Statutory Residence Test

The Statutory Residence Test is a decision tree, and the discipline the exam rewards is walking it IN ORDER, stopping the moment a stage answers the question. Stage one, the automatic overseas tests: a 'leaver' (UK resident in any of the previous three tax years) is automatically NOT resident below 16 days in the UK; an 'arriver' (not resident in any of those years) gets the more generous 46-day threshold. Stage two, the automatic UK test: 183 days or more is resident, full stop, whoever you are. Only if neither automatic test bites do you reach stage three, the sufficient ties test: count the client's UK ties — family, accommodation, work, the 90-day tie, plus a fifth (the country tie) for leavers only — and read the answer off a day-band table that demands fewer ties the more days spent in the UK. Two structural facts generate most of the wrong answers. First, leavers and arrivers use DIFFERENT tables, and leavers need fewer ties at the same day count — it is deliberately harder to shed UK residence than to acquire it. Second, the ties test is never reached if an automatic test has already decided: an arriver on 30 days with four ties is simply not resident, however UK-entangled they look, because 30 is under their 46-day automatic threshold. Keep 90 days in its place too — it is a TIE (about presence in earlier years), not an automatic residence line; 183 is the only automatic 'in'. Residence is what this node calculates; domicile and the remittance basis are related but separate ideas the syllabus treats elsewhere.