Guide

The UK statutory residence test

Whether someone is UK resident for a tax year is settled by the statutory residence test, a fixed sequence set out in Schedule 45 to the Finance Act 2013 and applied separately to each tax year, which runs from 6 April to 5 April. It works through the automatic overseas tests first, then the automatic UK tests, and only then a sufficient ties test that weighs days spent in the UK against connections to the UK.

Published 30 August 2026. Checked against the cited sources on that date.

This guide describes published UK rules in general terms, as at 30 August 2026. It is not tax advice, and nothing here takes account of your circumstances. Decisions about residence, domicile and tax belong with your tax adviser.

How a day is counted

Almost everything in the test rests on counting days, and the counting rule is narrower than most people assume. Under paragraph 22 of Schedule 45, if an individual is present in the UK at the end of a day, that day counts as a day spent in the UK. The end of the day means midnight. A day of arriving in the morning and leaving again before midnight is generally not a day spent in the UK.

Three qualifications sit on top of that rule, and each changes counts in practice.

  • Transit. A day on which someone arrives in the UK as a passenger, leaves the following day, and does not, between arrival and departure, engage in activities that are to a substantial extent unrelated to their passage through the UK, is not treated as a day spent in the UK. Taking a meeting, or working, generally forfeits it.
  • The deeming rule. Where an individual was UK resident in one or more of the three previous tax years, has at least three UK ties for the year, and has been present in the UK on more than 30 days without being present at the end of the day, the first 30 of those days are ignored and every further one counts as a day spent in the UK. Anyone using day trips to manage a count needs to know this exists.
  • Exceptional circumstances. A day may be disregarded where the individual is prevented from leaving by circumstances beyond their control, and intends to leave as soon as those circumstances permit. The legislation caps this at 60 days in a tax year, counting forward from the start of the year, and the conditions are applied narrowly.

The order the test is applied in

The sequence is not optional. The tests are worked through in order, and the first one that is met settles the year.

1. The automatic overseas tests

If any one of these is met, the individual is not UK resident for that tax year under the test, and nothing further is applied.

  • Fewer than 16 days spent in the UK, for someone who was UK resident in one or more of the three previous tax years.
  • Fewer than 46 days spent in the UK, for someone who was not UK resident in any of the three previous tax years.
  • Full-time work overseas across the tax year, with fewer than 91 days spent in the UK, of which fewer than 31 are days of working more than three hours in the UK.

2. The automatic UK tests

These are reached only where no automatic overseas test is met. If any one of them is met, the individual is UK resident for that year.

  • 183 days or more spent in the UK in the tax year.
  • The only home test: a period of at least 91 consecutive days during which the individual has a home in the UK, at least 30 of those days falling in the tax year, with the conditions in the legislation about presence at that home and about any overseas home.
  • Full-time work in the UK across a period of 365 days, measured on the basis set out in the legislation.

3. The sufficient ties test

Only where neither of the first two stages settles the year does the test turn to ties. Days spent in the UK are weighed against the number of UK ties the individual has: the more days, the fewer ties it takes.

The five ties

  • Family tie. A UK resident spouse, civil partner, partner the individual lives with as such, or a child under 18, subject to the conditions the legislation attaches to children.
  • Accommodation tie. A place to live in the UK available to the individual for a continuous period of at least 91 days in the tax year, in which they spend at least one night, or at least 16 nights where it is the home of a close relative.
  • Work tie. Working more than three hours in the UK on at least 40 days in the tax year.
  • 90-day tie. More than 90 days spent in the UK in either of the two previous tax years.
  • Country tie. The UK is the country in which the individual was present at the end of the day on more days than any other single country. This tie applies only to someone who was UK resident in one or more of the three previous tax years.

How ties and days combine

Schedule 45 sets out two tables. Which one applies depends on whether the individual was UK resident in any of the three tax years before the year being tested.

Ties needed for residence under the sufficient ties test, by days spent in the UK
Days spent in the UK Not resident in any of the previous three years Resident in one or more of the previous three years
More than 15 but not more than 45 Not applicable: below 46 days an automatic overseas test is met At least 4 ties
More than 45 but not more than 90 All 4 ties At least 3 ties
More than 90 but not more than 120 At least 3 ties At least 2 ties
More than 120 At least 2 ties At least 1 tie

The country tie applies only in the right-hand column, so someone not resident in any of the previous three years has four possible ties rather than five. The final band runs to 182 days in practice: at 183 days an automatic UK test is met and the ties test is never reached.

Split year treatment

The test decides residence for a whole tax year. Where someone arrives in the UK or leaves part-way through a year, split year treatment may divide that year into a UK part and an overseas part. There are eight cases, each with its own conditions, and they interact with the tests above rather than replacing them.

Working out whether a case applies, and which one, is a matter for a tax adviser, and is deliberately outside the scope of this guide.

The records that make a count defensible

The test is arithmetic applied to facts. The arithmetic is rarely the difficulty: the difficulty is that, two or three years later, nobody can evidence the facts. A count assembled from memory, a phone's location history and a partial diary tends to be assembled at exactly the moment it is being questioned. What holds up is contemporaneous and boring:

  • Arrival and departure dates for every trip, recorded at the time, with the country travelled from and to.
  • Tickets, boarding passes and booking confirmations, kept rather than deleted, including for private aviation and for sea crossings.
  • Where a night was actually spent, which is what the midnight rule turns on, not simply which country was visited.
  • A log of days on which more than three hours of work was done in the UK, since both the third automatic overseas test and the work tie depend on it.
  • The dates a UK property was available to the individual, and the nights spent in it.
  • Notes on any day claimed as transit or as exceptional circumstances, written while the detail is still fresh.

Keeping that record is a habit rather than a technical problem, and it belongs to the family rather than to an adviser. The residence day counter makes the habit easier: it counts days against the published rules so you can keep your own record. It runs in your browser, keeps nothing on my server, and lets you export what you have entered. It does not reach a conclusion about residence, and it is not a substitute for advice.

When to involve an adviser

Well before the year in question ends, and certainly before a count gets close to a threshold. The points that most often need judgement rather than arithmetic are whether a property creates an accommodation tie, what counts as full-time work overseas, whether a disruption meets the exceptional circumstances conditions, whether split year treatment applies, and how a double taxation treaty resolves residence in two countries at once.

None of that is my work. Mine is the layer underneath it: making sure the family holds a clean, current, evidenced record of the facts its advisers are asked to apply the rules to. That usually sits under a retained private digital office, and you can get in touch directly.

Sources

Rules described as at 30 August 2026, from the following published sources.

Two related guides sit alongside this one: leaving the UK, on the practical and record-keeping side of a departure, and the non-dom changes, on the regime that replaced domicile-based taxation.