residex.ioEvery trip accounted forUAE Tax Residency: the 183-Day and 90-Day Tests
A rolling twelve months, and a certificate that treaties turn on
Why residency matters in a country with no income tax
The UAE levies no personal income tax, so being resident costs you nothing locally. What it buys is a tax residency certificate — the document another country, or a tax treaty tie-breaker, asks for when you say you are no longer resident there. Someone who has left Europe for Dubai and cannot show UAE residence may find their old country still counts them as its own.
A rolling window, not a calendar year
The 183 days are measured over any period of twelve consecutive months, not the calendar year. So a stay that straddles New Year is not split into two harmless halves: October to April is six months, and it is six months in the window whichever year it starts in.
residex.io measures UAE presence over a rolling twelve months for that reason, and reports the highest load the window reached rather than a per-year figure.
The shorter test
A UAE national, a GCC national, or a holder of a valid UAE residence permit meets the test on 90 days in twelve months, provided they also have a permanent place of residence in the UAE or carry on employment or a business there. And regardless of days, someone whose usual or primary residence and centre of financial and personal interests are in the UAE is resident.
The certificate itself is applied for through the Federal Tax Authority and requires evidence: entry and exit records, a lease, and proof of the days claimed. This is where a reliable day record earns its keep.
What residex.io does about it
Residex counts your days in the UAE over a rolling twelve-month window, arrival and departure days included, warns as you approach 183, and can notify you on the date a planned trip would take you across it. The 90-day test depends on your visa and your home, which it does not know; if you rely on that test, treat 90 as your own line.
Who needs to watch this
- People who moved to Dubai or Abu Dhabi and still travel constantly
- Anyone applying for a UAE tax residency certificate
- Consultants and founders splitting time between the Gulf and Europe
- Anyone whose old home country has questioned the move
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.