BUZZ ACCOUNTINGHow many days can you spend in the UK?
The Statutory Residence Test in one interactive question set: tick your ties, get the day budget the table actually gives you.
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Tick whichever ties apply to you
No ties ticked. A leaver with no UK connections can spend up to 182 days here before the ties test makes them resident.
Most people get this wrong by assuming 90 days is safe
Ninety days is the number everybody repeats, and it is only right for someone with two ties. Keep a room at your parents’ house, take a few UK meetings and carry a 90-day history from the year you left, and the real limit is 45.
This applies the sufficient-ties table for a leaver. The automatic tests below can override it in either direction, so read those before you book anything.
What this checker does, and what it cannot do
The Statutory Residence Test has three parts, applied strictly in order. This tool covers the third and most common one — the sufficient ties test — which is where most people who have genuinely moved abroad end up. It cannot clear you on the first two, so read what they are before you rely on a number.
1. The automatic overseas tests — you are non-resident, full stop
Meet any one of these and you are non-resident for the year regardless of ties:
- You were UK resident in one or more of the previous three tax years and spend fewer than 16 days in the UK this year.
- You were not UK resident in any of the previous three tax years and spend fewer than 46 days in the UK.
- You work full time overseas, spend fewer than 91 days in the UK, and no more than 30 of them are working days.
2. The automatic UK tests — you are resident, full stop
Meet any one of these and ties do not help you:
- You spend 183 days or more in the UK in the tax year.
- You have a home in the UK, are present in it on at least 30 days, and have no overseas home you spend a meaningful amount of time in.
- You work full time in the UK across a 365-day period with no significant break.
3. The sufficient ties test — the part above
If neither set of automatic tests decides it, residence comes down to how many days you spend here against how many connections you have kept. The four ties everybody can have are family, accommodation, work and the 90-day tie; leavers have a fifth, the country tie. More ties means fewer days before you tip into UK residence — which is the table the checker applies.
The ties, defined
- Family tie — your spouse or civil partner, or your minor children, are UK resident. An adult child at university in the UK does not count; a partner you are separated from does not count.
- Accommodation tie — somewhere in the UK available to you for a continuous period of 91 days or more, which you actually spend at least one night in. It does not have to be yours. A room permanently kept for you at a parent's house counts, and this is the tie people miss most often.
- Work tie — 40 or more UK working days in the tax year, where a working day is any day you do more than three hours of work. Answering email at Heathrow on the way through counts.
- 90-day tie — you spent 90 days or more in the UK in either of the two previous tax years. This one is backward-looking and cannot be changed by anything you do now.
- Country tie (leavers only) — you were present in the UK at midnight on more days than in any other single country. Someone genuinely dividing a year between three countries can pick this one up without meaning to.
How a day is counted
A UK day is a day you are in the UK at midnight. Arrive at 2pm and leave at 11pm the same day and it does not count. There is a deeming rule for people with three or more ties and a history of UK residence that can catch transit days, and a limited exception for exceptional circumstances outside your control — that exception is capped at 60 days and HMRC reads it narrowly.
Two practical points that cost people more than the rules themselves. First, keep the evidence as you go: boarding passes, passport stamps, calendar entries. Reconstructing a year of travel eighteen months later, under enquiry, is miserable and rarely convincing. Second, leave a margin. Landing exactly on your day limit means a delayed flight or a family emergency can change your tax residence for an entire year, so we suggest planning to at least ten days inside the number.
Worked example
90 days looked safe. It was not.
Someone moves to Dubai in 2024 and plans on roughly 90 UK days a year to see family. Their adult children are grown, so no family tie. But their parents keep a bedroom for them permanently, and they stay in it — that is the accommodation tie. They spent 100 days in the UK the year they left, which is the 90-day tie. And they take three or four client meetings on each trip, comfortably over 40 working days across the year: the work tie.
Three ties, as a leaver, caps them at 45 days — not 90. On their planned schedule they would be UK resident, with worldwide income back in charge of HMRC. The fix is cheap if it is spotted in April and impossible if it is spotted the following January.
Guides to the rules that catch expats out
The Statutory Residence Test, explained properly
Whether the UK taxes your worldwide income comes down to a mechanical test of days, ties and work.
Filing UK returns from abroad: the plumbing nobody warns you about
HMRC's own website cannot file the pages that make you non-resident. Add a dead UK SIM, a locked Government Gateway and a helpline that opens at 3am…
Double tax treaties: why you won't be taxed twice (if the paperwork is right)
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