Making the Perfect Destination Thailand Visa (DTV) Application as a Remote Worker

Applying for the Destination Thailand Visa (DTV) under the Workation category requires a well crafted application to give you the best chance of success.

This article will outline how to structure it in a way that gives you the greatest chance of approval.

What’s not included in this article

We aren’t going to cover the nature of the visa or basic eligibility requirements, as we’ve discussed that previously.

We aren’t going to cover the “soft power” category of this visa, because the requirements will be more or less dictated by your school, who should help you with this. 

With that said, there is still a lot you can learn from this and the financial evidence section of the application is the same, so feel free to read on and use the information that you find valuable.

You’ll have to get these things before applying:

• A passport.
  • Consider getting a new one if yours is nearly expired.
• A passport-style photo that’s been taken in the last six months.
  • This doesn’t have to be a passport photo per-se, but should be clear, unobstructed, and in the style of an actual passport photo.
• Proof of your current residence.
  • This is typically a driver’s license or other ID card from your country of residence showing your current home address, but can also be things such as a utility bill showing your current address.
• Details of the flight you’ll be entering Thailand on, therefore it might be a good idea to book before applying to ensure continuity between your application and your actual travel movements.
• Access to your financials and business documents – you’ll want these to all be printed/PDFed at a roughly similar time to one another.

Check your relevant embassy or consulate’s website

You’ll generally have to apply at the embassy or consulate in the region where you are living.

For instance, Australians outside of New South Wales should apply at the Canberra Embassy, and those within New South Wales should apply at the Sydney Consulate.

Each embassy/consulate will list specific (albeit similar) requirements, so checking the relevant website will give you the best chance of success.

Let’s think about who’s reading your application

The people at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) have to read a lot of these applications – make it easy for them.

This visa, especially the Workaction category, is inherently subjective. Build a case – you’re telling them why you’re a great applicant.

A note on social media and hearsay

Facebook groups, YouTube, and the likes are a great help starting out, but please be wary of the quality of advice that you are getting from these platforms. 

There is often a “don’t worry about it” or a “how will they know?” attitude amongst these groups. It’s not worth deceiving, misleading, or half-assing your visa application and jeopardizing your overall status in Thailand just to take a shortcut.

If you aren’t genuinely eligible for a DTV, it’s best that you don’t apply. The last thing that you want is Thai Immigration to have a literal mark against your name for the rest of your life.

With that out of the way, lets get into it:

Creating the documents

There are five submission points on the application:

1. Passport Biodata page
2. Passport style photo from the past 6 months
3. Proof of current residence
4. Proof of financial status
5. Proof of remote work

For the passport, you’ll have to submit your biodata page (that’s the page with your photo and personal details). This is pretty simple, just make sure that the scan is legible, scanning on the scanner glass of a printer will yield the best result, but scanning apps on mobile phones can be quite good with the correct lighting.

For the passport photo from the last six months, just keep it within the guidelines for a passport style photo (no smiling, hats, glasses, etc). You can always go to a shop and get this done professionally if you’re concerned – try to get some physical photos if you do that because they could come in handy for border runs or other trips in future.

For the proof of current residence, scan your driver’s license or other ID of sorts that displays you address – a formal government ID is the best option here. You can also use a utility bill or the likes that has your name and address on it.

Proof of financial evidence

This is where it gets interesting, and important.

Remember who you’re addressing this to and why.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to know that you can finance your stay in Thailand and won’t have to rely on the charity of the Thai Government should anything happen to you.

It is for this reason that we recommend disclosing as much of your financials as possible.

Some embassies and consulates want to see the 500,000 Baht in one bank account. Whether this is, or isn’t, a requirement for your place of application, we would consider it prudent to do so.

Further, if you have other financial assets on top of this bank account we recommend disclosing them as well.

To provide evidence, get formal account statements for all of your financial assets. These should have a letterhead from your bank or broker.

A few tips:

• Financial assets in your own name should be the strongest, this is as opposed to assets with joint control or under different entities (e.g. joint accounts or business accounts).
• The greater the liquidity, the better – if you have the 500,000THB, but it’s locked in a term deposit, that is less useful to you (and comforting to the MFA) than an easily accessible savings account.
• Get all of the statements on the same date if possible – this tells the MFA that you aren’t just shuffling funds around to look wealthier than you are.
• Long-term activity statements, as opposed to a one day proof of balance, are going to be seen as more credible. Some embassies are asking that you provide ongoing statements for several months prior to your application showing a balance consistently above the 500,000THB requirement. 

Now, once you collect all of these statements, write a cover letter for this submission point explaining your financial position.

• We recommend including – a brief explanation of your cash flow, how often you get paid, and what each of the statements following the cover letter are.
• Display this in a succinct table with the total net worth listed (and specify what currency, with a conversion to Thai baht for that day).

Now compile the cover letter followed by the statements into a single PDF and compress it to size if necessary (more on that below).

Proof of Remote Work

This is possibly the most important section, or at least the most subjective. Again, we want to ask ourselves “What do the MFA want to see?”

Now, we can’t answer that for sure, but it’s safe to assume that they want to see stability, both in terms of income and work status.

There are several routes here, whether you’re an employee, freelancer, or business owner you will require slightly different documentation.

Firstly, there a few types of “remote work” documentation that we can provide, here’s how we at Offshore in Asia break it down:

• Business financial
• Business administrative
• Professional portfolio

Here’s what you can provide for each type:

• Business financial

• • • Profit and loss statement, balance sheet.
    • Invoice requesting payment for services performed.
    • Payslip from employer.

• Business administrative

• • • This can be a business registration number, or similarly verifiable government identification for your business.
    • This could also be a tax statement showing your taxable income for the previous tax year.
    • For freelancers or employees, this could be your employment agreement or an ongoing freelance contract.

• Professional portfolio

• • This can be screenshots of your website, portfolio shots of services performed, screenshots of your Google Business Profile/search results, your businesses Instagram pages, etc.
  • Your degree or professional certification/accreditation would also go a long way – anecdotally, Thailand respects those with tertiary education and this would definitely help.

Tips

• Try and provide documentation from each of the three categories.
• For all of these, try and use information that the person reviewing your application can verify. If you tell the immigration agent that you run a successful marketing agency, but you don’t have an online presence, that is going to seem suspicious. Think about it from their perspective, if they’re trying to ensure that applicants are genuine, and they see your photo on your businesses website, Google Reviews raving about the good job that you’ve done, and outgoing invoices to quality clients, that’s going to look more favorable than you showing them information that they have to “trust you” on.
• For employees, it would be a good idea to get a letter from your boss or HR explaining that you can work remotely from Thailand and that the business supports you – make sure that it is on a company letterhead.

Now that you’ve got the documents verifying the nature of your work and your work arrangements, write a cover letter for this section explaining your work and how you can do it remotely if there may be any doubts in the MFA’s mind. 

You might want to talk about how long you have been in your current role and how you plan on continuing it and addressing any concerns that the reviewing officer might have.

Format your application

You can only upload one PDF for your financial evidence, and one more for your proof of remote employment. 

You’ll want to use a tool such as Adobe Acrobat or any trustworthy online tool to compile all of your documents for each category (i.e. each submission point) into one PDF.

If any of these PDFs are too large you can use the same tools to compress them to the appropriate size.

Review and submit your application.

• Make sure that there are no spelling mistakes, especially in the prefilled section containing information like your name, date of birth, passport number, etc.
• Make sure that all documents are uploaded.
• Once uploaded, submit and pay the visa fee.
• Monitor the application daily until it is approved – note that it is quite common for the MFA to request further documentation.

Approval!

Great, you’ve done the hard work and now you’ve got approval. There are few things to note:

• You’ll need to print out the acceptance letter (the one with the QR code) to present to Immigration upon your arrival.
• Further, as the Immigration Bureau are from a different government department than the MFA, it is fairly likely that they’ll take you aside and interview you, it’s for this reason that we highly recommend the following:
  • Print off updated financial statements in anticipation for an interview.
  • Print off or prepare proof of business activity as well (make sure that your laptop has battery, or at least the charger, so you can log-on to the computer and show Immigration your business). This is speculation, but if you don’t have the ability to log in to say, your accounting software or bank account provided in the application, this probably won’t look very good.
  • Mentally prepare for the fact that you may be interviewed by Immigration – from what we’ve heard this isn’t particularly scary/uncomfortable if you genuinely meet the criteria.
• You’ll need to do 90-day reporting, so set a reminder so that you don’t forget.
• Note the date that they write down in your stamp, this is the 180-day limit to your stay and you must leave the country or extend your visa by that date. As of writing this, it seems that extensions are quite challenging so it could be best to leave the country on a border run.
• Lastly, this visa is still new so it’s likely that eligibility criteria and the level of scrutiny will change in response to loopholes that people are exploiting to take advantage of this visa – so stay in the loop.

But what if you were denied your DTV?

You could have been denied for a few reasons, hopefully you were told why so you know where to improve. If you want help moving forward or exploring different visa options, we can help with this.

Some general consideration with relocating to Thailand long-term:

• Thai health insurance might be more appropriate and affordable than your travel insurance.
• A long term lease is almost always a better option than renting short term or staying in hotels.
• Getting a bank account and motorcycle/car license is worth the hassle.
• Learning Thai will open a world of opportunities in terms of socializing, navigating bureaucracy, dating, and going about your day.
• Doing these things sooner, rather than later, will allow you to reap the benefits as soon as you can.