Determining your residence position is important as it can affect your exposure to UK taxation. In this article, we outline the Statutory Residence Test (SRT), and why it is important to correctly determine your residence status.

Trying to understand and apply the complex UK residence rules can be rather overwhelming and intimidating as it requires someone who is well versed in navigating through several pages of tax legislation and HMRC guidance.

Correctly determining your residence status will enable you to find out whether you need to file a Self-Assessment Tax Return and if you will be taxed as a UK resident (on your worldwide income and gains) or as a non-UK resident (on UK sourced income and gains on UK land and property). It has recently become more important, with the abolition of the non-dom regime to one solely determined by residency.

The UK's Statutory Residence Test (SRT)

The Statutory Residence Test (SRT) is used to determine your UK residence status for a tax year. For the purposes of this article, we will use the 2025/26 tax year. There are three parts to the SRT as follows:

1. The automatic overseas tests

2. The automatic UK tests

3. The sufficient ties test

The automatic overseas tests

In practice, these are the first tests used to determine your residence status.

These tests state that you are not UK resident in the 2025/26 tax year if you meet any of the following criteria:

• You were UK resident in one or more of the previous three tax years and are present in the UK for fewer than 16 days in the tax year; or

• you were not UK resident in any of the previous three tax years and are present in the UK for fewer than 46 days in the tax year; or

• you meet the work abroad conditions and:

  • you spend fewer than 91 days in the UK; and

  • you have fewer than 31 workdays in the UK.

The automatic UK tests

If none of the automatic overseas tests are met, these are the second set of tests used to determine your residence status.

These state that you are resident in the UK in 2025/26 if you meet any of the following criteria:

• You are present in the UK for 183 days or more during the tax year.

• You have a UK home in the tax year and either you have no overseas home or you have an overseas home in which you spend less than 30 days.

• You work full-time in the UK, broadly an average of 35 hours a week or more with no significant breaks.

The sufficient ties test

If you do not meet any of the previous tests, this is the final test to determine whether you are UK resident or not. This test considers the number of days spent in the UK and the extent of your connections with the UK.

There are five possible UK ties:

• Family: Generally created where you have a UK resident spouse, partner, or minor child.

• Accommodation: Created where you have a place to live in the UK available to you for a continuous period of 91 days in the tax year, and you spend at least one night there during the tax year (or 16 nights there if it is the home of a close relative).

• Work: Created if you have at least 40 UK workdays in the tax year.

• 90-day: Created if you have spent more than 90 days in the UK in either or both of the previous two tax years (2023/24 and 2024/25 in this scenario).

• Country: Created if the UK is the country in which you are present at midnight for the greatest number of days in the tax year.

The number of ties you need to be considered UK resident depends on the number of days you have spent in the UK in the tax year (i.e. 2025/26). For this, you get categorised into one of two groups: a ‘leaver’ or an ‘arriver’. You are a leaver if you have been UK resident in one or more of the previous three tax years, and you are an arriver if you have not been UK resident in any of the previous three tax years.

The legislation contains a table for each of these groups showing the correlation between days and ties.

The first table relates to leavers.

The second table relates to arrivers. There are only four ties available here as the country tie cannot apply to arrivers.

How does my residence status affect how I am taxed?

If you are UK resident, you are generally taxed on your worldwide income and capital gains on an arising basis. However, if you are determined to be non-resident, you are only taxed on UK sourced income and gains arising from direct and indirect disposals of UK property or land. Therefore, with a potentially vast difference in your basis of taxation, it is important to correctly determine your residence status.