What it is and who must file
Under the Immigration Act, any foreigner staying in Thailand on a long-stay basis must notify immigration of their residential address once they have been in the country for 90 consecutive days, and again every 90 days thereafter. The duty applies across visa types: retirement extensions, marriage extensions, Non-B holders, students, LTR and Privilege holders, and DTV holders who remain long enough all fall within it. It is a notification, not an application; nothing is being approved.
The clock counts continuous presence. Leaving Thailand resets it: on re-entry, the count starts again from day one, and the next report falls due 90 days after that entry. Frequent travellers sometimes never file a report at all, entirely lawfully, because they never reach 90 unbroken days.
The three ways to file
- Online, through the immigration e-services portal. Filing opens in a window before the due date and, when the system cooperates, takes minutes. Approval arrives electronically. The system has matured but still rejects a meaningful share of filings for opaque reasons, so file early enough to fall back on another method.
- In person, at the immigration office covering your address, with your passport and the TM47 form. Reports can be filed up to 15 days before or 7 days after the due date. A receipt is stapled into the passport showing the next due date.
- By agent or authorised representative, who attends with your passport and paperwork. Filing by post also remains possible at many offices, though tracking and proof depend on the office.
Penalties and practical consequences
A late report attracts a fine, currently 2,000 baht, rising to a maximum of 5,000 baht if the failure comes to light through an arrest or inspection rather than voluntary correction. The money is rarely the real cost. An incomplete reporting history surfaces at extension time, at residence-certificate requests, and in any application that involves an officer reviewing the file. It reads as carelessness, and carelessness is expensive in a discretionary system.
The 90-day report does not replace the TM30 notification of residence, which is the housemaster's or landlord's separate duty when a foreigner takes up residence. The two are routinely confused. Our briefing on the TM30 covers that side of the ledger.
Edge cases worth knowing
- Travel near the due date: if you will be outside Thailand when the report falls due, no report is needed for that cycle; the obligation simply restarts from your next entry. There is no filing from abroad and no penalty for a cycle you were not present for.
- Moving house: a change of address should be notified rather than saved up for the next 90-day cycle, and it interacts with the TM30 at your new residence. Offices expect the two records to agree.
- Lost receipts: the stapled TM47 receipt is your evidence of the next due date. If it is lost, the office can confirm the date from the system, but turning up with a complete run of receipts makes every future interaction faster.
- New extensions and conversions: an extension of stay does not reset the 90-day clock; the count runs on continuous presence, independent of what stamp authorises it. Many late filings trace back to assuming the annual extension restarted the count.
- Online rejections: portal refusals often stem from name formatting, an unmatched TM30, or a recent address change. Fix the underlying record rather than resubmitting the same filing repeatedly.
How LTR and Privilege change the picture
LTR holders report annually rather than every 90 days: one notification per year of continuous stay, a deliberate design feature of the programme and a genuine quality-of-life improvement. Privilege members remain subject to the standard 90-day duty, but the programme's concierge desk files on their behalf as part of the membership service, so the obligation exists without being felt. For principals who value never standing in a government queue, this difference is worth factoring into visa selection alongside the larger financial questions.
Running it properly
The reliable pattern is simple: diarise the due date from each entry, attempt the online filing at the start of the window, and have an agent standing by for the cases the portal rejects. Households with several family members on different entry dates benefit from a single tracked calendar rather than four separate ones. This office runs that calendar, and the filings, for clients as a matter of course; it is unglamorous work, which is precisely why it should never be the principal's problem.
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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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