How many days can you spend in the UK?

A UK tax year runs from 6 April to 5 April the following year, not January to December. So 2026/27 means 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027.

Your allowance applies per tax year, and it can change from one year to the next as ties fall away. The second year abroad is usually more generous than the first.

For 2026/27, the last three tax years are 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26. If you were living and paying tax in the UK during any of them, answer yes.

It matters a lot here: recent leavers work from a tighter table and face an extra tie (the country tie), so the same ties buy fewer days.

There's a catch called the deeming rule. If you were recently UK resident, keep three or more ties, and clock up more than 30 days where you visit but leave before midnight, the extra ones start counting as UK days anyway.

If that's you, treat your real allowance as lower than the headline number.

More than 3 hours of work in a day makes it a work day, and it doesn't need to be in an office. Emails at your mum's kitchen table, a client call, a site visit: three hours and one minute is enough.

Two thresholds matter for your allowance: 40 or more work days gives you the work tie (costing you a band), and 31 or more closes the generous full-time-work-abroad route.

Full-time work overseas is its own route to automatic non-residence, worth up to 90 UK days almost regardless of ties, as long as your UK work days stay under 31.

"Sufficient hours" means broadly an average of 35 or more a week across the year, employed or self-employed, and a break of 31 days or more (ignoring leave) fails it. A normal full-time job in Dubai passes comfortably.

This catches people whose working life genuinely stays in the UK: sufficient hours worked here over a 365-day stretch, with most working days in the UK. It makes you resident whatever your day count, so there's no allowance to calculate. If you're moving your work to the UAE, this won't be you.

A "home" is somewhere you actually live: owned, rented, or even rent-free, furnished and there for you to live in. A property you've let to tenants on a proper tenancy isn't available for you to live in, so it doesn't count here.

We ask because a UK home you keep using can trigger an automatic residence test that no day allowance survives. The next two questions check whether that trap is armed.

Unlike the midnight rule for day counting, presence in a home is measured generously: any time inside the property during a day counts, even ten minutes to collect the post.

This is usually your escape route. If you're present in a home outside the UK on 30 or more days in the year, the UK home test can't make you automatically resident, whatever you keep here. Your ties still set the allowance, but the trap is off.

This is broader than a home you own. Anywhere available for you to stay for 91 days or more in a row counts: the house you kept, a family home where there's always a bed, a friend's place you can genuinely use whenever you like. Short gaps in availability (under 16 days) don't break the chain.

A hotel you book as and when you need it doesn't normally count.

Close relative means a parent, grandparent, brother, sister, or your own child aged 18 or over. Staying with them is treated more leniently: it takes 16 or more nights in the year to count against you, rather than just one night anywhere else.

One night in a place that's available to you is enough to give you the accommodation tie. At a close relative's home you get more slack: 16 or more nights. Zero nights anywhere means no tie, however available the place is. Staying in hotels on your visits keeps this tie switched off.

A husband, wife, civil partner, or someone you live with as a couple, who will themselves be UK tax resident for the year. Separated (by court order, deed, or in circumstances likely to be permanent) means they don't count.

If your partner is moving out with you, whether they count depends on their own residence position for the year. That's one of the fiddlier corners of the test and worth checking properly.

This means a child under 18 who is UK resident in their own right. One useful carve-out: a child who is only in the UK for full-time education and spends fewer than 21 days here outside term time can be disregarded.

If your children are at school in the UK while you're in Dubai, that detail is worth checking properly. It changes the answer for a lot of families.

Even with a UK-resident child under 18, you only have the family tie if you see them in person, in the UK, on 61 or more days in the year. Any part of a day counts as seeing them.

Time together abroad (school holidays with you in Dubai, say) doesn't count towards the 61.

Planning 2026/27? Then this asks about 2024/25 (6 April 2024 to 5 April 2025) and 2025/26 (6 April 2025 to 5 April 2026). More than 90 days in the UK in either one gives you the tie.

If you were living in the UK through those years, it's automatically a yes. You can't change this tie for this year, but a year at 90 days or fewer sheds it for the next.

Tally your midnights by country for the whole tax year. If the UK's total beats every other single country, you have the country tie. A draw that includes the UK also counts.

Unlike the other ties, this one moves with your travel plans, so a big allowance can shrink if you actually use too much of it. We'll flag that in your result if it applies.