residex.ioEvery trip accounted forMalaysia’s 182-Day Rule
Four routes to residence, and a stay that can be linked across New Year
The threshold is 182, and it is only the first test
The familiar test is 182 days or more in the calendar year — one fewer than the 183 most countries use. Malaysia adds three more. A stay of fewer than 182 days still counts if it is part of a continuous period of at least 182 days that runs into or out of an adjacent year, with short temporary absences (business trips, medical treatment, social visits of up to fourteen days) not breaking the continuity.
That linking rule is the one that surprises people. Arrive on 1 October and stay through to mid-April: neither calendar year reaches 182, but the two stays are linked, and both years are resident years.
The 90-day tests
You are also resident if you spent 90 days or more in Malaysia this year and were resident, or present for 90 days or more, in three of the four preceding years. And someone resident in the three preceding years and resident in the following year is treated as resident in the year between, even with no days in it at all.
The point of the extra tests is continuity: a long-standing resident does not drop out of residence because of one travelling year.
Why it matters
The difference is the rate. A non-resident is taxed on Malaysian-source income at a flat rate with no personal reliefs; a resident pays progressive rates and can claim them. Residents are not taxed on foreign-source income in most cases, which is what makes the status attractive to people on the Malaysia My Second Home programme and the digital nomad pass.
What residex.io does about it
Residex counts your days in Malaysia over the calendar year, warns as you approach 182, and can notify you on the date a planned trip would take you past it. It does not apply the linking rule or the 90-day tests, which depend on prior years and on the reason for each absence. If your stays straddle New Year, read the linking rule again.
Who needs to watch this
- Digital nomads on Malaysia’s DE Rantau pass
- Retirees on Malaysia My Second Home
- Anyone with a stay that runs across New Year
- Long-standing residents taking a year away
Counting days is where this stops
Residex tells you exactly where you stand against this threshold and warns you before you cross it. Crossing it is not a conclusion, though: it does not tell you what you owe, whether a treaty offers relief, which forms to file, or how this interacts with residency you already hold elsewhere.
That is where Amanda picks up — turning a day count into a read on your real cross-border obligations.
Track it automatically
Free forever. No account required. Your data never leaves your device.
How residex.io works
residex.io tracks where you have physically been, and tells you where that puts you against each country's own residency threshold.
What it does: • Counts your days per country, and per area for the Schengen 90/180 rule • Applies each country's actual rule — 183 days for most, 180 for Thailand, the UK's 6 April tax year, Portugal's rolling twelve months, and the US weighted three-year test • Counts days the way each rule counts them, including the arrival and departure days that most tests count and a nights-based tally misses • Warns as you approach a threshold, and can notify you on the date a trip you have already planned would take you across it • Exports to CSV, or hands off to Amanda for the compliance picture
Built for digital nomads, frequent travellers, expats, and anyone whose year is split across borders.
On your device, and nowhere else. There is no account, no login, and no copy of your travel history on our servers — residex works offline because the data never needed to be anywhere else.
It leaves your device only when you decide to send it: • A backup file you save yourself • A transfer to another device, encrypted with a code only you hold — the server relaying it cannot read what it is carrying • A hand-off to Amanda, which you start
We do receive a small amount of anonymous usage information — how many trips are in a log, how old an install is, the language the app is used in, and a random identifier that is not linked to you. Never a trip, a date, a destination, or your name. It is listed in full in our Privacy Policy.
The trade-off worth knowing: because your device holds the only copy, clearing your browser data or deleting the app erases it, and we cannot restore it. Save a backup before you switch devices.
No — residex is a day counter, not a compliance engine. It flags when you cross a threshold like the 183-day rule, but turning that into specific filings, tax exposure, or reporting obligations depends on your jurisdictions and personal ties.
For that, our partner Amanda maps your full cross-border legal exposure across countries, surfaces the filings and deadlines you trigger, and turns the data residex collects into a concrete compliance picture you can hand to your accountant.
You can export your residex trips and import them straight into Amanda — the CSV formats are aligned.