Singapore Tax Residency Test

Day count

How many days count for the calendar year? Take whichever is higher — the days you were physically present in Singapore, or the days you exercised an employment in Singapore.

These are two different counts and they can come out a long way apart, so work out both and enter the larger. Days of physical presence are the days you were actually in Singapore. Days of employment are the days a Singapore employment ran, and IRAS states that they include weekends and public holidays, and that absences from Singapore which are temporary (such as overseas leave) or incidental to the employment (such as business trips) are still counted towards the total. In IRAS's own worked example, someone whose Singapore employment ran for most of the year but who spent the greater part of that year away on overseas business trips is treated as a tax resident on the employment measure, even though their days actually in Singapore were far below the threshold. One exception: if you are here as a company director, the employment measure is not open to you — the statute's carve-out attaches to exercising an employment — so count physical presence only. Singapore uses the calendar year as the basis year, assessed in the following Year of Assessment, and the days do not need to be consecutive. IRAS measures a stay inclusively from the date of arrival to the date of departure, so both the arrival day and the departure day fall inside the count — in IRAS's own worked example, an arrival on 3 November and a year end on 31 December give 59 days. IRAS does not publish a rule about part-days, so if your arrival or departure timing is what decides your position, confirm it with IRAS rather than relying on this tool.