no it is possible for both, but when my friend from SA tried to make personal during his 2 week vacation (the goal of the vacation was to︀ make bank account for easier dealing with his customers on freelance websites, he's a 3D︁ artist) they asked him for local US address proof and denied opening account, he tried︂ 3-4 different banks which we chose after some research as the 'foreigner friendly banks' (ones︃ that do open accounts to visitors, by reports from other people) but no luck. he︄ had to have a local address proof (water bill / phone bill / etc' with︅ his name on it and local US address and zip code). So that's just something︆ to keep in mind (and it was like last year October or smth, so most︇ likely it's the case today as well, those things don't change quickly in US). You︈ can buy a sim card and register to your friend address or even some airbnb︉ but you'll need to wait about 30-40 days for the 'bill' to arrive (well, bill︊ or statement, the monthly invoice letter), and it's kinda fraud as well since it's not︋ your real address but I think is not a big deal, since the banks simply︌ want to check a box and are happy for more customers afaik. But yeah, it︍ was more complicated than we thought. For LLC account, it's possibly different, so need to︎ call and ask, to be on a safe side. I have Chase, BoA, Schwab (for️ the travel card, it refunds abroad ATM fees automatically), Mercury. Two personal and two for LLC. Kinda scary that small US banks can go bankrupt so for large funds to keep in account it's best to go to Chase, BoA, Wells Fargo, I guess, because they're largest most stable one, maybe Citibank too, don't remember their total AUM but one of the biggest too, less likely to get bankrupt (I guess?). Wise for LLC works well, but I never moved around more than like 5k-10k inside it, so won't say about large sums. A bit scary, I wouldn't trust them with anything above 'what im︀ ready
I think Thais are actually very smart, they know perfectly well about all︄ the farangs working from laptop and so on, but they balance nicely between the "earn︅ your money from abroad and use it here locally no questions asked" and "give us︆ some tax money in addition to spending it locally". And the remittance based tax is︇ perfect example of how smart they are in managing the fragile balance of taxing foreigners︈ and at the same time not driving them away. Because having people 'working illegally but︉ not in local businesses' (all remote worker farangs, whether freelancers or full timers from Google/Apple/IBM/etc︊ who happily never get back to office after covid) is still profitable for economy by︋ syphoning cash from other countries into Thailand, basically 'exporting' various local services and goods 'abroad'︌ through a dude who consume it all locally but technically is someone that it was︍ exported to 😎. The only problem they care about is taking local work places, so︎ as long as local jobs are not occupied by foreigner they're good with that. For️ the biggest fish - remittance tax will probably be enforced, and audits will happen etc' but as I know how Thai systems work - the audit and everything will happen only when you come knocking at their door asking some questions or doing documents / purchases / getting stamps / something that you need from the government for various activities and during the 'give me some papers I need for XYZ' they'll stick the "aha, where's the money from" or something to you, and then the audit / fine / jail ( smi(&% ) will follow, depends on severity.
That's just my 2cents (from experience of︀ living in Thailand a few years back in 2011-2013 and 2021-2023 recently). IMHO best to︁ follow the rules in each country - because one day you'll need to buy or︂ sell or register something and the paper trail (or a "missing trail") will cause trouble︃ and one wouldn't know how to explain this and that. And aaaaalll countries are getting︄ digitalized and biometricalized, etc' so there'll be no escape from doing things the legal way,︅ soon, and it's better to prepare being crystal clear in all aspects of historical paperwork︆ and taxation. Someone who is itching to pay as little tax as possible, would be︇ better to pick a jurisdiction of low tax and pay it there, unless 0% setup︈ is possible, but those 0% setups are for bigger fish than nomads, since the setup︉ itself will often cost more than the 10-15% tax you'd pay in various countries.
