SDLT day-counting evidence: what HMRC accepts (UK 2026)

The 2% non-UK resident SDLT surcharge stands or falls on a single statutory test: was the buyer present in the UK on at least 183 days during any continuous 365-day period in the two-year window straddling the property's effective date? HMRC SDLT manual page SDLTM09870 sets out the day-count rules in three short paragraphs. The hard part is never the rules — it is the file of boarding passes, hotel folios, payslips and school letters a buyer has to assemble two years later to prove them.

This is the evidence layer that determines whether a 2% surcharge refund claim succeeds or is rejected outright. Of 153,233 UK transactions above £500,000 recorded by HM Land Registry in 2025 (Price Paid file, queried 3 June 2026 against the 30.98M-row dataset), every one needed an SDLT return — and any buyer claiming the non-resident surcharge back must rebuild their movement file in enough detail to satisfy an HMRC compliance check. This piece walks through what evidence HMRC's published manuals say they accept, what they say they treat as weak, and the Schedule 36 power that lets them ask third parties — letting agents, employers, schools — for the same records.

The 183-day test, in one paragraph

Schedule 9A FA 2003 paragraph 4 is short. A buyer is non-resident for SDLT purposes on the effective date of a transaction unless they were present in the UK on at least 183 days during any continuous period of 365 days falling within the period beginning 364 days before, and ending 365 days after, the effective date. The test window is therefore 730 days wide — roughly two years — and the qualifying year can slide anywhere inside it. The SDLT residency test is statutorily distinct from the income-tax Statutory Residence Test (FA 2013 Schedule 45) and the two can give different answers on the same facts; the conflation is covered in detail in our SDLT vs SRT comparison piece.

Because the qualifying year is forward-looking as well as backward, a buyer who was non-resident at completion can become resident retrospectively by spending enough of the following year in the UK. That is the route to the surcharge refund explained in our refund-claim explainer. The 2-year window for amending the SDLT return runs under Schedule 9A paragraph 8 and Schedule 10 FA 2003.

What counts as a "day of presence"

SDLTM09870 sets the midnight rule: an individual is present in the UK on a day if they are physically in the UK at the end of that day — midnight local time. The rule is deliberately mechanical, partly to avoid disputes about partial-day presence and partly to mirror the long-established income-tax "end-of-day" test that pre-dated the SRT.

That has three immediate consequences for evidence:

1. Departure days do not count if the buyer is outside the UK at midnight — a 6am Heathrow departure removes that day from the count, even if the buyer was in London the previous evening.
2. Arrival days do count if the buyer is in the UK at midnight — a late-evening Heathrow arrival adds a day, even if only the last 90 minutes were spent on UK soil.
3. Pure transit — airside connections at Heathrow or Gatwick without clearing UK immigration — does not count, because the traveller is not legally present in the UK. HMRC's published guidance treats the transit lounge as outside the UK for SDLT and SRT purposes alike.

There is no de minimis carve-out for transit that involves clearing immigration. A traveller who clears UK Border Force to meet a connecting flight, then re-boards airside, is present in the UK at any midnight that falls between those two events.

Evidence HMRC accepts vs evidence HMRC treats as weak

The SDLT manual is more candid than the income-tax SRT guidance about what HMRC will and will not treat as proof. The pattern is consistent: contemporaneous documents from third parties beat anything generated by the taxpayer after the fact.

The pattern HMRC's published guidance returns to is contemporaneity. A boarding pass scanned the morning of the flight is worth more than a flight booking made three weeks earlier; a hotel folio printed at checkout is worth more than a reservation confirmation; a school attendance register dated weekly is worth more than a letter the head teacher writes two years later.

This is the same evidence-quality hierarchy that surfaces repeatedly in the refund-failure case patterns: claims fail when the file is thin, the file is retrospective, or the file relies on the buyer's own records rather than third parties.

The Schedule 36 power: HMRC can ask the third parties themselves

The 2008 Finance Act gave HMRC a general information-notice power, sitting in Schedule 36. The power applies to SDLT enquiries through the cross-referencing provisions in Schedule 10 FA 2003 and the SDLT manual's compliance pages.

In practice, when HMRC opens a compliance check into a non-resident surcharge refund claim, the inspector can issue an information notice not only to the taxpayer but to:

• The letting agent or estate agent — confirming the address the buyer used and the period of any tenancy.
• The employer — confirming dates worked, location of work, and any business-travel pattern.
• The school — confirming registration dates and attendance.
• The conveyancer who acted on the purchase — confirming the address used on the SDLT return and any residency declarations made.
• The hotel chain or short-let host — confirming booking dates against the buyer's evidence file.

The third-party notice route is set out in Schedule 36 paragraphs 2 and 5. There is a 30-day window in which the recipient of the notice (or the taxpayer, depending on the paragraph) can appeal to the First-tier Tribunal on grounds of unreasonableness, privilege or unduly onerous burden. The procedural mechanics are dense; the paragraph 30 "unduly onerous" appeal route and the privileged-material carve-outs in paragraphs 23 to 25 sit on the same statutory page and matter materially in practice.

The result, from a buyer's perspective, is that the evidence file the buyer assembles for a surcharge refund claim is only ever a starting point. If HMRC opens an enquiry, the inspector can — and routinely does — ask the same third parties the same questions, and any discrepancy between what the buyer files and what the third parties confirm becomes a live issue.

Practical evidence stack for the 183-day count

Buyers preparing a refund claim under the gov.uk dedicated service typically assemble four documentary tranches:

Travel records

• Every used boarding pass, ferry ticket or rail ticket across the 730-day window.
• Passport pages showing UK and non-UK immigration stamps (still useful for non-eGate routes).
• e-Gate / UK Border Force traveller history — available by subject access request to the Home Office where the buyer needs the underlying data.
• Credit-card statements showing UK card-present transactions on disputed days.

UK-presence anchors

• Hotel folios and Airbnb receipts in the buyer's name.
• A tenancy agreement (if the buyer was renting in the UK before completion) and council tax bills.
• Mobile phone bills showing UK network connection on disputed days.

Third-party UK activity

• Employer letter confirming days worked from UK premises, with payroll records.
• School registration and attendance records for any dependent children.
• GP / NHS letters confirming attendance dates.

Pattern evidence

• A running spreadsheet, with each day flagged as UK or non-UK, cross-referenced to specific source documents.
• The spreadsheet is the index, not the evidence — each row points at a contemporaneous document.

HMRC's published practice (per SDLTM09870 and the SDLT compliance internal manual) is to start with the spreadsheet, sample-test a handful of disputed days against the source documents, and escalate to a full Schedule 36 enquiry only if the sample reveals material gaps.

Partial days, transit and the awkward edge cases

Three edge cases recur in published HMRC guidance:

1. Airside transit — the traveller is on UK soil but has not entered the UK for immigration purposes. SDLTM09870 treats this as outside the UK; the same treatment applies under the SRT.
2. Landside transit (cleared immigration) — the traveller has entered the UK. If they are still on UK soil at midnight (a delayed connecting flight that overnights), the day counts. Boarding passes for both legs and any hotel folio for an overnight stay are the strongest evidence.
3. Cruise / ferry day — a passenger on a cross-Channel ferry at midnight is treated by HMRC as outside the UK if the vessel is in international waters at the moment of midnight UK time. The point is mechanical but HMRC will accept the ferry operator's published timetable as evidence.

There is a fourth, awkward case: deemed days. The SRT has a concept of "exceptional circumstances" that can disregard up to 60 UK days the individual was forced to spend in the UK (serious illness, family bereavement, hostile event abroad). The SDLT residency test in Schedule 9A FA 2003 does not have an equivalent carve-out. A buyer who spent 200 days in the UK because of a forced repatriation cannot, on the published guidance, exclude any of those days from the SDLT count even though the income-tax SRT would let them disregard up to 60. This is one of the cleanest divergences between the two tests.

How this fits into a typical refund claim

A non-resident buyer who completes on a £500,000 London flat pays £25,000 SDLT (£15,000 standard plus £10,000 non-resident surcharge — cross-checked against the live stamp duty calculator on 3 June 2026). The 2% surcharge is the £10,000 the buyer wants back. The 2% surcharge mechanic itself is explained in our non-UK resident SDLT guide.

The refund route, under Schedule 9A paragraph 8 + Schedule 10 FA 2003, requires:

1. The buyer to spend at least 183 days in the UK during a continuous 365-day period falling within the 730-day window straddling the effective date — the qualifying year usually runs from the effective date forward.
2. The buyer to amend the SDLT return within 2 years of the effective date, using the dedicated gov.uk online service.
3. The buyer to retain the evidence file in case HMRC opens a compliance check.

Step 1 is the statute; step 2 is the procedure; step 3 — the evidence file — is what this piece is about. Try the True Cost tool for a prime central London postcode like W1K 1AA to see how the 2% surcharge sits alongside the standard SDLT, council tax, EPC running cost and notional mortgage at the current Bank of England quoted 5-year fixed rate.

What this is not

This is not advice on whether to claim a refund, what evidence to gather in any specific case, or how a particular HMRC officer will weight the file. It is a summary of the published rules and the documented evidence treatment, drawn from HMRC's SDLT and compliance manuals, FA 2003 Schedule 9A, FA 2008 Schedule 36 and the gov.uk service page.

Refund claims that turn on contested evidence are routinely resolved at the First-tier Tribunal, where the burden is on the taxpayer to establish residency on the balance of probabilities. The published Tribunal decisions on the SDLT residency point are still few — most disputes settle in correspondence — but the consistent thread is that the strength of the file matters more than the eloquence of the witness statement.

Speak to a qualified tax adviser or SDLT specialist before acting. This piece is general information about the published HMRC rules and evidence practice, not personal tax advice.

Based on HM Land Registry Price Paid data (30.98M transactions queried 3 June 2026), HMRC SDLT and compliance internal manuals, and the gov.uk non-resident SDLT surcharge refund service. See more in our Cost Intelligence guides.