Log of UK visits

Establishing your country of tax residency is important to determine what income and gains you will pay UK tax on. For this reason you should keep a continuous record of your visits to the UK.

Residence

If you are a UK tax resident, you pay tax on your worldwide income, whereas if you are not UK resident you only pay tax on your UK arising income - and even this might be restricted.

Statutory test

Residence status in the UK is determined by the statutory residence test (SRT). Fundamental to this test is the day counting principle. The test applies a limit to the number of days you can spend in the UK, and this limit varies according to your particular circumstances.

You will always be UK resident if you spend 183 days or more in the UK in a tax year. Conversely, you will always be non-resident if you spend fewer than 16 days here in a tax year. Between these two extremes, there are a number of different limits that depend on things like:

• where you work
• how often you work in the UK and for how long
• where you have homes
• where you have family
• where you spend most of your time
• where you have been resident previously.

You count days if you were present in the UK at midnight, so you would count the day of arrival but not the day of departure.

Example

In 2022/23 Barney left the UK to work abroad. He works enough hours on average to meet the “sufficient overseas hours” part of the SRT. In 2023/24 he spends 85 days in the UK, of which 29 are work days - days where he spends more than three hours working. Barney is not UK resident for 2023/24. HMRC wants Barney to provide evidence of his visits to the UK to back up his claim for non-UK residence. Unfortunately, he cannot find some of his flight details, and can’t remember the exact dates he travelled.

Record keeping

Our Log of UK Visits allows you to record the arrival and departure dates, flight numbers, and details of UK work days on an ongoing basis.

At the end of the year, you simply add up the relevant columns and use the results to check your residence status. Alternatively, you can give the sheet to your accountant. We have pre-filled the sheet with some examples of how to record your visits and work days.