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Comment by spraak | Hacker News Reader

Can you please cite sources for that? I really don't think that's the case.

It makes more sense that you'll cite something, as what he described is the de-facto standard of work permits pretty much anywhere. You'll be usually violating a law if you live and work somewhere without the legal framework - be it US, India or Japan. I don't see a reason Thailand would be any different.

Not sure for Thailand but I've heard the same for Japan.

The counterfactual would be that if this were possible, every foreigner in Thailand would be made an employee of a company in Ireland or something to avoid dealing with visa issues (or tax issues )

You can't licitly work for a foreign company from Japan without a work-capable visa, though Japan won't work too hard to detect and penalize this given that you're keeping your nose clean. I'd strongly recommend keeping it legal; it starts to matter a lot more as you put down roots and get asked "So what were you doing last N years?" by various authorities.

hey, I tried emailing you at the address in your profile but didn't get a response , so am assuming you didn't get the message

I wrote a blog post on this a few years back:

https://ashleyconnor.co.uk/2014/09/07/the-digital-nomad-and-...

You can't really work anywhere in South East Asia without a work permit. Cambodia used to be the easiest place but last time I looked they were changing the law.

A lot of these laws were made before remote work was even a thing.

Some countries do allow remote work. Canada being one of them.

Yes, it is the case, the digital nomad scene is illegal in most (all?) countries. The plus side is nobody knows what you're doing and typically you don't have any money going through Thai bank accounts. There have even been rare examples of co-working spaces being raided.

In reality, it's a non-issue for the reasons above.

There is only one raid that I've heard of, which was on the Tha Phae Pun Space I think. And eventually they let everyone go when they realized they weren't actually working for Thai companies

My business lawyer in Thailand?

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