The UK Statutory Residence Test, explained for expats
Information and education only. This guide explains HMRC's published rules. It is not financial, tax or legal advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation for your circumstances. Paratus Wealth does not provide tax advice: our work is the financial planning around a cross-border life, and where a residence position needs formal tax advice, that comes from a qualified tax specialist. Paratus Wealth does not offer services to UK residents.
Key takeaways
For most people who leave the UK, the number that matters is 16 or 46 days, not 183. The 183-day figure decides residence in one direction only: staying under it does not make you non-resident.
Residence is assessed one tax year at a time, 6 April to 5 April. There is no permanent "non-resident" status, and each year's answer can differ from the last.
A recent leaver who keeps four UK ties can be dragged back into UK residence by as few as 16 days in the country.
Days are counted at midnight, but a deeming rule can count days on which you left before midnight, and it catches frequent visitors specifically.
Split-year treatment is automatic, cannot be chosen or declined, and the split date is fixed by law, not by the date on your removal van.
Since 6 April 2025, every year you are SRT-resident is also a tally mark in the 10-out-of-20-year long-term residence test that decides whether UK Inheritance Tax reaches your worldwide estate.
A split year counts as a full year of UK residence for that Inheritance Tax test.
What's included
This guide covers the three parts of the Statutory Residence Test in the order HMRC applies them, the exact day thresholds with a link to the HMRC manual page each one comes from, the arriver and leaver ties tables in HMRC's own wording, the day-counting rules including the deeming rule and the 60-day exceptional circumstances cap, split-year treatment and its eight cases, a worked departure-year scenario followed end to end, what non-residence changes for ISAs, pensions and UK payroll, the P85 and SA109 forms by name, and the table showing how long UK Inheritance Tax follows you after you leave.
What you'll learn
By the end you will know which of the three tests decides your year and in what order, why the 183-day figure is the least useful number in the whole test, how the five ties are defined and how many of them make a leaver resident at each day count, which days count and which can be disregarded, how a departure year is split, and how each resident year feeds the 20-year count that determines Inheritance Tax exposure long after you have left.
What the Statutory Residence Test is and who it applies to
The Statutory Residence Test, usually shortened to the SRT, is the legal test that decides whether you are UK resident for tax purposes in a given tax year. It has applied since 6 April 2013, and before that date residence rested on case law and HMRC practice, which is why older forum advice about UK tax residency is often simply wrong.
Two features shape everything that follows. First, the UK tax year runs 6 April to 5 April, not the calendar year, which matters enormously if the country you move to taxes on a calendar-year basis. Second, each tax year is looked at separately. You are never "a non-resident" in some permanent sense. You are non-resident for 2026/27, and then the question is asked again for 2027/28. Anyone who has been abroad for years and assumes the matter is settled is assuming something the law does not say, a point long-term expats tend to find uncomfortable and useful in equal measure.
The test has three parts, worked strictly in order:
The automatic overseas tests. Meet any one and you are non-resident for the year. Nothing else is considered.
The automatic UK tests. If no overseas test is met, meeting any one of these makes you automatically resident.
The sufficient ties test. If neither of the above decides it, residence turns on how many days you spent in the UK combined with how many UK ties you have.
HMRC's published guidance note is called RDR3. In 2026 the RDR3 page is a summary, and the detailed conditions now live in HMRC's internal Residence and FIG Regime Manual, so throughout this guide each threshold links to the specific manual page it comes from rather than to a general index.
A word on where this guide sits.
Paratus Wealth is a financial planning firm, not a tax adviser, and this page exists because residence status shapes almost every financial planning decision an expat makes: where a pension is held, what happens to savings wrappers, what protection is in place, which estate rules apply.
The rules below are explained so those planning conversations start from an accurate picture. Determining your own status, and any formal tax advice about it, is work for a qualified tax specialist.
The 183-day myth: what the number does and does not decide
Ask in any expat forum how many days you can spend in the UK, and someone will answer "183". It is the most repeated and most misleading number in UK tax.
The rule does one thing. Spending 183 days or more in the UK in a tax year makes you automatically UK resident, with no further questions asked. It is a one-way door into residence.
What it does not do is work in reverse. Spending 182 days in the UK does not make you non-resident. Below 183 days, your status is decided by the other automatic tests and then by the sufficient ties test, and under that test a recent leaver with four ties becomes UK resident at just 16 days. Someone who left the UK last year, kept their house, keeps a UK job pattern and has a UK-resident spouse could spend three weeks in the UK and be resident for the entire tax year.
So the honest answer to "how many days can I spend in the UK?" is: it depends on your ties and your recent history, and for most leavers the numbers that matter are 16, 46, 91 and 121, not 183. The rest of this guide is about which of those numbers is yours.
The automatic overseas tests: when the law treats you as non-resident
Most people phrase the question as how they stop being UK tax resident. The law answers it with three automatic overseas tests: meet any one of them and you are non-resident for the year, full stop, regardless of your home, family or anything else. What follows describes how HMRC's tests work, not what anyone should do about them.
The three tests that apply to living individuals are, per RDR3's automatic overseas tests section:
Test | Who it is for | Condition (2026/27) |
|---|---|---|
First automatic overseas test | You were UK resident in one or more of the three previous tax years (a "leaver") | Fewer than 16 days in the UK in the tax year |
Second automatic overseas test | You were UK resident in none of the three previous tax years | Fewer than 46 days in the UK in the tax year |
Third automatic overseas test | You work full-time overseas across the tax year with no significant break | Fewer than 91 days in the UK, and more than three hours' work in the UK on fewer than 31 days |
Notice the asymmetry. If you were resident recently, only fewer than 16 UK days guarantees non-residence on day count alone. Once you have been away three full tax years, the allowance nearly triples to fewer than 46 days. The test is deliberately sticky for recent leavers.
The third test is the one most new expats actually rely on, because in the first years abroad most people cannot stay under 16 days. If you were to work full-time abroad, averaging at least 35 hours a week across the year, you could spend up to 90 days in the UK, provided you do more than three hours' work in the UK on no more than 30 of them. Be careful with how GOV.UK's consumer page shortens this: the working-day limit is about days on which you do more than three hours' work in the UK, not any day on which you glance at an email. Answering a message from your parents' kitchen does not, by itself, use up one of the 30; a full working day in a London office does.
This test is also why the digital nomad pattern is riskier than the corporate secondment pattern. A structured overseas employment contract makes "full-time work overseas with no significant break" straightforward to evidence. A patchwork of freelance projects with gaps between them may not sustain it, and if the third test fails, the fallback for a recent leaver is the unforgiving 16-day limit or the ties table below.
The tests above are HMRC's published rules, set out for information only. Whether any of them applies to you is a question for a qualified tax adviser.
The automatic UK tests: the ways you stay resident without meaning to
If none of the overseas tests is met, HMRC next asks whether any automatic UK test applies. Meet one and you are resident for the year.
The first is the 183-day test already covered. The second is the only home test: broadly, if for at least 91 consecutive days you had a home in the UK, at least 30 of those 91 days fall in the tax year, you were present in that home on at least 30 separate days in the year, and you had no overseas home (or spent only limited time in one). This is the test that catches people who have "moved abroad" in every practical sense but have not yet established a genuine home in the new country. Selling up in the UK while living out of hotels abroad is a fact pattern worth examining carefully against this test.
The third is the full-time UK work test: full-time work in the UK for any period of 365 days, where more than 75% of the days in that period on which you do more than three hours' work are days you do that work in the UK, and at least one day of the period falls in the tax year. The point most guides miss is that the 365-day period does not have to sit inside one tax year. HMRC's own wording is that the test is met where "all or part of the 365 day period falls within the tax year". A long UK project that straddles 5 April can make you resident in both years it touches.
The sufficient ties test: where most expat years are actually decided
If the automatic tests have not settled the year, residence turns on arithmetic: days spent in the UK, set against the number of UK ties you hold. This is the part of the test that decides most real expat years, and it is where the family visit, the spare room and the retained flat all suddenly acquire tax consequences.
There are five ties. Whether all five can apply to you depends on whether you were UK resident in any of the three preceding tax years: leavers are tested against five ties, arrivers against four.
The family tie
You have a family tie if your spouse or civil partner (unless separated), a partner you live with as if married, or a child under 18 is UK resident for the tax year. There is a carve-out for children: you do not have a family tie through an under-18 child if you spend fewer than 61 days in the tax year seeing that child in person in the UK, and any day or part-day of contact counts. A further rule prevents a child who is in the UK only for full-time education from creating a family tie, provided the child spends fewer than 21 days in the UK outside term-time; term-time includes half-terms, but not the main holidays. Families with children at UK boarding schools sit exactly on this line and the day counts on both sides deserve real attention.
The accommodation tie, and your parents' spare room
The accommodation tie exists if a place to live in the UK is available to you for a continuous period of 91 days or more in the tax year and you spend at least one night there. Gaps in availability of fewer than 16 days are bridged, so a place that is "usually" available counts as continuously available.
The question every expat asks is whether staying at their parents' house creates this tie. The rule draws a specific line: where the accommodation is the home of a close relative, defined as a parent, grandparent, sibling, or child aged 18 or over, the tie only arises if you spend 16 or more nights there in the tax year. Fifteen nights at your mother's house across the year: no accommodation tie. Sixteen: tie. Few thresholds in the SRT reward a diary as richly as this one.
The work tie
You have a work tie if you do more than three hours of work a day in the UK on at least 40 days in the tax year. The days need not be consecutive, and "work" is broad. Eight one-week UK business trips of full working days will do it. This is the tie remote workers who visit the UK office regularly walk into without noticing.
The 90-day tie
You have a 90-day tie if you spent more than 90 days in the UK in either or both of the two tax years immediately before the year being tested. Each of those two years is tested separately; the days are not added together. Practically, this means almost everyone carries this tie for their first two years abroad, because their final UK years contained far more than 90 UK days. It falls away on its own with time, which is one reason the early years abroad are the tight ones.
The country tie (leavers only)
You have the country tie if the UK is the country in which you were present at midnight for the greatest number of days in the tax year, and a dead heat that includes the UK still counts. This tie applies only to leavers, and it is the reason a "perpetual traveller" with no fixed base abroad cannot rely on simply spreading time thinly: if no single country beats your UK midnight count, the UK wins.
How many ties make you resident
Two tables, and which applies depends entirely on whether you were UK resident in any of the three previous tax years. The band wording below is HMRC's own, transcribed from RFIG20520.
Table A: leavers. HMRC's heading is "Ties required if individual was UK resident in 1 or more of the 3 tax years before the year under consideration".
Days spent in the UK in the tax year | UK ties needed to be resident |
|---|---|
More than 15 but not more than 45 (16 to 45 days) | At least 4 |
More than 45 but not more than 90 (46 to 90 days) | At least 3 |
More than 90 but not more than 120 (91 to 120 days) | At least 2 |
More than 120 | At least 1 |
Table B: arrivers. HMRC's heading is "Ties required if individual was not UK resident in any of the 3 tax years before the tax year under consideration".
Days spent in the UK in the tax year | UK ties needed to be resident |
|---|---|
More than 45 but not more than 90 (46 to 90 days) | All 4 |
More than 90 but not more than 120 (91 to 120 days) | At least 3 |
More than 120 | At least 2 |
Read Table A from the leaver's side and its logic is plain: the more UK ties you keep, the fewer days you can spend. Four ties caps you at 15 days. Three ties, 45 days. Two ties, 90 days. One tie, 120 days. For most people in their first years abroad, this table, not the 183-day figure, is where their year is actually decided.
The ties and tables above are HMRC's published rules, reproduced for information. Counting your own ties correctly is exactly where mistakes happen, and it is work for a qualified tax adviser, not a blog post.
Counting days properly: midnight, deeming and the 60-day cap
The midnight rule and the deeming rule
A day counts as a UK day if you are present in the UK at the end of the day, meaning midnight. Fly in at 9am and out at 11pm, and that day does not count. That is the rule the day-trip planners know.
What fewer people know is the deeming rule, on the same manual page, which exists precisely to stop the midnight rule being gamed. It applies only when all three conditions are met: you were UK resident in one or more of the three previous tax years, you have at least three UK ties for the year, and you have been present in the UK on more than 30 days without being there at midnight. Once all three are true, every such "qualifying day" beyond the first 30 is treated as a full UK day. A recent leaver with three ties who makes a habit of same-day hops through the UK can find dozens of phantom days added to their count.
Genuine transit days are excepted from the midnight rule: arrive as a passenger, leave the next day as a passenger travelling between two other countries, and do nothing substantially unrelated to the journey in between. HMRC's own illustration is that dinner and breakfast at the airport hotel are fine, but going to the cinema, staying in a UK home, or catching up with friends or relatives breaks the exception.
Exceptional circumstances: real, capped, and narrower than people hope
Days spent in the UK because of exceptional circumstances beyond your control can be disregarded, up to a maximum of 60 days in a tax year, provided you intend to leave as soon as circumstances permit. HMRC's lists are specific: civil unrest, natural disaster, war, or sudden serious illness can qualify; births, weddings, divorces, deaths, planned medical treatment and missed flights normally do not.
Almost every summary of this relief sets the same trap: it reads as if the 60 disregarded days apply everywhere. They do not. Exceptional circumstances do not apply to every count in the SRT. HMRC splits the position across two pages, the tests where the relief can apply and the tests where it cannot. Broadly, the relief works on the headline day-count thresholds: the 183-day test, the 16-day and 46-day tests, the sufficient ties tables and the 90-day tie. It does not work on tie definitions or work conditions: the 16-night count at a relative's home, the 40-day work tie, the 91-day accommodation availability, the country tie's midnight count, and the deeming rule are all outside it. "You can always ignore up to 60 days" is exactly the sentence the second page exists to correct.
A related honesty check: HMRC's free online residence checker, reached from the GOV.UK residence page, is worth running, and its own description of its output is that it gives "an indication" of your status, covering the current tax year and the previous six. An indication is not a determination, and the tool is only as good as the tie answers typed into it.
Split-year treatment: how a departure year is taxed
Strictly, you are resident or non-resident for a whole tax year. Split-year treatment softens this for the year you leave or arrive, dividing it into a UK part and an overseas part.
Four mechanical points matter more than the detail. Split-year treatment applies only if you are UK resident for the year under the SRT. It is automatic: there is no claim, and it cannot be declined. A year can be split only once, and you cannot choose the split date; it is fixed by law and is frequently not the date you actually moved. And eligibility often depends on your circumstances in the following tax year, so a return filed on a split-year basis can need amending if the next year's conditions end up unmet.
The eight cases
There are eight cases, three for leaving and five for arriving, with HMRC's titles verbatim: Case 1, starting full-time work overseas; Case 2, the partner of someone starting full-time work overseas; Case 3, ceasing to have a home in the UK; Cases 4 to 8 cover arrivals (starting to have a home in the UK only, starting full-time UK work, ceasing full-time work overseas, the partner of someone doing so, and starting to have a home in the UK). Where more than one leaving case applies, Case 1 takes priority over Cases 2 and 3, and Case 2 over Case 3.
Worked scenario: Sarah's move to Dubai
Sarah is an illustrative example, not a template: the point of following her year is to show how the moving parts connect, not to suggest any course of action. She is 34, has lived in the UK all her life, and accepts a full-time role in Dubai starting at the end of September 2026.
Her departure year, 2026/27. From 6 April to her late-September departure Sarah clocks roughly 170 UK midnights. That is under 183, so the first automatic UK test does not decide it, and she meets no automatic overseas test. Under the sufficient ties test she is a leaver on Table A with more than 120 days, where at least one tie makes her resident, and she has several: her London flat, more than 40 UK working days, and the 90-day tie. So Sarah is UK resident for 2026/27 under the SRT. But because she leaves to start full-time work overseas, Case 1 split-year treatment applies automatically, dividing 2026/27 into a UK part and an overseas part. The split date is set by the rules, not by her flight date, and the treatment holds only if she goes on to satisfy the full-time-work-overseas conditions into 2027/28, so her 2026/27 filing position depends partly on how 2027/28 actually unfolds.
Her first full year abroad, 2027/28. Sarah plans 30 UK days: a fortnight in summer, Christmas with her parents. She counts her ties as a leaver. Family tie: she is single with no children, so no. Accommodation tie: she has let her flat to tenants and stays 12 nights at her parents' house, below the 16-night threshold for a close relative's home, so no. Work tie: she does more than three hours' UK work on 4 days, far below 40, so no. Country tie: her midnight count is overwhelmingly in the UAE, so no. The 90-day tie: yes, because she spent well over 90 days in the UK in 2026/27. One tie, 30 days. Table A's 16-to-45-day band requires at least four ties.
Sarah is non-resident for 2027/28, and comfortably so; on those ties she could in fact have spent up to 120 UK days. She would also likely meet the third automatic overseas test on her Dubai contract, which would settle the year before ties were even counted. Either route lands in the same place, and knowing both is what turns a nervous first year into a planned one.
What Sarah's residence history goes on to mean for Inheritance Tax is picked up two sections below, because her 2026/27 split year has a longer tail than she might expect.
If you were later to move back
A word for the years further out. If Sarah's story ran in reverse, or if, some years from now, you were to consider returning to the UK, the same machinery would run the other way: the arriver cases of split-year treatment (Cases 4 to 8, with priority fixed by the split dates each case would produce) would govern your arrival year, your first years back would be tested against the arriver ties table until three non-resident years had passed, and if you had been non-resident for at least 10 consecutive tax years you could qualify as a new arriver under the four-year Foreign Income and Gains regime, under which split years count as full resident years. A return would be a full financial transition in its own right, and the residence arithmetic would be only the first line of it. Paratus Wealth does not offer services to UK residents.
What non-residence changes for your money
Most guides treat the SRT as a compliance puzzle and stop. The reason the test matters is what your status changes, and this is the territory a financial planning firm actually works in: pensions, savings, protection and estate arrangements that all behave differently once you are non-resident. Everything in this section describes the rules; what anyone does about them is a separate, personal question, and the planning around them is the conversation Paratus has with clients every week.
ISAs and LISAs
The rule, per GOV.UK's ISA guidance, is that if you move abroad you must tell your ISA provider, and you cannot put new money into an ISA for a tax year in which you are non-resident, unless you are a Crown employee working overseas or their spouse or civil partner. Existing ISAs keep their UK tax wrapper and can stay invested, but the wrapper is a UK concept: the country you live in may tax the ISA's income and gains as if the wrapper did not exist, and for anyone within the US tax net an ISA raises specific reporting questions. Lifetime ISAs carry the additional government-bonus rules, which continue to run on the account's own terms rather than pausing because you moved.
Pension contributions
UK pension tax relief does not stop dead at departure, but it narrows on a timetable. Relief depends on being a "relevant UK individual", which after leaving broadly means someone who was UK resident at some time in the five tax years before the contribution year and was resident when they joined the scheme. A member without UK relevant earnings can receive relief on contributions up to the £3,600 gross basic amount a year (£2,880 net, through a relief-at-source scheme), so in practice the window narrows and then closes over the first years abroad. The interaction between a UK pension, non-residence and an eventual retirement abroad is one of the most consequential and least reversible areas of expat finance, which is why we cover it separately in our SIPP vs QROPS comparison for expats and in our guide to UK pensions and Inheritance Tax from 2027 for those living abroad.
Telling HMRC: P85 and SA109
"Do I need to tell HMRC I've left?" is one of the most asked and least answered questions on this topic. There are two routes, and which applies depends on whether you file Self Assessment. Form P85 is the standalone notification for someone leaving the UK who does not complete a tax return: it tells HMRC you have left, and it is the mechanism through which any PAYE refund for the departure year is triggered. SA109 is the residence and remittance supplementary page of the Self Assessment return: it is where a filer reports non-residence and split-year treatment for the year. A leaver who files a return uses SA109 rather than P85. And for the many people who left without doing either: the SRT determines your status by facts, not by paperwork, so an unfiled P85 does not make you resident; it does, however, leave HMRC's records assuming nothing has changed, and any departure-year PAYE refund goes unclaimed.
Remote work for a UK employer
Working remotely from abroad for a UK employer sits at the junction of two systems. Your UK tax position runs through the SRT: if you are non-resident, UK income tax generally reaches only the duties you physically perform in the UK, which is why the work tie's 40-day count and the third automatic overseas test's 30-workday limit both matter to remote workers who visit the office. Meanwhile the country you live in will normally tax the employment income as its own, your employer may have payroll and social security obligations there, and National Insurance follows its own agreements rather than the SRT. Double tax treaties usually prevent the same income being fully taxed twice, but treaty relief is claimed, not automatic. The pattern to avoid is the informal one, where neither the employer nor the employee has worked out whose payroll rules apply; the two-country limbo people describe online is nearly always the product of nobody having done the residence arithmetic on either side.
The SRT and UK Inheritance Tax: every resident year now leaves a mark
Until recently, an SRT determination settled one year's income tax and capital gains tax and little more. Since 6 April 2025 that is no longer true, and this is the single most important change for anyone reading this guide from abroad.
From that date, UK Inheritance Tax on assets outside the UK turns on whether you are a long-term UK resident. Since 6 April 2025 the test is long-term residence, not domicile; the older domicile-based system is gone for new chargeable events, save for narrow transitional cases. The definition, per IHTM47020, is residence in the UK for at least 10 of the 20 tax years immediately before the tax year in which the chargeable event, including death, arises. And residence for this purpose is determined by the Statutory Residence Test for 2013/14 onwards.
Put those two rules together: every year the SRT marks you resident is a tally mark in a rolling 20-year Inheritance Tax count. A year you were carelessly resident in 2019 counts toward whether your worldwide estate sits inside UK IHT decades later. A split year counts as a full year of UK residence for this test, so Sarah's split 2026/27, the year she thought of as "the year I left", is a full tally mark.
Nor does leaving end it. Once you are a long-term UK resident, IHT exposure continues for a tail period after departure, scaled to how long you were resident, per IHTM47020:
Tax years of UK residence | Years still in scope of UK IHT after leaving |
|---|---|
10 to 13 | 3 |
14 | 4 |
15 | 5 |
16 | 6 |
17 | 7 |
18 | 8 |
19 | 9 |
20 or more | 10 (maximum) |
Sarah's tail. Having been UK resident for every one of the 20 tax years before her departure, Sarah leaves in the "20 or more" row: her worldwide estate remains within UK IHT for 10 years after she stops being resident, even while she is building a life and assets in Dubai. Had she been resident for, say, 12 of the last 20 years, the tail would have been 3 years. There is also a long-run reset: after 10 consecutive years of non-residence an individual is no longer treated as long-term UK resident, even if they later return.
Two practical notes. UK-situated assets, including UK property, remain within UK IHT regardless of residence status; the long-term residence test governs the worldwide estate. And the standard nil-rate band remains £325,000 per individual for 2026/27. Running your own residence history against the 10-of-20 count is exactly what our IHT calculator is built for, and the full picture, including the 2025 reform and what it changed, is in our guides to UK Inheritance Tax planning for expats and why UK IHT now follows residence, not domicile. For anyone with UK pension savings, the treatment of pensions within estates from April 2027 makes the residence tally matter even more.
Frequently asked questions
How many days can I spend in the UK without becoming tax resident again?
There is no single number. If you left recently, fewer than 16 days guarantees non-residence; after three full non-resident years, fewer than 46 days does. Above those floors it depends on your ties: a leaver with one tie can spend up to 120 days, with two ties 90 days, with three ties 45 days, and with four ties only 15 days, per HMRC's tables. The widely quoted 183 days only makes you resident; staying under it does not make you non-resident.
Is the 183-day rule real?
Only in one direction. Spending 183 days or more in a tax year makes you automatically UK resident. Below 183, your status is decided by the automatic overseas tests and the sufficient ties test, where the operative numbers are far smaller.
Do I need to tell HMRC I have left the UK?
Residence is determined by facts, not forms, so not filing does not change your status. The notification routes are Form P85, for a leaver who does not file Self Assessment, and the SA109 residence pages of the tax return for someone who does. An unfiled P85 mainly means HMRC's records still assume you are here, and any departure-year PAYE refund goes unclaimed.
Does staying at my parents' house count as a UK tie?
Only if you stay enough. A close relative's home (parent, grandparent, sibling, or adult child) creates an accommodation tie only if you spend 16 or more nights there in the tax year. Fifteen nights or fewer, no tie. Other UK accommodation available to you for 91 or more continuous days creates the tie after a single night.
Can I keep paying into my ISA while living abroad?
The rule, per GOV.UK, is that no new ISA subscriptions can be made for a tax year in which you are non-resident, apart from the Crown-employment exception, and you must tell your provider when you stop being UK resident. Existing ISAs remain open and invested, but the country you live in may not recognise the wrapper and may tax the income and gains within it.
Can I work remotely for a UK employer and be non-resident?
Yes, the SRT tests days and ties, not who pays you. But UK workdays count toward the work tie at 40 days and toward the third automatic overseas test's 30-workday limit, and the country you live in will generally tax the income and may impose payroll obligations on your employer. The residence test and the payroll question are separate problems that both need answering.
What is split-year treatment and can I choose my split date?
Split-year treatment divides the tax year you leave or arrive into a UK part and an overseas part. It applies automatically when its conditions are met, cannot be declined, and the split date is fixed by law and your circumstances, not chosen, and it is frequently not your moving date. For Inheritance Tax's long-term residence count, a split year counts as a full resident year.
Can I just use HMRC's free residence checker?
You can, and it is a sensible starting point: the official checker covers the current tax year and the previous six. HMRC's own description is that it gives "an indication" of your status, not a determination, and its output depends entirely on the tie answers entered, which, as the accommodation and work tie definitions above show, are where the mistakes actually happen.
Paratus Wealth is not a tax adviser and does not give tax advice. What we do is the financial planning that surrounds a residence position: pensions held across borders, savings and investments that need restructuring when a wrapper stops working, protection, currency, and estate planning against the 10-of-20 Inheritance Tax count.
Where a client's position needs formal tax advice, that comes from a qualified tax specialist, and we help clients bring the tax determination and the financial plan together into one coherent picture.
If you live outside the UK and want to talk through how your residence position connects to the rest of your financial picture, the Senior Partners at Paratus Wealth have these conversations every week with expats in exactly your position.
You can reach us through our contact page, or start with the cross-border tax hub and the IHT calculator to see where your own numbers land.
A downloadable SRT self-check worksheet, a structured version of the day-and-ties count walked through in this guide, is in production and will be available from this page.
Sources
HMRC, RDR3 Statutory Residence Test guidance note: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rdr3-statutory-residence-test-srt/guidance-note-for-statutory-residence-test-srt-rdr3
HMRC, Residence and FIG Regime Manual (sufficient ties tables, RFIG20520; ties definitions, RFIG20530-20580; day counting and deeming, RFIG20720-20730; exceptional circumstances, RFIG22210-22270; split year, RFIG21000-21030; FIG regime, RFIG44000): https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/residence-and-fig-regime-manual
GOV.UK, Tax on foreign income: UK residence and tax: https://www.gov.uk/tax-foreign-income/residence
GOV.UK, Inheritance Tax if you are a long-term UK resident: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/inheritance-tax-if-youre-a-long-term-uk-resident
HMRC, Inheritance Tax Manual, long-term UK residence (IHTM47020): https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/inheritance-tax-manual/ihtm47020
GOV.UK, Individual Savings Accounts: if you move abroad: https://www.gov.uk/individual-savings-accounts/if-you-move-abroad
HMRC, Pensions Tax Manual, relevant UK individuals and the basic amount (PTM044100): https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/pensions-tax-manual/ptm044100
Disclaimer
This article is for general information and education only and does not constitute financial, tax or legal advice. Paratus Wealth does not provide tax advice. The Statutory Residence Test and the rules that interact with it are complex, subject to change, and depend entirely on individual circumstances, including the rules of your country of residence. Nothing on this page is a recommendation, and no decision should be taken on the basis of it. Seek advice from a qualified tax specialist on your residence position, and professional advice appropriate to your circumstances and your country of residence before acting on any financial matter.
Paratus Wealth does not offer services to UK residents.
Last reviewed August 2026. Thresholds and rules stated are those published by HMRC as at 21 August 2026 and apply to the 2026/27 tax year unless otherwise stated.
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