Does a transit day count as a day in the UK?

When a transit day doesn’t count

A day counts for the statutory residence test if you’re in the UK at midnight. A transit day is the exception: HMRC leaves it out of your day count if, travelling from one country outside the UK to another,

• you arrive as a passenger,
• you leave the next day as a passenger, and
• you don’t do anything substantially unrelated to passing through the UK.

HMRC’s transit day examples

You land the evening before a morning flight on, and…	Does the midnight count?
sleep at an airport hotel and have breakfast	No
meet friends and go to the theatre	Yes
have a 90-minute dinner with your team leader about work	Yes
have a chance coffee with a colleague about holidays	No

Time at your own UK home, or catching up with friends or family, is substantially unrelated to the journey, so that midnight counts as a day in the UK.

The day you fly on

You leave before midnight, so the second day isn’t a midnight day. HMRC notes it may still count under the deeming rule, which counts days without a midnight past the first 30 in a tax year for some people with UK ties. How that works, and the rest of the test: UK tax residency. To see how many days you have left, use the UK days calculator.