North Dakota Tax Residency (7-month rule)

Key parameters
Threshold	7 months (~210 days)
Period / Window	Tax year (1 Jan – 31 Dec)
Counting	Any part of a day
Alternative	Domicile
Additional requirements	Permanent place of abode

This applies to anyone keeping a home in North Dakota while treating another state as their own. You are a resident if either of these applies:

• Domicile — North Dakota is your permanent home, the place you intend to return to whenever you are away.
• Abode plus days — you maintain a permanent place of abode in the state and spend more than 210 days of the tax year there.

North Dakota is specific about the home. A permanent place of abode is any house, apartment or other shelter with adequate cooking and bathing facilities, capable of sustaining year-round living and permanently maintained. Shelter without those facilities does not qualify however long you occupy it.

Two groups sit outside the rule entirely: members of the United States armed forces, and full-year residents of Minnesota or Montana, who are covered by reciprocity arrangements with those states.

• Facilities decide it, not comfort. A shelter without both adequate cooking and bathing facilities is not a permanent place of abode however habitable it feels.
• Reciprocity removes whole populations. Full-year residents of Minnesota and Montana are outside the day rule entirely, whatever their North Dakota count.
• Serving military are excluded. Members of the United States armed forces do not fall under the statutory route.
• Seven months is 210 days, not 180. Reading "seven months" as half a year understates the allowance by about a month.
• Domicile carries no threshold. Someone domiciled in North Dakota is a resident on that basis alone, so the count is beside the point until domicile changes.

A resident is taxed on income from all sources while a nonresident pays only on North Dakota-source income, so an error usually surfaces as out-of-state earnings never reported while another state taxed the same income. The Tax Commissioner charges interest from the original due date and adds penalties for filing late and for underpaying, rising where an understatement is treated as more than an honest mistake. Professional tax advice is strongly recommended in situations like this.

A work camp that does not qualify

You spend 240 days in North Dakota on a rotating energy contract, living in accommodation without its own cooking facilities. The count passes 210 but the abode limb fails, so residency does not attach on this route.

An apartment and a long season

You are domiciled in Texas and rent a Bismarck apartment with a full kitchen and bathroom, spending about 230 days in the state. Both limbs hold, so you are a North Dakota resident for the year.

A neighboring-state resident

You are a full-year Minnesota resident and spend roughly 220 days working in Fargo. Reciprocity places you outside the statutory route, so the day count does not make you a North Dakota resident.

• North Dakota Office of State Tax Commissioner — Resident
• North Dakota Office of State Tax Commissioner — Individual income tax