Are you still UK tax resident?

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.

The test gives a separate answer for each tax year: you can be resident one year and non-resident the next. If you left the UK last autumn and want to know whether you broke residence, you're probably checking 2025/26 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 because the test is stricter with recent leavers: fewer permitted days, and an extra tie (the country tie) that long-term expats don't face.

HMRC counts a day if you're in the UK at midnight. A Friday to Sunday visit is usually two days (the Friday and Saturday nights), because the day you fly home doesn't count.

Genuine airport transits don't normally count, provided you don't do anything else while here. A meeting between flights changes that.

If you're part-way through the year, count the days you've already spent plus an honest estimate for the rest. Estimate high, not low.

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.

Frequent day-trippers (a London meeting and home for dinner) can burn through their allowance without realising.

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, a board meeting: three hours and one minute is enough.

Forty or more of these in the year gives you the work tie. Thirty-one or more will sink the full-time-work-abroad route to automatic non-residence.

The test looks for "sufficient hours" overseas: broadly an average of 35 or more hours a week across the year, employed or self-employed, once holidays and certain gaps are adjusted for.

A "significant break" fails it: 31 days or more in a row with no overseas work day, ignoring annual leave and sick leave. A normal full-time job in Dubai passes comfortably; patchy consulting work may not.

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. 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. The test bites when it's yours through a period of 91 consecutive days, at least 30 of which fall in the year you're checking.

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.

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. It doesn't need to be an overnight stay.

This is usually your escape route. If you have a home outside the UK (your apartment or villa in Dubai counts) and you're present in it 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 matter, but the automatic 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.

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.

Checking 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. It usually takes two full years abroad for this tie to fall away, which is why the second year out often feels like the reward.

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.

In the year you leave, the UK often still wins this count, which is normal and only one tie. By your second year abroad the UAE should clearly be ahead.