BOI Visa in Thailand.

There is no visa called a BOI visa

A BOI visa in Thailand is not a visa class. The document your employee ends up holding is a Non-Immigrant B, or a Non-Immigrant IB for investment and business, exactly as it would be without promotion. What Board of Investment promotion changes is the route and the privileges: the company files an approved position for the foreigner, dependants are handled inside the same filing, and the visa, the work permit and the extension of stay are handled through the One Stop Service Centre for Visa and Work Permit, which combines the Board of Investment, the Immigration Bureau and the Department of Employment in one place.

That distinction matters commercially, because it tells you what to buy: correct handling of a filing sequence that belongs to the company rather than to the employee.

This page covers the people step, the one that starts after the promotion certificate exists. Whether to seek promotion in the first place, and what the company has to commit to for it, is a separate job covered on BOI application.

Who can use the One Stop Service Centre

The Board of Investment splits the people it sponsors into two groups, and the split decides both how long someone can stay and whether the family comes with them.

Section 25 of the Investment Promotion Act covers foreign technicians and experts who come to work in a promoted activity. This is the group most companies mean when they say BOI visa. Their spouses and dependants are covered too, they file through the Single Window for Visa and Work Permit, and on extension they are allowed to live and work for one to four years at a time, depending on the type of promoted activity. Family filings run alongside the employee's own and follow the same centre, which is where this route differs most sharply from an ordinary dependent visa application.

Section 24 covers a different situation: foreigners entering to study investment opportunities, to work on an activity still under consideration or awaiting its certificate, or through a foreign chamber of commerce. They also receive a Non-B or IB, but permission to stay runs six months to one year at a time, and the Board of Investment states plainly that dependants of these foreigners are not entitled to the visas. A company that assumes the section 25 family treatment applies to a pre-certificate scouting visit has planned the move wrong.

SMART Visa and LTR Visa holders are served by the same centre under their own rules. Those are separate programmes, not versions of this one.

Two things are worth reading twice in that sequence. The gating object is the approved position, not the person: the position exists first, and the employee is appointed into it afterwards, from inside Thailand. And the published timings are per request form. Board of Investment material states working days against named request numbers; it does not publish an end-to-end total for the whole journey, and neither does this page. Firms that quote you a single door-to-door figure are estimating, not citing.

Where the standard non-BOI route differs, including the capital and Thai-staff conditions that apply without promotion, is worked through in the guide on getting a work permit through a Thai company.

The Board of Investment does not publish a work permit fee for the BOI track. The Department of Employment schedule that applies is set out on the work permit page, and a firm quotes the official cost for your specific filings separately from its own fee.

What goes wrong

The expensive mistake is documented by the Board of Investment itself. Companies receive BOI approvals and then do not extend the visa and work permit before the expiry dates. When that happens the foreigner has to apply to BOI again and leave Thailand to obtain a new Non-B visa. A short administrative lapse turns into a fresh application, a departure, and a gap in someone's lawful employment.

The rest of the failure list is procedural and equally avoidable:

• A position extension has a window. File not less than 15 days before the expiry of the previous permission, and not more than 90 days after it. Filing more than 90 days early means labelling the request urgent and giving reasons, and the extension then runs from the submitted date.
• The urgent permit is a one-time bridge. Urgent employment permission (request 6.1) is approved within three hours and lasts a maximum of 30 days, it requires a Non-B or Non-IB visa, and it can only be requested once.
• Request 4.1 has a location condition. Appointing an expert to an approved position can only be filed while that expert is in Thailand on a Non-B visa. Filing it from abroad is not an option.
• The foreigner appears in person. The centre states that applicants must submit the application themselves. A firm prepares and accompanies; it does not replace the person at the counter.

After approval

The centre is not only for the first filing. Extension of temporary stay, the 90-day address notification, re-entry permits, visa issuing and change of visa type are all provided there for foreigners staying under the Investment Promotion Act, which is why companies with several promoted staff tend to keep the whole caseload in one place.

Staff movement has its own mechanic. When someone resigns, the employer files the termination through the e-Expert system up to 15 days before the last day of employment, and BOI extends the person's permitted stay by seven days. Filing at the earliest point therefore leaves roughly three weeks to arrange the next position or the departure, and filing late leaves days. If the person is moving to another promoted company, an urgent permit can bridge the gap while the new employment is processed.

Most promoted companies hand this caseload to a corporate services team or a visa agency that files at the centre regularly, because the value is in the sequencing and the calendar rather than in any single form. When comparing firms, ask who tracks the expiry dates, whether the fee covers the family filings, and what happens if a position lapses on their watch.

This page is general information, not legal advice. Rules, fees and procedures change; for a specific employee or promotion situation, speak with a qualified professional.