Offshore structures and Thai assets: what works

Start with the problem, not the structure

A structure is a tool, and the first question is what it is for. The legitimate motives we see are estate planning and probate avoidance, consolidation of a family's assets under one governance framework, privacy in the sense of not appearing personally on public registers, and occasionally treaty access or home-country planning. The illegitimate motive that still gets pitched, concealment from tax authorities, stopped being viable when the Common Reporting Standard matured; passive holding companies are looked through and reported with their controlling persons, and Thailand joined the exchange network in 2023. Any adviser whose plan depends on data not moving is selling you a liability.

Condos through offshore companies

A foreign buyer can hold a Bangkok or Phuket condominium personally within the 49 percent foreign quota, or through a foreign company, which occupies the same foreign quota. What does the company layer actually change?

• Probate: this is the real benefit. On death, shares in the offshore company pass under the company's jurisdiction and your estate plan; the condo itself never changes hands at the Land Department, avoiding Thai probate on that asset. For estates with heirs abroad, this is a material simplification.
• Resale flexibility: the company's shares can be sold instead of the unit, though in practice most Thai buyers and their banks want the unit, not a foreign SPV, so the benefit is occasional.
• Privacy: your name is off the Land Department title, though beneficial ownership is visible to banks, to CRS reporting and to any serious counterparty.
• Tax: little or nothing is saved. Rental income from Thai property is Thai-source and taxable here regardless of the owner's jurisdiction, transfer taxes apply on the way in and out, and a company sale of the unit can face less favourable treatment than a personal sale. The structure adds annual accounting, audit and registered-office costs in the offshore jurisdiction, typically a few thousand dollars a year, forever.

The balance: for a single condo bought to live in, personal ownership plus a proper Thai will is usually the better answer. For a larger portfolio, or an estate with complicated succession, the company layer can earn its keep. What the structure must never be is a device to hold land, which foreigners cannot own; nominee shareholder arrangements to fake Thai majority ownership of land-holding companies are illegal and enforcement attention on them has only grown.

Thai operating companies and shares

Holding shares in a genuine Thai operating business through an offshore holding company is common and legitimate, and can help with succession, with joint-venture governance sitting in a neutral jurisdiction, and with future exit mechanics. The constraints are Thai, not offshore: the Foreign Business Act limits foreign-majority ownership in restricted sectors whoever the shareholder is, and since 1 January 2026 the DBD requires Thai shareholders in foreign-participation companies to evidence their capital with roughly three months of bank statements, a rule aimed squarely at nominee arrangements. An offshore layer does nothing to soften either rule, and a structure built on a nominee foundation is rotten regardless of how elegant the top of it looks.

Trusts, and Thailand's absence of them

One structural gap surprises common-law families: Thailand has no domestic private trust regime. Thai law recognises trusts only in narrow capital-markets contexts, so you cannot settle Thai land or a condo into a trust the way you might at home, and a foreign trust cannot hold Thai immovable property directly. What works instead is layering: a foreign trust or foundation holding the shares of the offshore company that in turn holds the Thai-permissible assets, with the trust operating entirely in its own jurisdiction. That arrangement is legitimate and common for succession and governance at scale, but it inherits every substance, disclosure and cost point made above, twice over. For Thai assets themselves, the will and probate route described in our estate planning briefing usually does the real work.

Substance expectations

The days of the brass-plate company are ending on the offshore side too. The traditional jurisdictions, BVI, Cayman, Jersey and their peers, now operate economic substance regimes requiring certain entities to demonstrate real local activity, and pure holding companies face at least reduced substance tests such as maintaining registered agents and meeting governance obligations. Meanwhile home tax authorities increasingly test where a company is actually managed: an offshore company whose every decision is taken by you at a desk in Bangkok risks being treated as managed and controlled from Thailand, with consequences nobody planned for. If a structure matters, it needs real directors making real decisions, minuted, in the right place, and that governance has a running cost.

The disclosure climate

Assume visibility. CRS reports offshore accounts and their controlling persons to residence jurisdictions, Thailand included since 2023. Beneficial ownership registers in the offshore centres are accessible to authorities and are moving, unevenly, toward wider access. Thai banks ask structure questions at onboarding under a tightening AML regime, and the 2024 remittance rules give the Thai Revenue Department a live interest in offshore arrangements of residents. None of this makes structures improper; it makes undocumented structures untenable. A structure whose purpose you can state in one sentence, supported by a file, is comfortable in 2026. A structure whose purpose is a shrug is a standing invitation to questions.

If any part of a proposed structure only works while nobody official looks at it, that is not a structure, it is a deferred problem with compounding interest.

When simple beats clever

There is a persistent mismatch between what gets sold and what is needed. A family with one condo, local accounts and a clear succession plan needs a Thai will, clean FET paperwork and perhaps an LTR visa; a three-jurisdiction structure adds cost and questions without adding protection. Cleverness earns its keep at genuine scale: operating businesses, multi-country asset bases, complicated families, real treaty questions. Below that line, the running costs, the governance burden and the explanatory load of a structure usually exceed its benefits, and simplicity is itself a form of asset protection, because simple arrangements survive their creator.

Getting an honest answer

The structural question deserves an adviser with no product to sell. Asia Global Partners does not sell structures; we scope the actual problem, and where a holding arrangement is genuinely warranted we bring in the offshore counsel, the Thai lawyers and the bankers to build it with proper substance, and to document why it exists. Just as often, our advice is that the family needs less than they were about to buy. Both answers are worth the same, because the expensive mistake in this field is not the structure you did not build; it is the one you did not need. If a proposal cannot show you, in plain language, the specific problem it solves and the annual cost of solving it that way, decline it and keep your affairs simple until something real changes.

This briefing is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Thai rules change frequently and individual cases differ. Verify current requirements with the relevant authorities, including the Immigration Bureau, the Board of Investment, the Land Department, the Department of Business Development and the Revenue Department, and take advice on your own facts before acting.