Georgia (US State) Tax Residency (183-day rule)

Key parameters
Threshold	183 days
Period / Window	Tax year (1 Jan – 31 Dec)
Counting	Any part of a day
Alternative	Legal residence in Georgia
Additional requirements	Status judged at year-end

This applies to anyone spending substantial time in the US state of Georgia, whichever state they treat as their own. Status is settled at the end of the tax year, and you are a resident if any of these applies:

• Legal residence — Georgia is your legal residence at year-end. This is the route the state's own filing guidance leads with, and it holds even while you are living outside Georgia temporarily.
• Living there on a regular or permanent basis — you reside in the state regularly or permanently rather than as a visitor or sojourner, and are still doing so at year-end.
• The 183-day count — you have been residing in Georgia for 183 days or part-days or longer, in the aggregate, across the tax year.

The statute words that count as a lookback from the last day of the tax year rather than as time spent during it, which comes to the same thing on a calendar year and diverges only for someone whose fiscal year ends on another date.

Leaving is harder than arriving. Someone who has been a Georgia resident stays one until they show two things together: that they have become a legal resident of another state, and that they no longer meet the 183-day count. Doing one without the other leaves residency running.

• The count is not a floating 12-month window. It is measured to the end of the tax year, so a heavy autumn and the following spring fall in different years rather than combining into one total.
• The state's own guidance leads with legal residence. Georgia's filing instructions define residents by legal residence and do not set out the day count, which is why most people never meet it until it is raised.
• Part-days are counted by the statute itself, which puts the partial-day question beyond argument rather than leaving it to guidance.
• Leaving takes two things at once. Becoming a legal resident of another state is not enough on its own if your Georgia day count still passes 183.
• This is the US state, not the country. Georgia the country has an entirely separate tax residency regime with different thresholds and conditions.

A resident is taxed on income from all sources while a nonresident pays only on Georgia-source income, so an error usually surfaces as out-of-state earnings never reported after a move the state does not accept was complete. The Department charges interest from the original due date and adds penalties for filing late and for underpaying, with greater exposure where an understatement is treated as deliberate. Professional tax advice is strongly recommended in situations like this.

Regular short visits that add up

You are domiciled in Florida and travel to Georgia for about three days most weeks across the year. Part-days count expressly and the days need not be consecutive, so those visits aggregate past 183 within the window.

A heavy autumn that still falls short

You arrive in Atlanta in September and stay through to the following August. The first year holds roughly 110 days, under 183, so it is not caught. The second year is counted on its own and passes comfortably.

A move that was never completed

You leave Georgia for an open-ended contract overseas without becoming a legal resident anywhere else. Residency continues, because ending it needs a new legal residence as well as falling below the day count.

• Georgia Code — Section 48-7-1, definitions
• Georgia Department of Revenue — Individual taxes