Physical presence test calculator

The calculator above searches every possible 12-month window rather than assuming a calendar year, because the taxpayer chooses the period and the choice frequently decides the outcome. It runs entirely in your browser.

What the test requires

To claim the foreign earned income exclusion under this route you must be physically present in a foreign country for at least 330 full days during any 12 consecutive months.

Unlike the bona fide residence test, this one asks nothing about your intentions, your home, or how settled you are. It is pure arithmetic — which makes it the safer claim in a year you moved, and the more fragile one in a year you travelled.

What counts as a full day

A full day runs from midnight to midnight. That definition does more work than it appears to, and three consequences follow that catch people out:

• Days you arrive in or leave the United States do not count. Part of that day was spent in the US or getting there, so it was not a full day in a foreign country.
• Days travelling between two foreign countries do count. Flying from France to Spain, you were in a foreign country all day — just not the same one throughout.
• Days in or over international waters count toward neither. Time at sea is not time in a foreign country. A cruise between two foreign ports produces days that are not US days and not foreign days either.

That last point is the one to watch. It is widely misreported, it is easy to overlook because no US territory is involved, and on a long crossing it can quietly remove a week from a count you believed was safe. Tick the “by sea” box on a leg where the crossing took a full day or more and the calculator will exclude those days.

Choosing the window

Because you choose the 12-month period, the same travel history can pass or fail depending on where you start counting.

Take someone who lived abroad from July of one year to the end of June the next, then returned to the United States. Measured over the second calendar year they have only about 180 foreign days and fail. Measured from 1 July to 30 June they have a full 365 and pass comfortably. Nothing about their life changed; only the window did.

This is why the calculator reports the window it found alongside the count. If you are close, the window matters as much as the days.

What the calculator reports

• Full days abroad in the best window, and which 12-month window that was.
• How many days you are short, if any.
• The earliest date you could qualify, assuming you remain abroad from now on — the number that answers “how much longer do I need to stay?”.

What it does not do

It counts presence and nothing else. It does not know whether your income is foreign earned income, it does not calculate the exclusion amount or the housing exclusion, and it cannot tell you whether the bona fide residence test would serve you better — for a year in which you have settled abroad and completed a full tax year, it often does.

It also assumes anything you have not entered as a foreign trip was time in the United States or unaccounted for. That is deliberate: a gap in the record is not evidence of presence abroad, and treating it as such is how a claim becomes indefensible under examination.