Who may trade at all
A Thai company imports and exports freely once registered with customs as an importer-exporter, a routine digital registration. The structural nuance is the Foreign Business Act again: wholesale and retail trading by foreign-majority companies carries capital thresholds, typically ฿100 million per store category for retail exemption, or licence and BOI routes below that. Trading companies are one of the areas where BOI's international-business categories can carry foreign ownership cleanly; the structure deserves deciding before the first purchase order.
The control lists
- Free goods, most of the tariff book: import against duty and VAT with no permit.
- Licensed goods: a Commerce Ministry permit list covering categories from certain agricultural products to used machinery and vehicles.
- FDA-controlled: food, supplements, cosmetics, medical devices and pharmaceuticals, each needing product registration before import, with timelines from weeks to a year by category.
- Excise territory: alcohol, tobacco and vehicles, carrying both licences and the duty structures that reshape their economics entirely.
- Prohibited and treaty-controlled goods, from obvious contraband to CITES species and dual-use items.
The recurring HNW cases are personal rather than commercial: the wine collection, the car, the art. Each sits in a controlled category with its own briefing in our library, and each rewards planning months ahead of the shipment.
Customs in practice
Thai customs runs a modern electronic system with risk-based inspection, and the practical variables are valuation and classification: duty rates swing widely by tariff code, and the declared value of related-party shipments attracts attention. Free-trade agreements, ASEAN above all, zero many rates where origin documentation is clean, which makes the certificate-of-origin discipline commercially material. A competent customs broker is not a luxury; for controlled categories, a specialist one is the difference between weeks and quarters.
Where ventures stumble
- Discovering FDA registration timelines after committing to launch dates.
- Classification optimism, arguing for the friendly tariff code after the shipment lands rather than ruling it before.
- Origin paperwork too casual to claim the FTA rate the business model assumed.
- Structuring the trading entity without the FBA analysis, then meeting it at licence renewal.
The office's role
We put the structure, registrations and broker relationships in place before goods move, and for controlled categories we manage the registration calendar as the critical path it is. If your Thai plans include product, bring the tariff codes to the first conversation and the rest sequences cleanly.
Continue reading.
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.
Where a conversation helps.
Briefings generalise; your situation will not. We work with a limited number of private partners, and if any of the above touches a decision you are actually making, we would be glad to consider it with you, privately and without obligation.
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