What is the Statutory Residence Test?
The Statutory Residence Test (RDR3, GOV.UK) is the legal framework, in force since 6 April 2013, that determines whether you are resident in the UK for tax purposes in a given tax year. Before the SRT, residency turned on vague case law and HMRC practice; the SRT replaced that with a structured set of day counts and connecting factors, so that in most cases the answer is objective and you can work it out in advance.
Residence is decided separately for each tax year, and the result is all-or-nothing: for 2026/27 you are either UK resident or non-resident for the whole year. (Split-year treatment, covered below, can still relieve part of a year of arrival or departure, but it does not change your underlying status of resident for that year.)
Why it matters: a UK resident is, broadly, taxable on worldwide income and gains, while a non-resident is generally taxable only on UK-source income and certain UK assets. Residence also governs access to reliefs such as the four-year foreign income and gains (FIG) regime that replaced the non-dom remittance basis on 6 April 2025 and is now in its second year. The SRT is the gateway to all of it.
The SRT does not consider domicile or nationality. An American working in London and a Briton retiring to Portugal apply exactly the same day counts and ties. What differs is what happens after the SRT has given you a status.
How the SRT works: the three parts, in order
The SRT works as a sequence of three parts that you apply in a fixed order, stopping as soon as one of them gives you a definitive answer. Working through them out of order is the most common reason people reach the wrong conclusion.
- Step 1: the automatic overseas tests. If you meet any one of these, you are automatically non-resident for the year, and you stop. You do not look at ties.
- Step 2: the automatic UK tests. If you do not meet an overseas test, check these. If you meet any one of them, you are automatically UK resident, and you stop.
- Step 3: the sufficient ties test. If neither set of automatic tests settles it, you compare your UK day count against the number of UK ties you have. That combination decides your status.
The logic is deliberately weighted towards finding a clear answer early. Most people with a strong overseas pattern are caught by an automatic overseas test; most people clearly based in the UK are caught by an automatic UK test. The ties test exists for the genuinely in-between cases, which is exactly where cross-border individuals tend to sit.
The automatic overseas tests (non-resident)
The automatic overseas tests are three routes to being treated as non-resident for the year, and meeting any single one of them is enough. They are checked first because being conclusively non-resident is the simplest outcome.
- The 16-day test (for leavers): you are non-resident if you were UK resident in one or more of the three preceding tax years and you spend fewer than 16 days in the UK in 2026/27.
- The 46-day test (for arrivers): you are non-resident if you were not UK resident in any of the three preceding tax years and you spend fewer than 46 days in the UK in 2026/27.
- The full-time work abroad test: you are non-resident if you work full-time overseas across the year with no significant break, spend fewer than 91 days in the UK, and work for more than three hours in the UK on fewer than 31 days.
There is also a special rule for people who die during the tax year, which is outside the scope of this guide. The headline point is that if you genuinely keep your UK presence low, or you have a real full-time job abroad, you can usually become non-resident with certainty by managing the day counts.
The automatic UK tests (resident)
The automatic UK tests are three routes to being treated as UK resident, and again meeting any single one makes you resident for the year. You only reach these if no automatic overseas test applied.
- The 183-day test: you are UK resident if you spend 183 or more days in the UK in 2026/27. This is the best-known threshold and it is decisive on its own.
- The UK home test: you are resident if you have a home in the UK for a period of at least 91 consecutive days (with at least 30 of those days in the tax year), you are present in that home on at least 30 days in the year, and you have no overseas home (or spend fewer than 30 days in any overseas home).
- The full-time work in the UK test: you are resident if you work full-time in the UK over a 365-day period, with more than 75% of your working days being UK days and at least one of those days falling in the tax year.
A frequent trap is the home test. People assume that keeping below 183 days protects them, but if your only home is in the UK and you spend even 30 days a year there, the home test can make you resident regardless of the headline day count. This is precisely the kind of detail where a fixed-fee review pays for itself.
The sufficient ties test
The sufficient ties test decides your status when neither the automatic overseas nor the automatic UK tests give an answer, by weighing your UK day count against the number of connecting ties you have to the UK. The more ties you have, the fewer days you can spend in the UK before you become resident.
It is the part of the SRT that catches genuinely mobile people: someone splitting their year between countries, keeping a UK property, or doing occasional UK work. The five ties are defined precisely, and an honest count of them is essential.
The five UK ties explained
- Family tie: you have this if your spouse or civil partner (or a partner you live with as if married) is UK resident for the year. A UK-resident minor child only gives you this tie if you also spend time with them in person in the UK on 61 days or more in the tax year (a child here solely for full-time education is disregarded if they spend fewer than 21 days in the UK outside term-time).
- Accommodation tie: you have this if you have a place to live in the UK that is available to you for a continuous period of at least 91 days and you spend at least one night there during the year (16 or more nights if it is a close relative's home).
- Work tie: you have this if you work in the UK for at least 40 days in the year, a work day being any day on which you do more than three hours of work.
- 90-day tie: you have this if you spent more than 90 days in the UK in either of the two preceding tax years.
- Country tie: you have this if the UK is the country in which you were present at midnight on the greatest number of days in the year. This tie applies only to leavers (those who were UK resident in at least one of the prior three years).
Arrivers count only four possible ties because the country tie does not apply to them. Leavers can have all five. That difference, combined with the day bands below, is what makes leaving the UK (GOV.UK) cleanly harder than arriving.
How many days each tie allows (arrivers vs leavers)
The number of ties you can have before becoming resident depends on your day count and on whether you are an arriver or a leaver, and HMRC sets this out in two tables. An arriver was not UK resident in any of the three preceding tax years; a leaver was resident in at least one of them.
For leavers (resident in one or more of the prior three years), the bands are: 16 to 45 days needs 4 or more ties to be resident; 46 to 90 days needs 3 or more ties; 91 to 120 days needs 2 or more ties; and 121 to 182 days needs just 1 or more tie.
For arrivers (not resident in any of the prior three years), the bands are more forgiving: 46 to 90 days needs all 4 ties; 91 to 120 days needs 3 or more ties; and 121 to 182 days needs 2 or more ties. Below 46 days an arriver is already caught by the automatic overseas test.
The practical message is that leavers are held to a tighter standard. If you have recently left the UK and kept a home, a UK-resident spouse and the country tie, even a fairly modest number of UK days can tip you back into residence.
| UK days in 2026/27 | Leaver (UK resident in any of the prior 3 years) | Arriver (not UK resident in the prior 3 years) |
|---|---|---|
| Fewer than 16 | Automatically non-resident (16-day test) | Automatically non-resident (46-day test) |
| 16 to 45 | Resident with 4 or more ties | Automatically non-resident (46-day test) |
| 46 to 90 | Resident with 3 or more ties | Resident with all 4 ties |
| 91 to 120 | Resident with 2 or more ties | Resident with 3 or more ties |
| 121 to 182 | Resident with 1 or more tie | Resident with 2 or more ties |
| 183 or more | Automatically UK resident (183-day test) | Automatically UK resident (183-day test) |
Counting your UK days (the midnight rule)
For SRT purposes, a UK day is normally a day on which you are present in the UK at the end of the day, meaning at midnight. So a day where you fly in at 9am and out again at 11pm the same evening generally does not count, because you are not here at midnight.
This midnight rule is simple in principle but easy to get wrong in practice. Transit days, where you arrive in the UK only to leave for another country and do not engage in activities beyond what a passenger reasonably needs, can be ignored. Days of arrival and departure on either side of an overnight stay both count if you are present at the relevant midnights.
Keep contemporaneous records: boarding passes, travel itineraries and a running day log. If HMRC ever queries your status, the burden of proving your day count sits with you, and reconstructing it years later from memory is not good enough.
The deeming rule and exceptional circumstances
Two important modifiers can change the headline midnight count: the deeming rule, which can add days, and the exceptional circumstances rule, which can remove them.
The deeming rule applies if you were UK resident in one or more of the three preceding tax years and you have at least three UK ties for the year. Where it applies, you may exclude up to 30 'qualifying' days (days you are present in the UK but not at midnight). Once you pass 30 such days, every further qualifying day is deemed a UK day even though you were not here at midnight. This rule is designed to stop people commuting in and out daily to dodge the midnight count.
Exceptional circumstances work the other way. Up to 60 days in a tax year can be ignored if you are forced to be in the UK by circumstances beyond your control, such as sudden serious illness or a national emergency, and you intend to leave as soon as those circumstances permit. The 60-day cap is an annual maximum, and HMRC applies it narrowly, so it is not a general safety valve for a busy year.
Split-year treatment and the SRT
Split-year treatment lets a tax year be split into a UK part and an overseas part when you arrive in or leave the UK partway through, so that you are effectively taxed as a resident for one part and a non-resident for the other. It does not change your SRT status, which remains 'resident' for the whole year; it simply changes how that year is taxed.
There are eight statutory cases, three for leaving and five for arriving, and you must fall squarely within one of them. The leaving cases cover starting full-time work overseas, being the partner of someone who does so, and ceasing to have a UK home. The arriving cases cover starting to have a UK home, starting full-time work in the UK, ceasing full-time work overseas, being the partner of someone who does so, and starting to have your only home in the UK. Each case has its own conditions and its own rule for when the split date falls.
For someone leaving in, say, October 2026, qualifying for split-year treatment can mean their overseas employment and foreign income from the split date are outside UK tax for the rest of 2026/27. Getting the case and the split date right is fiddly, and the cases interact with the SRT day counts, so this is an area where careful, fixed-fee advice tends to pay off. See our dedicated split-year guide for the detail.
Why your residency status matters for your tax
Your residency status matters because it sets the scope of what the UK can tax and which reliefs you can claim, and the differences are large. A wrong answer can be costly in both directions.
- Worldwide vs UK-source: a UK resident is generally taxed on worldwide income and gains on the arising basis; a non-resident is generally taxed only on UK-source income and certain UK assets.
- Income tax bands (2026/27, frozen): a personal allowance of £12,570, then 20% on taxable income to £37,700, 40% to £125,140 and 45% above. Dividends are taxed at 10.75% (ordinary), 35.75% (upper) and 39.35% (additional), with a £500 dividend allowance.
- Capital gains: the annual exempt amount is £3,000 for 2026/27, with residential property gains taxed at 18% within the basic-rate band and 24% above it. Non-residents can still be within scope of UK CGT on UK property and land.
- The FIG regime: now in its second year, this four-year relief is open to people who become UK resident after at least 10 consecutive non-resident years. Whether you qualify turns entirely on your SRT history.
- National Insurance: voluntary Class 2 contributions for periods abroad ended on 6 April 2026, so Class 3 (£18.40 per week for 2026/27) is now the main voluntary route to protect your UK State Pension while overseas.
Because the SRT result drives all of this, it is worth getting a defensible answer in advance rather than discovering a problem on a later enquiry. Horizon UK Tax Solutions handles residency reviews, split-year claims and the surrounding planning on a transparent fixed fee.
Worked example (hypothetical)
Here is a hypothetical example to show how the parts fit together; the figures are illustrative only and not advice for any real person. Imagine Maya, a consultant who was UK resident for the last several years and moves to Dubai during 2026/27. She wants to be non-resident for the year.
Because Maya was UK resident in the prior three years, she is a leaver. She does not work full-time abroad for the whole year and she spends 35 days in the UK in 2026/27, so no automatic overseas test applies (the 16-day leaver test needs fewer than 16 days). She does not meet any automatic UK test either, as she is well below 183 days and has given up her UK home. So her status falls to the sufficient ties test.
Maya's ties: her spouse moved with her, so no family tie. She kept no UK accommodation available for 91 days, so no accommodation tie. She did fewer than 40 UK work days, so no work tie. She spent more than 90 UK days in the previous tax year, so she has the 90-day tie. And because she spent more days in Dubai than the UK, she does not have the country tie. That is one tie.
For a leaver in the 16 to 45 day band, residence requires 4 or more ties. Maya has 1 tie at 35 days, so she is non-resident for 2026/27. Had she instead kept a UK flat available to her (accommodation tie) and done 40-plus UK work days (work tie), she would have 3 ties, and at 35 days a leaver with 3 ties is still non-resident (the band needs 4) but with very little headroom: a single extra tie, or drifting into the 46 to 90 day band, would flip her to resident. Small changes move the answer, which is why the analysis is worth doing carefully.
