Tax residency tracker: your days counted against each country's own test
Country Days Tracker: Geostay records which country you are in each day and counts those days against each country's own tax residency day test. It is a tax residency tracker for iPhone that shows how close you are to each limit and warns you before you reach it.
How it counts your days against each country's test
Geostay has the tax residency day test for 184 countries, plus 27 US states and New York City. Each test follows that country's own rule: how many days, over which year or period, and how a day of arrival or departure is treated. Spain, for example, treats you as resident when you stay more than 183 days in a calendar year, so the Spain card counts your days over the calendar year and compares them with that limit.1
Each card also shows the legal source behind its test and the date that source was last checked. The France card at the top of this page shows what that looks like: the days spent in France this year, the trip those days come from, a note that any part of a day counts, and a link to the French tax authority.
If you split a year between two countries, both cards sit on the Today tab, each counting over the period its test sets. A spreadsheet column that turns red at 183 days cannot follow a UK tax year that starts on 6 April or a US count that reaches back two years.
| Test | Period | Day limit | How a day counts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spain | Calendar year | More than 183 days | Occasional absences are counted as days in Spain unless you can prove tax residence in another country |
| UK Statutory Residence Test | Tax year, 6 April to 5 April | 183 days or more meets the first automatic UK test; fewer days can still make you resident under the sufficient ties test | A day counts when you are in the UK at midnight |
| US Substantial Presence Test | This year and the two years before it, weighted | 183 weighted days, with at least 31 days in the current year | Any part of a day in the US counts; last year's days count one third and the year before that one sixth |
The UK Statutory Residence Test and the US Substantial Presence Test
The UK counts by tax year, from 6 April to 5 April, and a day counts when you are in the UK at midnight. Spending 183 days or more in the tax year meets the first automatic UK test, but the sufficient ties test can make you resident on fewer days when you have ties in the UK such as work or family, and someone who was not UK resident in the three previous tax years is usually non-resident below 46 days.2,3,4
The UK card in Geostay counts your midnights in the UK against those tests. It applies the automatic tests and the sufficient ties test, asks about a UK home, UK work and your ties only when the answer would change the result, and links to HMRC's manual so the rule it counts against is one tap away.
The US weights three years. Every day of this year counts in full, last year's days count one third and the days of the year before count one sixth, and the total is compared with 183, with at least 31 days needed in the current year. Any part of a day in the US counts as a day. Someone present 120 days in each of 2023, 2024 and 2025 counts 120 plus 40 plus 20 for 2025, which is 180 weighted days, so the test is not met for that year.5
The US card does that arithmetic on the days Geostay recorded and links to the IRS page for the test. For each day in the US, Geostay also records the state, and 27 states and New York City each have a tax card with the day limit that applies there.
Where the days come from
You do not log border crossings yourself. Geostay records which country your iPhone is in each day, even when the app is closed. It works the country out from a map stored in the app, so it needs no connection, and roaming and flight mode leave no gap in the record.
Flights are left out, and so are location points close to a border, so a drive along one is not recorded as a visit. Timeline shows every stay as a list or on a calendar, and you can add a trip, change the country of a day or delete a day. Your own edits take precedence over what the phone recorded. If the earlier part of the year lives in a spreadsheet, save it as CSV with dates and countries and Geostay imports it as past stays, and those days go into the counts like any other.
A warning before you reach a country's day limit
Staying under the limit in two countries in one year means keeping an eye on two counts over two different periods. Geostay does that for you and warns you ahead of time, in a notification that gives the count and the date, such as "Staying past 4 Dec would cross the limit".
You set how many days ahead it warns, and each card has its own switch, so you can keep warnings on for just the two countries you are splitting the year between. On the Profile tab, "Watching for you" lists every card and how it warns.
A day log for your accountant
When your accountant asks where you were, "Create a report" on the Profile tab makes a PDF of your counts and stays for the period you choose, with a CSV day log beside it: one row per day with the date, country, state and city. Proof you attached to a trip, such as a boarding pass or a ticket, is included.
A backup saves the whole record in one file that you can restore on any iPhone, so the log moves with you to your next phone.
Count country days on iPhone.
Geostay records the days and counts each rule the way that rule counts them.
Sources
- 1.Agencia Tributaria, Spanish Tax Agency, “Individual resident in Spain,” sede.agenciatributaria.gob.es
- 2.GOV.UK, “Tax on foreign income: UK residence and tax,” gov.uk
- 3.HM Revenue and Customs, “RFIG20320 - Statutory Residence Test (SRT): Automatic UK tests: First automatic UK test,” gov.uk
- 4.HM Revenue and Customs, “RFIG20710 - Statutory Residence Test (SRT): Days spent in the UK: Meaning of a day spent in the UK,” gov.uk
- 5.Internal Revenue Service, “Substantial presence test,” irs.gov