Statutory Residence Test - HM Revenue & Customs

Period of temporary non-residence
Example 43
Louis moves to the UK on 9 January 2014, becoming resident here for 2013-
14. He satisfies the conditions for split year treatment for 2013-14 and is
treaty resident in the UK from arrival.
On 4 January 2017, Louis moves to the USA. He becomes a US tax resident
and is not treaty resident in the UK from that point onwards. He satisfies the
conditions for split year treatment and his overseas part of the split year starts
on 4 January 2017.
Louis returns to the UK on 9 March 2022 and split year treatment applies. He
is treaty resident in the UK from the date of his return.
Louis meets the ‘four out of seven’ test for tax years immediately preceding
his departure.
- 2013-14 was a split year which included a residence period for which
Louis had sole UK residence
- 2014-15 and 2015-16 were full tax years for which he had sole UK
residence
- 2016-17 was a tax year that included a residence period for which he
had sole UK residence (6 April 2016 – 3 January 2017). This last
period is period A.
Louis has more than one residence period immediately following period A in
which he does not have sole UK residence. The first such period is 4 January
2017 – 5 April 2017 (the overseas part of the split year in the year of his
departure).
By the time Louis returns he has been non-resident for more than five years
(4 January 2017 to 8 March 2022), therefore he is not temporarily nonresident
for the purposes of the statutory residence test. He does not need to
be non-resident for five complete tax years in order to be outside the scope of
the temporary non-residence provisions.
Tax when returning to the UK after a period of temporary nonresidence
6.11 If you are within the scope of the temporary non-residence rules, you will
become liable to tax in the year or part year (in the case of a split year) of your
return to the UK on certain of your income and gains:
accruing
arising, or
remitted to the UK
RDR3 73