Digital nomads optimize calendars. Tax authorities litigate life facts. Day counts help, but housing, family, work, and records decide claimability. Here is a residency proof framework and audit-file structure that beats spreadsheet thinking.
Noah is a remote professional who lives in seasons. He spends spring in one country, summer in another, and autumn somewhere cheaper, quieter, and easier. He tracks days diligently. He avoids the numbers that trigger dinner-table warnings. He keeps screenshots of flights.
Then a bank asks for a CRS self-certification update, and a tax authority asks where his “centre of life” really is.
Noah assumes this is still a day-count argument. He offers the spreadsheet.
But the questions that follow are not about math. They are about life:
This is why “days count” is not a strategy. It is one input.
In the UK, HMRC’s guidance on record keeping for the Statutory Residence Test explicitly references connections such as family, accommodation, work, and time spent in the UK, and instructs individuals to keep information and records that allow them to work out where they spent days and midnights, including travel schedules, booking info, and tickets.
That is already the hint: the test is not only days. It is ties.
In Spain, the tax agency’s residency guidance states that residence can be determined by spending more than 183 days in Spain, and also by having the main core or base of activities or economic interests in Spain, directly or indirectly.
Nomad life tends to create “soft ties” everywhere. The problem is that soft ties can still add up to claimability when one country has enough evidence to assert you are theirs.
A major confusion point for nomads is mixing immigration permission with tax outcomes.
Spain’s Digital Nomad Visa is positioned as a consular service for remote work in Spain, listing requirements around employment or self-employment and remote work documentation. Separately, Spain’s tax agency describes the tax-residency tests, including the 183-day presence test and the “core of economic interests” test.
Those are different systems with different purposes.
Portugal similarly lists “Remote Work / Digital Nomad” as a category within its national visas framework, which is an immigration classification. Whether you become tax resident still depends on domestic tax rules and your facts.
This split creates a practical risk: You can be lawfully present as a “digital nomad,” and still end up tax resident in a country based on days, housing availability, and economic ties.
The second risk is dual residency. If two jurisdictions can credibly assert you, you may rely on treaty tie-breakers. But treaty logic is evidence hungry. It does not reward vagueness. It rewards proof.
Who this playbook is for:
Conditions that need to be true:
Organize your proof into categories. Days are only one category.
Spain explicitly includes an “economic interests” test in its residency criteria.
HMRC explicitly advises keeping records that enable calculating where days and midnights were spent, including tickets and booking information.
Create a digital folder for each tax year:
If a question arises, you are not searching email for months. You are producing a coherent file.
From diagnostic to decision-ready in minutes:
Answer a structured assessment, receive your wealth stage and risk signals, then follow a clear, personalized pathway to education, advisory, or diligence.
Risks and frictions (do not skip):
Nomad culture often sells freedom. The durable version adds systems:
The strongest operators do not try to disappear. They stay legible.
Types of actors to speak to first:
Recommended sequence:
“Days are countable. Life is claimable.”
Key datapoints box:
Key sources used: HMRC Residence and FIG Manual record-keeping guidance, Spain Agencia Tributaria residency guidance (including Art. 9 IRPF references), Spain consulate Digital Nomad Visa page, Portugal national visas “type of visa” page listing remote work/digital nomad.
Standard I-Invest disclosure: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal, tax, or migration advice. Seek independent professional advice.
