What It Really Costs a Thai Company to Hire a Foreign Employee

The Entry Bar: Capital and the Thai-Staff Ratio

• The customary standard for an ordinary company sponsoring a work permit: 2 million THB paid-up registered capital per foreign employee, plus 4 Thai employees enrolled in social security; the bar halves for a foreigner married to a Thai national on a marriage visa
• This is the prevailing approval practice — verify current Labour Ministry and Immigration application of it. Company registration and capital paid-up mechanics are in our company registration guide
• BOI-promoted companies are the exception: foreign positions run on the approved project's quota, free of the 4:1 ratio, processed through the One Stop center with better speed and predictability — see our BOI application guide

One-Off Costs: Getting One Person Legal

• Work permit official fees: application and annual fees total in the low thousands of baht — the cheap part
• Non-B visa and annual extension: official fees plus document preparation; most SMEs outsource, with market service fees commonly 20,000–50,000 THB per person per year for the permit-plus-extension bundle (rates vary)
• The hidden heavyweight is the ratio cost: if the business doesn't genuinely need 4 Thai staff, then at Bangkok's ordinary-role salaries of 12,000–18,000 THB/month, four heads cost 600,000–900,000 THB a year — the fundamental reason shell-style hiring structures don't hold
• Foreign salaries carry visa benchmarks: Immigration reviews extensions against monthly salary guidelines by nationality (a commonly cited figure for Chinese nationals is 35,000 THB — verify current practice); lowball offers jam at renewal

The Recurring Annual Bill

• Social security (SSO): foreign regular employees enroll like Thais — employer and employee each contribute 5% on a wage base capped at 15,000 THB, i.e. at most 750 THB/month each
• Payroll withholding: monthly progressive-rate withholding and year-end reconciliation (see our tax guide); the company's monthly filing duties — PND.1, VAT, SSO — are in our monthly compliance guide
• Annual renewals: visa extension + work permit renewal + 90-day report admin every year, and any change — resignation, role, address — must be reported to the Labour Ministry
• Budget rule of thumb: for a foreign employee on 50,000 THB/month, the all-in annual cost (salary + ratio staffing + processing + admin) lands around 2× bare salary, depending on whether the Thai roles were needed anyway

Termination: Severance Is a Hard Liability

Thai labor protection makes no nationality distinction on severance: no-fault dismissal pays on a tenure ladder from 30 days' wages after 120 days of service up to 400 days beyond 10 years, plus payment in lieu if the 30-day notice is skipped. High foreign salaries scale the liability proportionally — price this contingent debt into senior hires before making them. Dismissal procedure, the boundaries of for-cause termination and labor court risk are in our labor law guide. After departure, cancel the work permit and notify Immigration promptly — sitting on it stains the company's record for future applications.

Three Hiring Structures and When Each Wins

• Direct hire by your own company: right when a real Thai operation with genuine Thai staff already exists — the thresholds are absorbed by the business
• BOI structure: for tech, regional headquarters and other promoted categories — quota-based positions, the fast lane, plus tax privileges; the best answer for foreign-heavy teams
• EOR / employer of record: staff sit on a licensed HR firm's payroll for a per-head fee — right for a 1–2 person market test; vet the EOR's own licensing and compliance record, because liability gets murky when things go wrong

The employee's side of a job change — permit transfer sequencing — is in our job change guide; employer and employee timelines must be planned together.

FAQ

Can we sponsor a work permit with less than 2 million THB capital?

Through the ordinary channel, essentially no — paid-up capital is a hard checkpoint. The real options: increase and pay up the capital, qualify through BOI or similar special channels, or bridge with an EOR. Treat any agent promising "we can fix a permit without the capital" as a red flag: non-compliant structures surface at renewal or inspection, and both company and employee pay for it.

Can the 4 Thai employees be part-time or on paper only?

Review practice looks at social security contribution records, and the four generally need months of genuine enrollment to hold up. Pure paper staffing — minimum wage plus SSO with nobody working — is a grey scheme that falls apart under Labour Ministry site checks and interviews, dragging the foreign employee's renewal down with it. The compliant route is filling real roles — admin, customer service, drivers — and costing them into the hiring budget.

Do foreign interns or short-term consultants need work permits too?

Yes. Thai law does not define "work" by pay or duration — unpaid internships and short project consulting legally require authorization, and the special channels (such as 15-day Urgent Work) are narrow. Letting someone "start on a tourist visa while we sort it out" is the classic employer violation, with penalties landing on both company and individual.

Can we pay a foreign employee's salary to an overseas account?

Not advisable. Visa extensions require Thai salary bank records and tax payment evidence; offshore payroll breaks the chain between bank statements and declared salary, and the renewal file falls apart. The clean pattern: pay into a Thai account with normal withholding, and let the employee remit onward — personal channels are covered in our remittance guide.

Need Help?

TaiHuBang supports employer-side compliance: work permit eligibility pre-checks and capital increase planning, BOI feasibility assessment, agent comparison and referral, and employment contract and severance review. See our company services, or submit an inquiry — a consultant will reply within 24 hours.