UK Statutory Residence Test calculator

The calculator above evaluates the tests in the order the legislation applies them and reports which one settled the year. It runs the same engine as the Residay app, and the questions come from the rule’s own definitions rather than being retyped here.

Why the order matters

The Statutory Residence Test is often described as a simple day threshold, which is true only in the sense that reaching 183 days settles it. Everything interesting happens below that number, and it happens in a fixed sequence: the moment a test resolves your position, the later tests are never reached.

The midnight test underneath everything

A day counts as a UK day when you are present at the end of it. Arrive at 09:00 and leave at 22:00 and the day does not count at all. This single convention is the largest source of error in self-assessed SRT calculations, because it contradicts the intuition that setting foot in a country uses a day — which is exactly how the US Substantial Presence Test works.

Days you could not leave because of exceptional circumstances are disregarded, capped at 60 per tax year. Transit days are excepted where you arrive and leave the next day without doing anything unrelated to travelling.

First the automatic overseas tests

Your history sets your category before any counting starts. A leaver was UK resident in any of the three preceding tax years; an arriver was not.

A leaver with at most 15 UK midnight days is automatically non-resident. For an arriver the allowance is 45. Working full-time overseas extends this to 90 UK days, subject to conditions on hours worked and UK workdays that only you can confirm.

Below these allowances nothing else can change the answer, which is why the calculator stops asking about ties once you are inside one.

Then the automatic UK tests

Reaching 183 UK midnight days makes you resident, full stop. Two other routes do the same without needing that many days: having your only home in the UK for a qualifying period, and working full-time in the UK. Both turn on facts about homes and working patterns that no location record can establish, so the calculator asks rather than infers.

Finally the sufficient ties test

If neither automatic stage settles the year, residence depends on how many UK ties you hold against how many days you spent. There are five: family, accommodation, work (at least 40 UK workdays of more than three hours), the 90-day tie from either of the two preceding tax years, and — for leavers only — the country tie.

The relationship is inverse: the more days you spend, the fewer ties you can afford. Someone with four ties becomes resident at a low day count that someone with one tie could double several times over.

The deeming rule catches day trippers

For leavers holding three or more ties there is a further trap. Once your qualifying days — days in the UK but not at midnight — pass 30, further such days start counting as UK days despite the midnight test. A pattern of frequent same-day visits that looks costless under the midnight rule stops being costless at that point, and the calculator shows the deemed days separately so you can see it happening.

What this calculator does not do

It does not compute split-year treatment. If you arrived in or left the UK during the year, one of eight statutory cases may split the year into resident and non-resident parts, and the whole-year answer here may overstate your position. Detecting which case applies is advice territory, and the app flags likely cases rather than computing the partition.

It also takes your day counts on trust. The counts are the input, and reconstructing them from memory at year end is precisely where SRT positions become hard to defend — HMRC’s enquiries turn on evidence for particular days, not on the arithmetic.