UK Domicile Test

What the UK domicile & long-term residence test does

This tool gives internationally mobile individuals a fast, plain-English read on the single question that now drives UK Inheritance Tax (IHT): is your worldwide estate within the UK IHT net, or only your UK-sited assets? It is built for British expats, returning nationals, former non-doms and anyone with a cross-border footprint who wants a starting point before taking formal advice. It answers six short questions and returns one of four indicative outcomes — it does not file anything, store your answers, or replace a professional review.

Since 6 April 2025 the UK taxes estates on a residence basis rather than a domicile basis, so this test is framed around the rule that matters most today: long-term UK residence. Domicile still features, because it shapes trust eligibility and succession, but it is no longer the primary switch for worldwide IHT. You can explore the full suite of related calculators on our planning tools hub.

How the six questions work

The test walks through six inputs in the order a domicile and residence analysis tends to follow. Questions one and two — whether you were born in the UK and whether your parents were UK-domiciled at your birth — establish your domicile of origin, the status you acquire at birth from your father (or mother in some cases) rather than from your nationality or place of birth. Questions three, five and six probe the strength of your ties abroad: whether you have settled permanently overseas with no intention to return, whether you hold foreign nationality or permanent residency, and whether you own or rent a genuine long-term home in another country. These are the classic evidential factors weighed when deciding whether a domicile of choice has been acquired.

Question four is the decisive one. It asks how many of the last 20 UK tax years — each running 6 April to 5 April — you have been UK resident. If that figure is 10 or more, the tool treats you as a long-term UK resident and returns the worldwide-IHT outcome regardless of the domicile answers, because that is exactly how the post-2025 regime works. Your year-by-year residence for this count is settled by the Statutory Residence Test, which you can work through with our UK Statutory Residence Test tool.

The four results and how to read them

The tool returns one of four indications. Long-Term UK Resident means your worldwide estate — overseas property, foreign accounts and non-UK investments included — is within scope of UK IHT at 40% above the available nil-rate band. Strong UK Connections flags that you are likely within the net while resident and may remain so for a period after leaving. Settling Abroad recognises that you are reducing your UK ties and, provided you do not remain a long-term resident, your non-UK assets should fall outside the net over time. Likely Outside the UK IHT Net applies where you are not a long-term resident and have no UK domicile of origin, so generally only your UK-sited assets are taxable here.

A worked example: someone born in the UK to UK-domiciled parents who has lived in Dubai for four years but was UK resident for 14 of the previous 20 tax years will still see the Long-Term UK Resident result — the decade-plus residence count outweighs the recent move. By contrast, a foreign national born abroad to non-UK parents, now permanently settled overseas after only a handful of UK years, will typically land in the outside-the-net result.

Domicile of origin, domicile of choice and the 2025 reform

A domicile of origin is remarkably tenacious. It lies dormant while you hold a domicile of choice elsewhere, but revives automatically the moment you leave that other country without having settled permanently in a new one. Acquiring a domicile of choice abroad requires both physical presence and a clear, settled intention to remain indefinitely with no plan to return to the UK — a high bar that many long-term expats fail to clear, because a lingering intention to come back “one day” is enough to keep the UK domicile alive. HMRC weighs the whole picture: property, family, business interests, the terms of your will and expressed intentions over time. Our guide on genuinely changing your UK domicile explains why such claims attract close scrutiny.

The April 2025 non-dom reform reshaped the backdrop. It abolished the remittance basis and the old “deemed domicile” and 15-of-20-years rules, replacing them with a four-year foreign income and gains regime for new arrivals and, crucially, moving IHT onto the residence basis this tool reflects. Domicile concepts now survive mainly in transitional and trust contexts. For fuller treatment see our explainer on the residence-based IHT reform and our guide to UK domicile and IHT planning in 2026.

Assumptions and limitations

Treat the output as a prompt for advice, not a determination. The test assumes your answers are accurate and applies a simplified version of the long-term residence rule; it does not calculate your Statutory Residence Test position for any single year, nor the post-departure “tail” of between three and ten years during which long-term resident status — and worldwide IHT exposure — can persist after you cease to be UK resident. It does not model double-tax treaties, the residence nil-rate band, business or agricultural property relief, trust structures, or estate tax in your country of residence. Domicile also continues to matter for excluded property trusts and cross-border succession in ways six questions cannot capture.

Why it matters and what to do next

The gap between the two positions is large: a long-term resident’s entire global estate is taxable in the UK, while a non-long-term resident is generally taxed only on UK assets. Getting the read right shapes wills, trusts, gifting and where you hold assets. Once you have your indication, size the potential bill with the IHT calculator, and where the numbers are material, take advice from a cross-border specialist before acting.