire
This part applies far more broadly. Every foreigner you bring in under the promotion has to be paid at or above a floor set by their role:
- Executive: at least THB150,000 a month.
- Management: at least THB75,000 a month, or at least THB50,000 if the person holds a bachelor’s degree or higher.
- Operation: at least THB50,000 a month.
The practical effect is that you can’t put a foreign hire on a token salary to satisfy the paperwork.
If you want the work permit, the pay has to be real and it has to clear the tier. For most genuine hires this is not a problem, but it does close the door on nominal or unpaid founder arrangements.
Timing matters here: Por.8/2568 took effect on 1 October 2025 for certificates issued on or after the announcement date, and on 1 January 2026 for companies that were already promoted before then. So even an older BOI company is now inside these rules. If you were promoted years ago on the old terms, check that your foreign salaries still clear the tiers.
How You Actually Get the Permit
Promoted companies do not queue at a normal labour office. Visas and work permits for BOI staff go through the One Stop Service Center, which sits inside the Thailand Investment and Expat Services Center (TIESC) at One Bangkok on Rama IV Road.
Immigration and the Department of Employment keep counters there, so the visa and the work permit get handled in one place instead of two agencies across town.
The rough sequence looks like this:
- BOI approves your foreign positions under the promotion.
- You submit the visa and work-permit applications through the Single Window against those approved slots.
- The one-stop center processes both, and the foreign hire collects the Non-B visa and the work permit.
The days of same-window turnaround are one of the real perks of promotion. Ask anyone who has run the standard route at a provincial labour office and they will tell you the BOI channel is worth the promotion on its own.
Re-confirm this before you file: the Department of Employment’s online e-Work Permit platform launched in October 2025 and is announced to become the mandatory filing route from 28 July 2026, after which paper submissions are only accepted with proof of a genuine system fault. The rollout deadline has already been pushed back more than once, so treat 28 July 2026 as the current announced cutoff, not a settled fact, and check the live date when you apply.
The Jobs No Foreigner Can Do
Promotion changes the quota, but it does not override Thailand’s list of occupations closed to foreigners. Under the Ministry of Labour rules, List 1 holds 27 jobs that no foreigner may hold, whatever their visa or company. The ones founders bump into most often are:
- Tour guiding and tour operation.
- Most clerical and secretarial work.
- Most legal work and legal services.
- Various trades and manual crafts reserved for Thai nationals.
This catches people who assume BOI promotion lets them do anything inside their own company. It does not. If your business model relies on a foreigner personally performing a List 1 job, no promotion certificate will fix that, and you will need a Thai national in that seat.
Keeping It Valid
A work permit is not a set-and-forget document. Two ongoing obligations matter most.
First, personal reporting. Any foreigner staying 90 days or more has to file a 90-day report with immigration. Miss it and the fine is THB2,000. It is a small thing that is easy to forget and easy to keep on top of once you set a reminder. SMART and LTR holders get a lighter version, reporting once a year instead.
Second, and more serious, your work permits ride on your BOI promotion staying in good standing. Since the 2026 reporting reform, a promoted company files progress reports through BOI’s e-Monitoring system. A late or missed report can auto-suspend your BOI privileges, and that suspension includes visa and work-permit processing. Two consecutive misses can cost you the promotion entirely.
In other words, sloppy BOI compliance does not just risk your tax holiday, it can freeze your ability to renew your own team’s permits. Keep the reporting current and this never becomes your problem.
Getting It Right the First Time
The work-permit side of a BOI company is a genuine advantage, but the newer salary tiers, the manufacturing staff floor, and the shift to online filing mean it takes a bit more planning than it used to. Get the structure and the salaries right at setup and the rest runs smoothly for years.
Thinking about setting up with BOI?
BOI Connect matches foreign business owners with a vetted firm that handles the whole thing, from company registration to visas, tax, and ongoing compliance.