Virginia Tax Residency (183-day actual residency rule)

Key parameters
Threshold	183 days
Period / Window	Tax year (1 Jan – 31 Dec)
Counting	Any part of a day, transit excluded
Alternative	Domicile
Additional requirements	Place of abode in Virginia

This applies to anyone with a place to stay in Virginia, whichever state they treat as their own. Virginia is unusual in naming its two routes as separate classes of resident:

• Domiciliary resident — Virginia is your permanent place of residence, the place you intend to return to even while living elsewhere.
• Actual resident — you maintained a place of abode in Virginia for an aggregate of more than 183 days of the tax year, whatever your domicile.

Both classes are taxed as residents. Someone can be an actual resident of Virginia and a domiciliary resident of another state in the same year, and both states will treat the year as a resident year.

Changing domicile requires two things together: abandoning the Virginia domicile with no intention of returning, and acquiring a new one by being physically present somewhere else intending to stay permanently or indefinitely.

• Transit days are excluded, but only pure transit. A part-day spent solely on the way to somewhere outside Virginia does not count, while a day that includes any other activity does.
• Two classes, one tax treatment. Actual residents and domiciliary residents are taxed the same way, so the distinction matters for how you are caught rather than for what you pay.
• You can be an actual resident here and domiciled elsewhere. Two states can treat the same year as a resident year, with credits closing only part of the gap.
• Leaving needs a new domicile, not just an absence. Abandoning Virginia is not enough on its own; you must acquire a domicile somewhere else.
• Northern Virginia commuting is the common trap. Regular short crossings from the District or Maryland add full days unless they were purely transit.

A resident is taxed on income from all sources while a nonresident pays only on Virginia-source income, so an error usually surfaces as out-of-state earnings never reported while another state taxed the same income. 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.

An apartment across the river

You are domiciled in the District of Columbia and keep an Arlington apartment, spending most nights there. The place of abode is maintained and your count passes 183 days, so you are an actual resident of Virginia.

Driving through on the way south

You pass through Virginia on roughly 30 occasions each year heading to the Carolinas, never stopping for anything but fuel. Those part-days are solely in transit to a destination outside the state, so they are excluded.

A move that never completed

You leave Virginia for a long overseas contract but establish no new permanent home and intend to come back. Domicile never changed, so you remain a domiciliary resident whatever your day count.

• Code of Virginia — Section 58.1-302, definitions
• Virginia Administrative Code — 23VAC10-110-30, definitions