The statutory residence test (SRT) explained

Anyone leaving the UK, arriving, or dividing their time between the UK and elsewhere faces the same question: am I UK resident for this tax year? Since 2013-14 the answer has come from the statutory residence test (SRT) in Schedule 45 to the Finance Act 2013. It decides residence for income tax and capital gains tax, and for inheritance tax and corporation tax where an individual’s residence matters to them.

Each tax year (6 April to 5 April) is tested separately, and the answer covers the whole year unless split-year treatment applies. For British expatriates in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, our guide to the statutory residence test for UK expats in the UAE applies these rules to that move.

Why residence matters

A UK resident is normally taxed in the UK on income and gains wherever they arise. A non-resident generally pays UK tax only on UK income, such as rent or wages for work done here, and on gains from UK property or land. Our guide to the non-resident landlord scheme explains how UK rent is taxed after you leave.

How the test is structured

The test has three stages, and the first that gives an answer settles it:

1. Automatic overseas tests. Meet any one, and you are not UK resident for the year.
2. Automatic UK tests. If no overseas test is met, meeting any one makes you resident.
3. Sufficient ties test. Otherwise, residence depends on your UK days and your UK “ties”.

So meeting an overseas test makes you non-resident even if you would also meet a UK test. Anyone who spends 183 days or more in the UK in a tax year is resident. (Extra tests, not covered here, apply in the year of a person’s death.)

The automatic overseas tests

You are automatically non-UK resident for a tax year if:

• you were UK resident in one or more of the previous three tax years and spend fewer than 16 days in the UK in the year; or
• you were UK resident in none of the previous three tax years and spend fewer than 46 days in the UK; or
• you work full-time overseas over the tax year, with no significant break, while working more than three hours in the UK on fewer than 31 days and spending fewer than 91 days in the UK.

Full-time means an average of 35 hours a week or more, worked out in a prescribed way: the hours actually worked overseas, not contracted hours, divided by the whole weeks in a reference period. That period starts at 365 days (366 in a leap year) and is reduced by days of more than three hours’ UK work, reasonable annual, parenting and sick leave, and gaps between jobs (up to 15 days per gap, 30 in total). A significant break is a run of at least 31 days with no day of more than three hours’ overseas work, treating leave days on which you would otherwise have worked as working days.

“Work” covers anything done in the duties of an employment or the course of a trade, and can include some travel and training, so more than three hours spent answering emails on a visit home can make a UK work day. The test does not cover voluntary posts, or certain jobs on board vehicles, aircraft or ships. Each condition is a hard line: one UK work day too many, or 31 days between contracts, can take someone outside it.

The automatic UK tests

If no overseas test is met, you are automatically UK resident if:

• you spend 183 days or more in the UK in the tax year; or
• your only home is in the UK: you have a UK home, are present in it on at least 30 days in the year, and there is a period of 91 consecutive days (at least 30 in the tax year) during which you have that home and either have no overseas home or are present in each overseas home on fewer than 30 days in the year; or
• you work full-time in the UK (the same 35-hour average) over a period of 365 days falling wholly or partly in the tax year, with no significant break, where more than 75% of your days of more than three hours’ work are UK days and at least one UK work day falls in both the period and the tax year.

“Home” has its own meaning: it need not be owned, but your arrangements there need enough permanence or stability. A holiday home is not a home, and a former home does not stay your home just because you still own it after moving out, for example while it is let.

The sufficient ties test

If no automatic test settles it, you are UK resident if you have sufficient UK ties. How many are sufficient depends on your UK days and on whether you were UK resident in any of the previous three tax years. That divides people into leavers, who were, and arrivers, who were not. A split year counts as a full year of residence when looking back.

The five UK ties

• Family tie. Your spouse or civil partner (unless separated), a partner you live with as a couple, or your child under 18 is UK resident for the year. A child does not count if you see them in person in the UK on fewer than 61 days in the year, and a child resident only because of full-time education here does not count if they spend fewer than 21 days in the UK outside term-time.
• Accommodation tie. A place to live in the UK is available to you for a continuous period of at least 91 days in the year (gaps of fewer than 16 days are ignored), and you spend at least one night there. You need not own it or have a legal right to it. At a close relative’s home (a parent, grandparent, sibling, or adult child or grandchild), the requirement is at least 16 nights.
• Work tie. You work in the UK for more than three hours a day on at least 40 days.
• 90-day tie. You spent more than 90 days in the UK in either or both of the previous two tax years.
• Country tie (leavers only). The UK is where you were present at midnight on the most days in the year, including where it draws with another country.

Each type of tie counts once, however many relatives or properties are involved.

How many ties are enough

For leavers, UK resident in one or more of the previous three tax years:

For arrivers, UK resident in none of the previous three tax years:

The tables apply only where no automatic test has already given the answer.

How many days can you spend in the UK?

There is no single safe number. As a purely illustrative example, a leaver who keeps a UK flat available and stays in it (an accommodation tie), and spent more than 90 days here last year (a 90-day tie), has two ties before counting a day, so 91 days in the UK would make them resident. If their spouse remains UK resident, a third tie brings that down to 46 days. For an arriver whose only tie is a UK flat, the ties test alone would not make them resident below 183 days, but if the flat is their only home the only home test may do so first.

HMRC’s online residence status checker gives an indication for the current tax year or the previous six, not a ruling.

Counting days

The midnight rule. A day counts if you are in the UK at the end of it. A day on which you arrive and leave before midnight does not, subject to the deeming rule.

Transit. A day does not count if you arrive as a passenger, leave the next day, and do nothing in between substantially unrelated to passing through. HMRC draws the line tightly: an airport hotel and breakfast are fine, but meeting friends, the theatre or a working dinner make the day count.

Exceptional circumstances. A day spent here only because exceptional circumstances beyond your control prevent you leaving does not count, if you intend to leave as soon as they permit. The legislation’s examples are emergencies such as war, civil unrest or natural disasters, and sudden or life-threatening illness or injury. No more than 60 days a tax year can be disregarded this way. HMRC’s view is that ordinary travel disruption, missed flights, visa delays and chosen medical treatment do not normally qualify.

The deeming rule. If you were UK resident in at least one of the previous three tax years, have at least three UK ties, and are in the UK on more than 30 days without being here at midnight, each such day after the thirtieth counts as a UK day. Deemed days do not count towards the 91-day limit in the full-time work overseas test.

Split-year treatment

Residence covers a whole tax year, so someone resident for the year they leave would, without relief, be taxed as a resident on income for all of it, including income earned abroad after departure. Split-year treatment divides that year into a UK part and an overseas part, for which, for most purposes, you are taxed as a non-resident.

It applies only if you are UK resident for the year and fall within one of eight cases:

• Leaving: starting full-time work overseas (Case 1); joining a partner who has done so (Case 2); ceasing to have any UK home (Case 3).
• Arriving or returning: starting to have only UK homes (Case 4); starting full-time work in the UK (Case 5); ceasing full-time work overseas (Case 6); joining a partner who has done so (Case 7); starting to have a UK home (Case 8).

Each case has detailed conditions. The leaving cases require residence for the previous tax year and non-residence for the next; the arriving cases require non-residence for the previous year. Case 3, for instance, also requires fewer than 16 UK days after your UK home ends and, six months on, a sufficient link with another country, such as tax residence there. Priority rules decide between cases.

Split-year treatment is not a choice: HMRC’s guidance is that if a case’s conditions are all met it applies, and if not it does not. GOV.UK is explicit that living abroad for less than a full tax year before returning does not qualify. It is reported on the residence pages of the return (SA109), which ask which case applies and when the UK part begins or ends. Capital gains have their own split-year rules.

Temporary non-residence

Short non-residence can be partly unwound. You are temporarily non-resident if:

• a period of sole UK residence (a tax year, or the UK part of a split year) is followed by one or more periods without it;
• you had sole UK residence in at least 4 of the 7 tax years before the year of departure (counting split years with a period of sole UK residence); and
• the period of non-residence lasts five years or less.

“Sole UK residence” means being UK resident without also being treated as resident elsewhere under a double taxation agreement.

If the rules apply, certain income and gains received while abroad, including capital gains, some pension payments and distributions from closely controlled companies, are taxed as if they arose in the period of return. Assets acquired while non-resident are generally outside the capital gains charge, with exceptions.

Records, and residence in an HMRC enquiry

The SA109 pages ask for days in the UK, deemed days, exceptional-circumstance days, transit days, the number of ties and, where relevant, UK work days. Those figures are part of the return, and an enquiry extends to anything in the return, so residence can be examined in a compliance check like any other entry. Once the enquiry window has closed, HMRC may still raise a discovery assessment within limits set by behaviour; see how far back HMRC can investigate.

HMRC’s manual lists the records it expects people to keep, which shows what it looks at:

• Days: travel schedules, bookings, tickets and boarding cards, and dates of leaving or arriving.
• Work: employment contracts and changes to them, and a work diary showing where you worked, for how long and on what, with leave and gaps between jobs.
• Homes: when homes were bought, sold, let or unavailable, and evidence of where you actually were, such as utility bills showing usage, phone records, and bank and card statements showing where you spent money day to day.

HMRC weighs the evidence as a whole; no single document establishes a home. And because several rules look back over earlier years, up to twenty for the inheritance tax test below, one year’s records can matter for many years afterwards.

If a past year’s residence was got wrong and tax is owed, it can be put right. The penalty rules allow larger reductions for an unprompted disclosure, made before you had reason to believe HMRC had found or was about to find the problem, than for a prompted one. Our page on voluntary disclosures explains the routes.

Why residence matters more since 6 April 2025

Since 6 April 2025 the test feeds into more than income tax and capital gains tax. In outline only:

• The four-year FIG regime. The remittance basis was abolished, and UK residents are taxed on worldwide income and gains as they arise. A “qualifying new resident” can claim relief on qualifying foreign income and gains for up to four consecutive tax years, starting with the year they become UK resident after at least ten consecutive tax years of non-UK residence. The relief must be claimed on the return for each year. Residence is decided by the SRT, and a split year counts as a full year.
• Long-term residence for inheritance tax. Domicile and deemed domicile were replaced by long-term UK residence: broadly, UK residence in at least 10 of the 20 tax years immediately before the year in question. A long-term resident’s non-UK assets may be within inheritance tax. Residence is again decided by the SRT, with a split year counting as a full year. After leaving, the status can last three to ten tax years depending on how long the person was resident, and there are transitional rules for some people who were non-UK domiciled or deemed domiciled and are non-UK resident in 2025-26.

These rules are new and detailed, and this is only an outline.

If you are leaving, arriving or in between

If you live in the UAE, our page for UK expats in the UAE explains how we approach residence and the UK compliance that goes with it. If you would like to talk through your own position, you can contact us.

Sources

• Finance Act 2013, Schedule 45: Part 1, paragraphs 1 to 20 (the rules); Part 2, paragraphs 22 to 38 (days, home, work and UK ties); Part 3, paragraphs 39 to 56 (split year treatment); Part 4, paragraphs 109 to 115 (temporary non-residence); and paragraph 153 (commencement)
• HMRC, RDR3: Statutory Residence Test (SRT) notes (updated 11 June 2026)
• HMRC, Residence and FIG Regime Manual: RFIG20000 onwards (statutory residence test), including RFIG20700 (days spent in the UK), RFIG21000 (split year treatment), RFIG21500 (temporary non-residence), RFIG21900 (record keeping) and RFIG22210 onwards (exceptional circumstances); and RFIG41000 and RFIG44000 (FIG regime)
• HMRC, Capital Gains Manual, CG26500 onwards (temporary non-residence)
• HMRC, SA109 Residence and foreign income and gains (FIG) regime etc notes (2025-26)
• HMRC, HS266 Foreign income and gains (FIG) regime (2026)
• HMRC, Inheritance Tax if you’re a long-term UK resident (GOV.UK guidance), and Inheritance Tax Manual IHTM47020
• GOV.UK, Tax on foreign income: UK residence and tax; and Tax on your UK income if you live abroad
• Taxes Management Act 1970, section 9A (enquiry into a personal return) and section 29 (discovery assessments)
• Finance Act 2007, Schedule 24, paragraphs 9 and 10 (reductions for disclosure)

This guide is general information, not advice on any particular case.