Lithuania Tax Residency (183-day and 280-day rules)

Key parameters
Threshold	183 days
Period / Window	Calendar year (1 Jan – 31 Dec)
Counting	Any part of a day
Alternative	280 days / 2 years, Permanent residence, Center of interests

Lithuania runs five conditions, and one is enough. They apply to citizens and foreign nationals alike, tested for each tax period:

• Permanent place of residence — your permanent home is in Lithuania.
• Center of interests — your personal, social or economic interests are in Lithuania rather than abroad.
• 183-day rule — you are present in Lithuania for 183 days or more.
• 280-day rule — you are present for 280 days or more across successive tax periods, with 90 days or more in one of them.
• Paid from Lithuanian public funds — you are a Lithuanian citizen meeting neither day test, but your employment income or your living costs abroad come from Lithuanian state or municipal budgets.

Three groups sit outside the day tests even when the numbers are met:

• Foreign diplomatic staff — diplomats and the staff of diplomatic missions, consular posts and international organizations.
• Foreign-state employees — non-citizens whose only Lithuanian income is employment income paid by a foreign state or its authorities for work done in Lithuania.
• Fixed-base arrivals — non-citizens who come solely to carry on individual activities through a fixed base.

Residents are taxed on Lithuanian and foreign income. Nonresidents are taxed on Lithuanian-source income and on income attributed to a fixed base in Lithuania.

• Treaty residence elsewhere can narrow the charge. A foreign citizen who is Lithuanian resident only through the day tests, and who is treaty-resident of another country for the same period, is taxed on Lithuanian-source income alone. That country's competent authority has to notify the Lithuanian tax administrator first.
• A permanent departure can end residence mid-year. After at least 3 successive tax periods as a resident, someone who leaves permanently in the following period and stays under 183 days that year is resident only up to the day of departure.
• Leaving for a low-tax territory can keep you resident for 2 more years. The mid-year exit is switched off for someone departing to a target territory while keeping significant commercial interests in the country. Those are over 25% of a Lithuanian entity or an individual enterprise, or over 30% of income from Lithuanian sources.
• A nonresident can ask to be treated as a resident. Where Lithuanian-source income is at least 90% of your gross income for the tax period, you can apply to the tax administrator for recognition as a resident.

Residents are taxed on worldwide income while nonresidents pay only on Lithuanian-source income, so the usual error surfaces as foreign income left off a return. The State Tax Inspectorate charges default interest for each day of delay. An understatement found on inspection carries a penalty of between 20% and 100% of the missing tax, depending on how the case is judged. Professional tax advice is strongly recommended in situations like this.

A single year over the line

You move to Vilnius in March and stay through November. Counting arrival and departure days, your presence passes 183 days in the calendar year, so you are a Lithuanian resident for that year on the day count alone.

Two years, neither one over 183

You spend 150 days in Lithuania one year and 140 the next. Neither year reaches 183, but the 2 years total 290 and one of them is comfortably over 90, so the 280-day route makes you resident.

Transit that doesn't count

You break a journey between two foreign countries at Vilnius airport and continue 30 hours later. Because the transit took less than 48 hours, those days are left out of your count entirely.

• State Tax Inspectorate — Law on Personal Income Tax (Article 4)
• State Tax Inspectorate — Concept of permanent residents
• OECD — Lithuania: information on residency for tax purposes