Closer connection exception 2026: staying a nonresident with Form 8840

The closer connection exception is the IRS's answer to a common situation: you come to the United States for part of every year, the three-year formula catches you, and yet your life is plainly elsewhere. It leaves your count alone and takes the result away, so you still meet the test on paper, but you are treated as a nonresident for US tax purposes under Internal Revenue Code section 7701(b). Four conditions must all hold, and a filing on top. You were present for less than 183 days during the year. You kept a tax home in a foreign country for the entire year. You had a closer connection to that country than to the United States, or to two countries in the narrow case below. And you had not taken steps towards lawful permanent resident status, nor had such an application pending. Without Form 8840 filed on time, it is lost, as the IRS's page explains in terms that leave little room for argument.

Where the exception starts and where it stops

It helps to see the exception as a narrow band. Below the substantial presence test you do not need it. At 183 days in the year it no longer exists. These cases come from our engine, assuming the connection itself can be shown:

Only the day count for the current year matters for the 183-day limit, and not the weighted total. A person with 150 days in each of 3 years has 225 weighted days, far above the line, and can still use the exception.

The tax home: not your family home

This is the condition most often misread. Publication 519 defines your tax home as the general area of your main place of business, employment or post of duty, wherever your family home is. It is the place where you permanently or indefinitely work. If you have no regular place of business because of the nature of your work, it is the place where you regularly live. If neither applies, you are an itinerant and your tax home is wherever you work.

Two further points follow from the same section. The tax home must exist for the whole of the current year, and it must be in the same foreign country as the closer connection you claim. So a retired person who lives abroad falls under "where you regularly live", while a person whose main place of work is in fact in New York can hardly claim a foreign tax home, however much family remains abroad.

What "closer connection" means in practice

The test is whether you have kept more significant contacts with the foreign country than with the US, and either you or the IRS can establish it. Publication 519 says the facts to consider include, but are not limited to, the following:

The list has no weights and no minimum score, and the IRS gives no number of factors that suffices. Answer Part IV of Form 8840 only with what you can back up. The first line of that table is about consistency, in our reading: what you sign elsewhere should not contradict what you claim here.

What closes the door

You cannot claim the exception if you personally applied, or took other steps during the year, to change your status to lawful permanent resident, or if you had an application for adjustment of status pending in the year. The IRS's page names the forms that indicate that intent if you filed them during or before the year in question:

Note the words "during or before". A petition filed in an earlier year can still count against you now. Anyone working towards a green card, even as a distant plan, should read this list before relying on the exception.

Form 8840: when and where

If you are filing Form 1040-NR, attach Form 8840 to it. If you have no return to file, mail it to the Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service Center, Austin, TX 73301-0215, by the due date for filing Form 1040-NR, including extensions. In the 2025 edition of Publication 519, that date is April 15, 2026 for people with wages subject to withholding and June 15, 2026 for others. Check the current form for the year you are claiming, as ours quotes the 2025 instructions. The instructions say each alien individual must file a separate Form 8840.

Two foreign countries, and the first-year point

You may claim a closer connection to two countries, and no more, if you changed your tax home during the year. You must have held a tax home from the first day of the year in the first country, moved it to the second, and stayed there for the rest of the year. You must have had a closer connection to each country for its part of the year. And you must have been subject to tax as a resident in either country for the entire year, or in both for their respective periods. That last condition asks for tax residence, and not merely a home.

A smaller, separate rule uses the same idea. Under the substantial presence test your residency starting date is generally your first day in the US that year, but up to 10 days can be left out if you had a closer connection and a foreign tax home on those days, with a signed statement. Those days still count for the test itself. Students who cannot use Form 8840 have a separate closer connection route of their own, which the IRS describes on its own page and which our Form 8843 page touches on.

What the check above tells you, and what it does not

Enter your 3 years and answer the three questions. The result shows whether the presence test is met, then whether a condition of the exception fails: 183 days or more, no foreign tax home, no closer connection, or green card steps. It is a gate check. It does not weigh your contacts, since the IRS leaves that to the facts. The default case is 150, 120 and 90 days: 150 plus 40 plus 15 gives 205 weighted days, so the test is met and the exception is the live question, with this year still under 183. Move the first field to see where it opens and closes. The substantial presence test calculator has the rates and the full test. A second country will usually have its own view of where you live, and the dual residency guide covers that. To keep the US count ready for the deadline, you can log your days in the Taxlag app.