Inheritance Tax connects to an individual through a statutory test. From 6 April 2025 that test is residence. The Finance Act 2025 substituted a new connecting factor into the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 by inserting sections 6A, 6B, and 6C, and by omitting the older deemed-domicile machinery at section 267. The substantive Finance Act provision is section 44, subsection (3) of which inserts the new sections and subsection (4) of which sets the commencement date. The new test is mechanical, looks at 20 tax years of residence history, and produces a binary answer for each tax year: an individual is either a long-term UK resident or they are not.

This page is the statutory-pillar companion to the IHT policy headline page on the April 2025 LTR regime. The headline page covers the regime change at a portfolio-investor angle, including transitional protections at the 30 October 2024 Budget date, the Schedule A1 look-through, and the Budget 2025 anti-avoidance package. This page covers the operative statutory mechanics: the verbatim section 6A test, the eight-row tail-period table at section 6A(3), the alternative loss route at section 6A(2), the section 6B variation for individuals under age 20, the omission of the historic section 267, and one worked example for the 15-year-residence cohort that is most common among landlords planning a departure. The two pages are companions, not duplicates: read the headline page for the policy framing; read this page when you need to apply the statute.

The single statutory test at section 6A: ten of the previous twenty tax years

The text of section 6A subsection (1) reads, in current form on the statute book:

"An individual is a 'long-term UK resident' at all times in a tax year if they were UK resident for at least 10 of the previous 20 tax years."

The test takes the tax year in question, looks at the 20 tax years immediately preceding it, counts the UK-resident years in that window, and asks whether the count is at least 10. If yes, the individual is a long-term UK resident at all times in the current tax year. If no, the individual is not. The test is binary for each tax year and is applied independently to each tax year.

"UK resident" for section 6A is the Statutory Residence Test concept from Schedule 45 of the Finance Act 2013, brought in by section 6A(5) of the Inheritance Tax Act. There is no separate IHT residence test post-FA-2025; the same SRT cascade (automatic overseas tests, automatic UK tests, sufficient-ties test) determines residence for IHT as for income tax and capital gains tax. A tax year is either UK-resident or it is not. Split-year treatment, where SRT treats part of a year as UK-resident and part as overseas, does not produce a partial count for section 6A: the year is either a UK-resident year or it is not, and an SRT split-year analysis still resolves to one classification for the year as a whole. The split-year mechanics affect when income and gains are sourced; they do not divide a tax year for section 6A counting purposes.

House-style guidance often presents the section 6A test as "10 consecutive tax years OR 10 of the previous 20", which is the HMRC consumer-guidance shorthand. The two presentations describe the same population. An individual who has been UK resident for 10 consecutive tax years has, by definition, been UK resident for 10 of the most-recent 20 tax years (the 10 consecutive years are a subset of the 20-year window). The statutory route is the single 10-of-20 test; the 10-consecutive framing is a readable subset that is easy to verify for clients who are continuously UK-resident. The two are not distinct alternative routes into long-term-resident status; one is shorthand for the other.

The 10-consecutive framing does, however, appear as a separate route in section 6A subsection (2) for the question of how to lose long-term-resident status once attained. See the dedicated section on the section 6A(2) loss routes below.

What long-term UK resident status does to your IHT scope

The relevance of the section 6A test is to UK IHT scope, which is set in section 6 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984. Post-FA-2025, section 6(1) reads:

"Property situated outside the United Kingdom is excluded property if the person beneficially entitled to it is an individual who is not a long-term UK resident."

Section 6(1A) carries the same long-term-resident framing across to holdings in authorised unit trusts and shares in open-ended investment companies. The pre-FA-2025 wording referred to "domiciled outside the United Kingdom"; the Finance Act 2025 substitution at section 44(2) replaced that with the long-term-resident reference. Section 44(4) sets the commencement: 6 April 2025.

The operative effect is that non-long-term-resident individuals are within UK IHT only on UK situs property; long-term-resident individuals are within UK IHT on worldwide property. UK situs property remains within UK IHT under every limb of the regime, regardless of the owner's residence status. Schedule A1 IHTA 1984, in force from 6 April 2017, brings UK residential property held via offshore company into UK IHT scope by treating the company's value-attributable-to-UK-residential-property as if owned directly. Schedule A1 was not amended by FA 2025 and remains operative in the same form.

The section 6A(3) tail-period table, verbatim and in full

Once long-term-resident status is established, departure from the UK does not immediately end it. The individual remains long-term resident (and worldwide-asset IHT exposed) for a tail period of consecutive non-UK-resident tax years. The length of the tail depends on the count of UK-resident years in the 20-year window. Section 6A(3) sets out the table:

Prior UK-resident tax years (within the 20-year reference window)Required consecutive non-UK tax years to lose long-term-resident status
13 or fewer3
144
155
166
177
188
199
20 (all 20 years UK resident)10

The table runs in single-year increments from 14 to 20 prior UK-resident years; the row for "13 or fewer" collapses everything from 10 to 13 prior UK-resident years into a uniform 3-year tail. The structural logic is that every year of UK residence beyond 13 adds one extra year to the tail, capped at the full 10 years for an individual who has been UK resident for all 20 of the prior tax years.

For practical advice work, the most-frequent table-rows in landlord-emigrant cases are the 14 to 18 rows. Long-resident landlords with 19 or 20 prior UK-resident years are a minority cohort; the 13-or-fewer row catches individuals who have been UK resident for between 10 and 13 of the previous 20 years (typically expat returners or part-period residents). Each row tells the same story: the tail is mechanical, derives from the residence history, and runs in consecutive non-UK tax years.

Two practical points about the table. First, the tail clock is consecutive non-UK tax years. A return to the UK before the tail expires breaks the run, and the count restarts (subject to the section 6A(2) routes discussed below). Second, the tail clock starts at the beginning of the first full non-UK tax year, not at the date of physical departure within a tax year. A landlord who leaves the UK on, say, 1 February 2026 (during the 2025-26 tax year) may still be UK resident under SRT for 2025-26 (the year of departure typically does count as UK resident absent split-year treatment); the tail clock starts at the beginning of 2026-27 if that is the first full non-UK year.

The two routes out of long-term-resident status: section 6A(2)

Section 6A subsection (2) provides two distinct routes by which an individual can lose long-term-resident status. Both routes must run to completion before the status falls away.

  1. Route (a): the 10-consecutive-non-UK-years route. An individual loses long-term-resident status if they have been non-UK resident for 10 consecutive tax years within the prior 19 tax years. This is the hard reset. It always works, regardless of prior UK residence count: 10 consecutive non-UK tax years are sufficient to clear the long-term-resident designation.
  2. Route (b): the section 6A(3) table route. An individual loses long-term-resident status after the number of consecutive non-UK tax years specified in the section 6A(3) table for their prior UK-resident-year count, ending with the tax year before the current one. This is the tapered tail described in the section above.

For an individual with 13 or fewer prior UK-resident years, the two routes produce the same result for the first 3 years (both require at least 3 consecutive non-UK years); the route (a) ten-consecutive route only matters at the longer-tail end. For an individual with 19 or 20 prior UK-resident years, the route (a) ten-consecutive-non-UK-years rule is the binding constraint that caps the tail at 10 years. For the typical 14 to 18 prior-UK-year cohort, the route (b) table is the operative tail (because the table number is shorter than 10), and route (a) is a backup that does not bind.

The interaction means the 10-consecutive-non-UK-years rule is the upper bound on any tail period; no individual can be drawn out for more than 10 consecutive non-UK years under section 6A. The table at 6A(3) reduces the tail below 10 for individuals with fewer than 20 prior UK-resident years.

Worked example: a landlord with 15 of the previous 20 tax years UK resident

Take a hypothetical landlord, Singh-Ahmed, who was born in the UK, lived continuously in the UK from 2011 to early 2025, accumulated a London-and-Birmingham BTL portfolio worth £1.8 million at notional death, and departed the UK on 30 March 2026 to take a long-term role in Singapore. At the point of departure, Singh-Ahmed's 20-year residence window covers 2006-07 to 2025-26. Within that window, they were UK resident for 15 tax years (2011-12 to 2025-26 inclusive) and non-UK resident for 5 tax years (2006-07 to 2010-11).

Apply the section 6A(1) test for the 2025-26 tax year. The 20-year reference window for 2025-26 is 2005-06 to 2024-25 (the 20 tax years before the current year). Singh-Ahmed was UK resident for 14 of those tax years (2011-12 to 2024-25). The 10-of-20 threshold is satisfied; Singh-Ahmed is long-term UK resident for 2025-26. Their worldwide assets (the UK BTL portfolio plus £600,000 of Singapore investments accumulated alongside the UK portfolio) are within UK IHT scope.

Now apply the s.6A(3) tail to the post-departure years. From 2026-27 the residence window rolls forward by one year. Singh-Ahmed is non-UK resident from 2026-27 onwards (assume continuous Singapore residence under SRT). The s.6A(3) lookup uses prior UK-resident years in the 20-year window. In 2026-27 the window is 2006-07 to 2025-26, of which 15 are UK-resident. The table row for 15 prior UK-resident years gives a 5-year tail.

The 5-year tail counts consecutive non-UK tax years from the year immediately following the loss of UK residence. Singh-Ahmed's residence ceases at 5 April 2026; the first non-UK tax year is 2026-27. Five consecutive non-UK tax years run from 2026-27 through 2030-31 inclusive. Long-term-resident status falls away from 6 April 2031, the start of 2031-32. From that date Singh-Ahmed's Singapore assets are outside UK IHT scope (subject to a continuing absence; a return to the UK in 2031-32 or later would re-engage the section 6A(1) test on a fresh 20-year window).

Dying inside the tail. If Singh-Ahmed dies in 2028-29 (the third year of non-residence, still within the 5-year tail), the full worldwide estate is in UK IHT scope: £1.8m UK BTL plus £600k Singapore assets, total £2.4m. Net of NRB £325,000 and RNRB (reduced to nil by the £2m taper, which removes £1 of RNRB for every £2 of estate over £2m), chargeable value is roughly £2,075,000 at 40%, an IHT charge of approximately £830,000.

Dying after the tail expires. If Singh-Ahmed dies in 2032-33 (the year following expiry of the 5-year tail), the UK BTL portfolio at £1.8m is in scope, but the Singapore assets are now outside UK IHT. Estate value for UK IHT is £1.8m; net of NRB £325k and (this time) full RNRB £175k (because £1.8m sits below the £2m taper), chargeable value is £1.3m at 40%, an IHT charge of £520,000.

The 5-year tail under section 6A(3) is therefore worth £310,000 to Singh-Ahmed's estate, on these illustrative numbers. The shape of the answer (UK situs always in scope; non-UK situs in scope during the tail and out after) is structurally the same for any 14-to-18-prior-UK-year departing landlord; the value scales with the non-UK estate.

The section 6B young-person variation

Section 6B modifies the section 6A test for individuals who are under 20 years old at the start of the current tax year. The substitutions in s.6B(2) read:

  • The "20" in section 6A becomes the number of whole tax years for which the individual was alive before the current tax year.
  • The "10" in section 6A becomes half of that number, rounded up.

So for a 12-year-old in tax year 2026-27, the section 6B-modified test asks whether the individual was UK resident in at least 6 of the 11 whole tax years they were alive before 2026-27 (born 2014 implies 11 whole tax years alive: 2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23, 2023-24, 2024-25). The 6-of-11 threshold reaches the same proportion of life-as-UK-resident as the 10-of-20 adult test does for someone who has been alive for at least 20 tax years.

Section 6B(3) creates a hard carve-out:

"An individual is not a long-term UK resident at any time in a tax year if they were under the age of 1 (or were not yet born) immediately before the tax year."

The under-1 rule removes infants and unborn individuals from the long-term-resident designation entirely, regardless of family or trust structure. This is useful in trust-of-minor contexts (a discretionary trust where the youngest beneficiary class includes an infant) because the infant's status cannot pull the trust toward IHT exposure even where older family members are long-term resident. The section 6B test re-engages from the start of the first tax year in which the individual is at least 1 year old at the start.

Section 6B is rarely the operative test in routine landlord advice, but it matters in three specific contexts: (i) family-investment-company succession to under-20 beneficiaries (the FIC growth-share gift recipient's IHT status can affect the cumulative gift analysis); (ii) trust-of-minor structures where a young beneficiary is a settlor (rare, but the settlor's LTR status drives the trust IHT scope under FA 2025 architecture); and (iii) any IHT planning that depends on the LTR status of a minor (rare in landlord practice but worth flagging for adviser due-diligence purposes).

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Why section 267 deemed-domicile no longer applies

The pre-FA-2025 IHT framework determined scope by reference to common-law domicile, augmented by a deemed-domicile rule at section 267 IHTA 1984. The headline deemed-domicile rule was the 15-of-20 test (UK resident in 15 of the previous 20 tax years made an individual deemed UK domiciled, regardless of common-law domicile), with a 3-year shadow on departure (deemed-domicile status persisted for 3 tax years after the individual ceased UK residence). Section 267 also covered domicile-of-origin reversion and the various transitional rules.

Finance Act 2025 omitted section 267 with effect from 6 April 2025. The omission is total: the freestanding deemed-domicile concept is no longer part of the Inheritance Tax Act. The replacement framework is sections 6A, 6B, and 6C, the long-term-resident test described above. Advice and competitor pages that cite section 267 for any tax year from 2025-26 onwards are working from stale law, and should be treated with caution.

Two narrower sections survive in the 267-range but are unrelated to deemed domicile. Section 267ZA permits an election into UK-domiciled treatment for spouse-exemption purposes only where the spousal connection condition is satisfied for a date before 6 April 2025 within the 7-year window: a legacy gateway for pre-reform connections. Sections 267ZC to 267ZF were inserted by FA 2025 and provide a new spousal-only election framework into long-term-resident treatment, with two conditions (A and B) both requiring a spouse or civil partner who is or was long-term UK resident within a 7-year window. Neither route is a freestanding election available to any individual; both require a spousal connection. The mechanical detail is covered in the dedicated Wave 8 spouse-exemption page.

How the long-term-resident test connects with the SRT and split-year treatment

Section 6A(5) cross-references the Statutory Residence Test at Schedule 45 FA 2013 for the residence count. Split-year treatment under Schedule 45 Part 3 (Cases 1 to 8) treats certain tax years as comprising a UK part and an overseas part, with the individual being UK-resident in the UK part and treated as non-resident in the overseas part for some purposes. The split affects when income and gains are sourced.

For section 6A, split-year mechanics do not produce a partial residence count. Schedule 45 still resolves a split year to UK residence overall, and section 6A asks only whether the individual was UK resident in the tax year. A split-year departure still produces a UK-resident year in the section 6A count; the next tax year, if fully non-UK-resident, is the first 0-count year.

Practical implication: timing a departure mid-tax-year does not save a year for section 6A purposes. The earliest the s.6A(3) tail clock can start is the first full non-UK tax year following the year of departure.

How section 6A relates to the rest of Wave 8 Bucket A

Three other Bucket A territories build on the section 6A architecture. The settlor-LTR pivot for excluded-property trusts, where a trust's IHT scope now depends on the settlor's LTR status at the time of addition rather than on domicile, is in the EPT settlor-pivot page covering new IHTA s.48ZA. The s.18 spouse exemption mechanics, including the s.18(2A) by-reference NRB cap for non-LTR receiving spouses and the s.267ZC SPOUSAL election with its two qualifying conditions, are in the spouse-exemption companion page. The interaction with returning to the UK after a period of non-residence (TCGA s.10A 5-year recapture plus FIG eligibility) is in the returning-to-UK companion page.

The income-side reforms in the same Finance Act 2025 package (the Foreign Income and Gains regime, the Temporary Repatriation Facility, the CGT rebasing election) are separate territory: they operate on different tax bases. The same individual can be in scope for one and out of scope for the other in the same tax year.

What this page does not cover

The s.18 spouse-exemption mechanics, the s.267ZC SPOUSAL election in detail, the EPT settlor-LTR pivot at s.6, the Schedule A1 look-through, the SRT day-count tests, and the FIG / TRF / rebasing / returning-to-UK siblings each have their own dedicated pages (linked above). For the descriptive IHT pillar covering reliefs (BPR, APR, RNRB, the £2m taper) and the headline charge, see Inheritance Tax on Rental Property Portfolios: UK Guide 2026. For the planning framework that integrates the LTR regime with the April 2026 BPR/APR cap and April 2027 pension reform, see IHT Decision Framework for UK Landlords.

Statutory and HMRC sources cited above: Inheritance Tax Act 1984 section 6A; Inheritance Tax Act 1984 section 6B; Inheritance Tax Act 1984 section 6; Finance Act 2025 section 44; Finance Act 2025 Schedule 13; Finance Act 2013 Schedule 45 (Statutory Residence Test); HMRC IHTM47020: Long-term UK residence test; gov.uk: Changes to the taxation of non-UK domiciled individuals.