The 183-Day Rule for State Residency, Explained

Updated October 15, 2026 · Location Ledger

Two ways a state can treat you as a resident

Most states with an income tax can treat you as a resident in one of two ways.

• Domicile. Your domicile is your true, permanent home, the place you intend to return to. You have only one domicile at a time. Changing it takes both intent and action, such as moving your home, family, and belongings.
• Statutory residency. This is a mechanical test. In states that use it, you are a resident if you maintain a permanent place of abode in the state and spend more than 183 days there in the tax year, even if you are domiciled elsewhere.

The two tests are separate. Someone domiciled in Florida who keeps an apartment in Manhattan and spends 190 days in New York can be taxed by New York as a statutory resident.

Which states use a day count

Many states use a 183-day statutory residency test, including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. The details vary, including what counts as a permanent place of abode and which days are excluded.

Some states take a different approach. California, for example, looks at whether you are in the state for more than a temporary or transitory purpose, and presumes you are a resident if you spend more than nine months of the tax year there.

States without a broad personal income tax include Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. People who move to one of these states often still need to track days in the state they left.

How a day is counted

The count usually isn't about nights. In New York, any part of a day spent in the state generally counts as a full day. A morning flight out of JFK counts as a New York day. A dinner in Manhattan before driving home to New Jersey counts too.

There are narrow exceptions. New York, for example, does not count a day when you are only passing through the state on the way to somewhere else, and has special rules for certain medical stays. Other states set their own rules, so check the guidance for the state you're tracking.

Because a single travel day can count for two states, your day totals across states can add up to more than 365. That's expected.

Not the same as the IRS substantial presence test

The federal substantial presence test also uses 183 days, but it decides whether a person who is not a US citizen is a US tax resident. It uses a weighted formula: all days in the current year, one third of the days in the prior year, and one sixth of the days in the year before that. State statutory residency is a different test with a different purpose.

Why the record matters

In a residency audit, the state may ask you to account for where you were on every day of the year. Auditors commonly look at credit card statements, phone records, travel receipts, and calendars. A record made at the time, rather than reconstructed months later, makes that much easier.

It also helps during the year. If you know you're at 150 days in your former home state by October, you can plan the rest of the year instead of guessing.

How Location Ledger helps

• Days counts any part of a day in a state, the same convention New York uses.
• Overnights shows where you slept, one location per night.
• Date range filters show your totals for any tax year.
• CSV export gives your accountant a timestamped log with addresses for each year.
• Siri can tell you your running total: "How many days have I spent in New York in Location Ledger?"

Location Ledger's Visits Only setting is on by default and focuses on places where you stopped. If you want drive-throughs counted too, turn off Visits Only and set Minimum Visit Duration to None in Settings under Presence.

Related guides

• How to Prove Where You Were for a State Residency Audit
• Snowbird Day Counting: Tracking Time Between Two States
• Location Ledger FAQ