Statutory Residence Test calculator 2026: UK tax rates and the days that make you resident

The United Kingdom taxes individuals through two separate questions, and people often mix them up. The first is residence, settled by the Statutory Residence Test for each tax year from 6 April to 5 April. The second is how much you pay, set by the bands for that year. A UK resident normally pays UK tax on income from the UK and from abroad, while a non-resident pays only on UK income, according to GOV.UK. For 2026-27 the standard Personal Allowance is £12,570, the basic rate is 20%, the higher rate 40% and the additional rate 45%, with different bands in Scotland. Residence depends on the days you spend in the UK, on your work and home, and on your connections there. It does not depend on your passport or on where you feel at home, and it is tested afresh every year, so a status held last year proves nothing for this one.

What the UK charges in 2026-27

England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland has its own bands; no Personal Allowance over £125,140.

The allowance shrinks by £1 for every £2 of adjusted net income above £100,000, and it is gone at £125,140. Inside that range the bands above are not the whole story, so check your own figure with HMRC if you sit there. Scotland keeps the same allowance but has its own table for wages, pensions and most other taxable income. Scottish taxpayers still pay the UK rates on dividends and savings interest.

Income Tax is rarely the only line on a UK return. These are the other rates GOV.UK publishes for the same year:

Residence changes the reach of all this. Non-residents pay no UK tax on income or gains arising outside the UK, but they can still owe tax on UK income such as rent from a UK property, and they usually pay Capital Gains Tax only on UK property or land, or if they return. There is also a newcomer regime: since 6 April 2025, someone in their first 4 years of UK tax residence after at least 10 years as a non-resident can claim relief on eligible foreign income and gains under the foreign income and gains regime. Foreign earnings fall outside that relief, and a claim costs you the tax-free allowances for Income Tax and Capital Gains Tax.

Three layers, tested in a fixed order

HMRC's RDR3 sets the order, and it matters. If you spent 183 days or more in the UK, you are resident and need nothing else. Below that, you look at the automatic overseas tests first, and meeting any one of them makes you non-resident. Only then come the automatic UK tests and the sufficient ties test, and meeting one of those makes you resident. Failing everything also means non-resident.

The overseas tests turn on 16 days if you were resident in any of the 3 previous tax years, 46 days if you were not, and on 91 days combined with fewer than 31 UK workdays of more than 3 hours if you work full-time abroad without a significant break. Our page on the automatic overseas test goes through each of them, including the hours calculation. The automatic UK tests add a home route, with a period of 91 consecutive days in which you have a UK home, at least 30 days present in it during the year, and no overseas home where you spend 30 days or more, and a full-time UK work route over 365 days.

If you reach none of those, your ties decide. There are five, and the sufficient ties test page defines each:

Leaving and arriving: the constraints that catch people

Telling HMRC. You must tell HMRC if you leave to live abroad permanently or to work abroad full-time for at least one full tax year. Without a Self Assessment return, that means form P85. With one, it means the residence section, form SA109, sent by post with a 31 October deadline for paper returns. Holidays and business trips need no notice.

The split. Residence covers the whole tax year, but the year can be cut into a UK part and an overseas part when you move and meet one of eight sets of conditions. It is not a choice, and our split year page lists the cases.

A short absence can reach back. If you were solely UK resident in at least 4 of the 7 tax years before leaving and you stay away for 5 years or less, the temporary non-residence rules can tax certain income and gains in the year you return, capital gains included. The period must be longer than 5 years to escape them: leaving on 4 May 2015 and returning on 4 May 2020 clears it, by HMRC's own example.

Records. HMRC's manual says to keep travel schedules, booking details, tickets and boarding cards, and evidence of when your homes were owned, let or available. A trip log kept as you travel is far easier to defend than one rebuilt later.

Why this calculator asks for trips rather than a number of days

A figure typed from memory hides what the law counts. A UK day is one on which you are present at midnight, so a trip of five nights is five days whatever hours you arrive. The midnight in a genuine transit does not count. Days you leave before midnight can still be added under the deeming rule, if you have 3 ties, were resident in one of the last 3 years, and pass 30 such days. Enter your dates and the calculator derives all three, then the 90-day tie against the tax-year boundary. Our guide to UK days covers the counting. Here is what the same engine returns on HMRC's own three deeming cases in RFIG20720:

Benedict shows why the check is not mere addition. He spent 135 days in the UK in some form, yet deeming never starts, because only midnights count when testing whether he has the 90-day tie that would have been his third.

The calculator gives an indication and no more. It takes your word on ties and on full-time work, and those tests depend on facts it cannot see. GOV.UK runs its own residence checker for the current tax year and the 6 years before it: use it as a second opinion, since HMRC's answer is the one that carries weight. If you want the count kept for you through the year, the Taxlag app does that; this calculator stays free.

When another country claims you as well

The Statutory Residence Test only answers for the UK. A second country can treat you as its resident under its own rules in the same year, as France or the United States may. GOV.UK notes that the UK has double taxation agreements with many countries, and that split year treatment does not change whether you count as UK resident for an agreement. Where both countries claim you, the dual residency guide explains the order a treaty usually follows.

Two points stay open in what we read. The definition of the family tie for a minor child depends on the child being UK resident in their own right, and the guidance we read does not walk through every borderline case for a child's own status, so we do not settle one for you. And GOV.UK says a year is "usually" split on a move, while HMRC's manual makes it depend on specific conditions: we follow the manual, which is the more precise of the two.