Last verified with Chinese Government sources:

Chinese tax residence turns on a day count, and the day count is stricter than almost everyone assumes. Under Announcement No. 34 of 2019 from the Ministry of Finance and the tax administration, a day only counts if you were in China for a full 24 hours — so arrival days and departure days do not count at all. Someone who spends every weekend in Hong Kong loses three days a week, not one, and so comes much closer to the 183-day line. This counts the days for you.

What this does and does not do

It counts days of presence under the 24-hour rule, and flags a single absence long enough to restart the six-year clock. It does not calculate tax, it knows nothing about your income, your treaty position or your domicile, and it is not advice. Domicile is a separate test that can make you resident regardless of days. Where real money turns on the answer, that is a question for a China-qualified adviser. The tax guide sets out the brackets, the deductions and the six-year rule in full.

The rule, in one paragraph

There are two independent residence tests and either one makes you a resident. The first is domicile — habitual residence by reason of household registration, family or economic interests — which catches almost no foreigner. The second is the one that bites: presence in China for 183 days or more, cumulatively, in a calendar tax year. There is no part-year residency; status is decided for the whole year.

Day counting is where people go wrong. A day counts only if you were in China for the full 24 hours. Cross to Hong Kong on a Friday evening and come back on the Sunday evening and none of those three days counts — the departure day and the return day are each under 24 hours, and you were not in China in between. That is the calculation this tool performs.

The 24-hour rule and the 30-day absence rule below are both in MOF/STA Announcement No. 34 of 2019 ↗, in force since 1 January 2019.

The six-year rule, and the trap inside it

If you have no domicile in China, income from outside China that is paid by an entity or individual outside China is exempt in a year you are resident, provided you record-file (备案) with your in-charge tax bureau — unless each of the six years before it had 183 days or more and no single absence of more than 30 days. The run of qualifying years breaks in two ways, and they work differently. A year under 183 days is not a qualifying year, and you are not resident in it anyway.

A single continuous absence of more than 30 days in a year of 183 days or more does not protect that year (it is still taxed on worldwide income if its own six prior years qualify), but it breaks the run, which restarts from the following year. In the officials’ own example ↗, Mr Zhang’s absence from 1 February to 15 March 2025 left 2025 taxed on worldwide income and made 2026 exempt again. The word that trips people is single (one unbroken trip). Several shorter absences adding up to thirty-odd days do nothing at all.

Announcement No. 34 does not say how the 30 days are measured, or which year an absence over New Year belongs to; this tool counts nights away and flags 30–31 nights as too close to call.

The 183-day test and the 24-hour rule apply from tax year 2019; before then the test was a full year of residence. The six-year count also starts in 2019, so the first possible run was 2019–2024, and 2025 was the first year anyone could be taxed on worldwide income under this rule. That is why this tool will not accept a year before 2019.

Use it, link to it, check it

This page is free to link to and quote. The rules it implements are published by the Chinese authorities:

If you think the arithmetic is wrong I would rather hear about it than not: [email protected].