The UK Statutory Residence Test, explained simply

21 July 2026

Whether you are UK tax resident in a given year is not a matter of opinion or of how you feel about where you live. Since 6 April 2013 it has been decided by a single set of rules, the Statutory Residence Test, set out in Schedule 45 to the Finance Act 2013. Get the answer wrong by a day and it can change your tax position for an entire year. This guide walks through how the test actually works, in plain English, with the day counts that matter.

One thing to clear up first, because it causes real confusion. The changes that took effect in April 2025, the abolition of non-dom status and the new four-year Foreign Income and Gains regime, changed how UK residents are taxed on their overseas income and gains. They did not change the Statutory Residence Test. Whether you are resident is still decided exactly as set out below; what changed is what being resident costs you. Keep the two questions separate.

The test runs in a fixed order

The SRT is not a single question. It is three sets of tests applied in sequence, and you stop as soon as one gives you an answer:

The automatic overseas tests. If you meet any one of these, you are non-resident for the year, and you can stop.
The automatic UK tests. If you meet any one of these (and none of the overseas tests), you are resident, and you can stop.
The sufficient ties test. If neither of the above settles it, your residence turns on how many days you spend in the UK combined with how many "ties" you have here.

Applying them in the wrong order gives the wrong answer, so always work overseas first, then UK, then ties.

Step one: the automatic overseas tests

These are the ways you are automatically non-resident. Any one is enough.

You spend fewer than 16 days in the UK in the tax year, and you were resident in one or more of the previous three tax years.
You spend fewer than 46 days in the UK in the tax year, and you were not resident in any of the previous three tax years.
You work full-time overseas across the year (broadly, an average of 35 or more hours a week), spend fewer than 91 days in the UK, and do no more than 30 days of work here (a work day being three hours or more).

The full-time-work-abroad route is the one most relocating professionals rely on, and it is also the easiest to break, because a handful of UK work days or an extended visit home can tip you over its limits.

Step two: the automatic UK tests

If no overseas test applies, you check the automatic UK tests. Any one makes you resident.

You spend 183 days or more in the UK in the tax year. This is the one most people have heard of, but as you can see it is only one of several routes, and residence can bite well below 183 days.
Your only home, for a period in the year, is in the UK (broadly, you have a UK home and no overseas home you use sufficiently).
You work full-time in the UK over a 365-day period, with the qualifying part falling in the tax year.

Step three: the sufficient ties test

Most genuinely borderline cases land here. The test combines two things: how many days you spent in the UK, and how many connecting factors, called ties, you have. The more ties you have, the fewer days it takes to make you resident.

There are five ties:

Family tie: your spouse, civil partner, or partner you live with, or a minor child, is UK resident.
Accommodation tie: you have a place to live in the UK available to you for a continuous period of at least 91 days, and you spend at least one night there (16 nights if it is a close relative's home).
Work tie: you do more than three hours of work in the UK on at least 40 days in the year.
90-day tie: you spent more than 90 days in the UK in either of the previous two tax years.
Country tie: the UK is the country in which you were present at midnight on the greatest number of days in the year. This tie only applies to "leavers", see below.

The number of ties you need depends on whether you are an "arriver" or a "leaver".

If you were not UK resident in any of the previous three tax years (an arriver), only the first four ties apply, and the thresholds are:

46 to 90 days in the UK: resident if you have all 4 ties.
91 to 120 days: resident if you have 3 or more ties.
121 to 182 days: resident if you have 2 or more ties.

If you were UK resident in one or more of the previous three tax years (a leaver), all five ties apply, and residence bites sooner:

16 to 45 days in the UK: resident if you have 4 or more ties.
46 to 90 days: resident if you have 3 or more ties.
91 to 120 days: resident if you have 2 or more ties.
121 to 182 days: resident if you have 1 or more ties.

The practical lesson is that if you have recently left the UK and still have family, a home, or work here, you can become resident again on surprisingly few days.

How a "day" is counted

The day count is not about flights or holidays, it is about midnights. As a general rule you count a day as a UK day if you are present in the UK at the end of that day, that is, at midnight. There are three refinements worth knowing:

Transit days, where you arrive and leave the next day purely to pass through, can be ignored if you do nothing unrelated to your transit.
Exceptional circumstances beyond your control, such as a sudden serious illness, can let you disregard up to 60 days that would otherwise count.
The deeming rule can pull in days where you were present but not at midnight, for people who have three or more ties, were resident recently, and cross a threshold of such days.

These edges are exactly where people miscount, and where a wrong count changes the answer.

Split years

If you arrive in or leave the UK partway through a year, you may not be resident or non-resident for the whole of it. Split-year treatment can divide the tax year into a UK part and an overseas part, under one of eight defined cases. It is common for anyone relocating, and it has its own detailed rules, covered in a separate guide.

Why this is worth tracking properly

The SRT is a counting exercise with hard edges, and the burden of showing where you stand sits with you, not with HMRC. A single miscounted day, an overlooked tie, or a wrongly treated split year can move you across a line that costs a full year of tax treatment. That is precisely what SplitYear is built to do for you: it applies the whole test to your real travel, counts your days to the midnight rule, tracks your ties, and shows you where you stand as the year unfolds, with every figure cited to its source so you and your adviser can check the working.

SplitYear gives general information about the rules, cited to source. It is not tax advice and does not replace a professional adviser. Rules as at Finance Act 2013, Schedule 45, and HMRC guidance note RDR3.