Non-Immigrant Visa Category "B" (Business and Work)

I should apply for a Non-B B-A, IB or IM visa — those are the codes for investment and business.

Those codes no longer exist as separate application categories. On 31 August 2025 Thailand's Department of Consular Affairs collapsed 17 non-immigrant codes into seven, and B, B-A, IM, IB and EX were all merged into a single B (Business) category. Fragomen's note on the change says "this adjustment does not alter eligibility criteria or applicants' rights" — it is an administrative relabelling, so nothing about what you must prove changed, but any guide or checklist still telling you to pick "Non-B-A" on the application form is describing a dropdown option that is gone.

A one-year Non-B visa lets me live in Thailand for a year.

It does not. The 5,000 Baht one-year Non-B is a multiple-entry visa: the visa is valid for a year but the MFA states that the "Holder of this type of visa is entitled to stay in Thailand for a maximum period of 90 days" per entry. To stay past 90 days you either leave and re-enter for a fresh 90 days, or file a separate extension-of-stay application inside Thailand, which "may be granted such extension for a period of one year from the date of first entry into Thailand." The same trap applies to the 10,000 Baht three-year Non-B, which permits "stay in Thailand for a period of not exceeding 90 days during each visit." People book flights on the assumption the visa validity is the stay length and get caught at the 90-day mark.

My employer needs 2 million baht in capital and four Thai staff to get me the visa, so if the embassy issues it I'm fine.

The capital and staffing tests are not embassy tests at all — they are Immigration Bureau tests applied later, when you ask to convert your 90 days into a year. Order 327/2557 puts them under the extension criteria: "The business must have a paid-up registered capital of no less than Baht 2 million" and "Said business must have a ratio of one alien employee per four permanent Thai employees." A thinly capitalised employer can get you a Non-B from a consulate abroad and then fail you at month three, and refusal means you "must depart from the Kingdom within seven days from the date on which the permitted period has lapsed." Ask the employer for its DBD affidavit and headcount before you accept the job, not after you land. Three structures escape this: the order exempts international trade (representative office), regional office and overseas branch office employers from the capital and financial-statement criteria and relaxes the ratio to "one alien employee per one permanent Thai employee."

My work permit is the blue book I collect at the Labour Department.

The blue book stopped being issued in October 2025. Clark Hill's summary of the change states that "As of Oct. 13, 2025, it has replaced the previous 'Blue Book' with a fully digital platform known as the e-Work Permit System," with applications filed online and a card-format permit issued after a biometric appointment at one of the Foreign Work Permit Service Centers. The practical consequence is that the WP3 and work permit steps now run through an employer account on the Department of Employment platform, so an employer that has never registered on it will stall your start date. Existing paper permits remain usable until they expire, after which renewals must be filed digitally.

The minimum salary for a Non-B extension is 50,000 baht a month for everyone.

It is banded by nationality under Annex A of Order 327/2557. The 50,000 Baht figure applies to "Countries in Europe (except Russia) and Australia, Canada, Japan, the United States of America." Most of Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, Central America, Mexico, Russia and South Africa sit at 35,000 Baht a month, and Africa plus Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam at 25,000. The band covering South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong is genuinely contested: the widely circulated English translation of the order prints "54,000 baht/month" for that group, while most Thai law firms and practitioners quote 45,000 Baht. The translation itself carries the disclaimer "The translation of this document is for information purposes only" and contains at least one other clear typo in the same table ("25,0000 baht/month"), so treat 54,000 as a probable transposition of 45,000 — but confirm with the immigration office handling your file rather than budgeting on either number.

Order 327/2557 is the rulebook for Non-B extensions.

That is what almost every guide cites, and its substance is still what officers apply — but at least one Thai advisory firm writing in August 2026 says the operative instrument is now Immigration Bureau Order 12/2568 (2025), pointing to clause 2.1 (6) of that order as the source of the representative-office, regional-office and branch-office exemption and of the relaxed one-Thai-per-foreigner ratio. That is the same substance and effectively the same clause numbering as 327/2557's 2.1(7), which suggests a renumbered successor rather than a policy change. The Immigration Bureau's own site blocked verification, and no other source consulted named Order 12/2568, so both positions are recorded here: cite 327/2557 for the requirements, but do not assume a document from 2014 is the version an officer is reading from in 2026.