Maine 183-Day Rule: The Year-Round House Counts
Quinn Moran · September 25, 2026
In Maine, days count toward statutory residency only when there is a permanent place of abode in Maine kept for the entire tax year. Statutory residency needs both that year-round abode and more than 183 days in Maine. Any portion of a day counts as a full day. A seasonal camp or cottage used only for vacations generally is not a permanent place of abode. A year-round house or apartment kept as a household is, whether it is owned or rented.
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Most 183-day rules come down to a single number. Maine's does not. Its statutory residency test has two conditions, and in most summer-house cases the deciding one is not the day count. It is whether a permanent place of abode in Maine was kept for the entire tax year.
That second condition explains why Maine Revenue Services' own examples look backwards at first. A person who spent 274 days in Maine is not a statutory resident. A couple who spent about 200 days there are.
This post covers that one pairing: what the abode condition is, how days are counted against it, and why a year-round Maine house is where the two meet. Domicile, the safe harbors, the forms and the tax rates are covered in full in the Maine tax residency guide.
How long do you have to live in Maine to be a resident? Two conditions, both required
Under 36 M.R.S. §5102, a Maine resident is someone who is domiciled in Maine or who qualifies as a statutory resident. The statutory route is aimed at people domiciled somewhere else. It applies to a person who, during the tax year:
- spent more than 183 days in Maine, and
- kept a permanent place of abode in Maine for the entire tax year.
Both conditions must be met. More than 183 days without a year-round abode does not make someone a statutory resident, and neither does a year-round abode with 183 days or fewer. Statutory residency does not apply to military personnel.
Minnesota and Virginia each have their own abode tests, covered in Minnesota's lake-cabin abode test and Virginia's 183-day abode test. What sets Maine's version apart is the phrase entire tax year, and how plainly its guidance separates a house from a camp.
What a permanent place of abode is
In Maine's guidance, a permanent place of abode is a house, apartment or other residence kept as a household all year. Ownership is not the test. A rented year-round apartment can qualify, and so can an owned house.
The guidance lists what does not count:
- a seasonal camp or cottage used only for vacations
- a hotel or motel room
- a student dormitory
- a dwelling kept only during a temporary stay for a particular purpose
In Maine, the camp exclusion matters most, and it depends on how the property is used, not on what it is called. The guide puts it plainly: seasonal camps generally are not permanent abodes, but a winterised home kept year-round is. A property called a camp but kept as a household all year falls on the house side of that line. The facts have to match the label.
Two examples that explain the rule
MRS publishes worked examples in its residency guidance. Two of them, side by side, show how the whole test works.
| MRS example | Days in Maine | Maine abode kept all year | Statutory resident |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Yorker renting a Maine apartment for a nine-month assignment | 274 | No | No |
| Florida-domiciled couple keeping their Maine lake house year-round | about 200 | Yes | Yes |
The New Yorker spends 274 days in Maine, 91 over the threshold, and is still not a statutory resident because the apartment was not kept for the entire year. The day count never comes into play.
The Florida couple spend far fewer days in Maine, but they keep the lake house all year. Both conditions are met, so they are statutory residents even though their Florida domicile is genuine. That is the purpose of the statutory route: being domiciled elsewhere does not get someone out of it.
The consequence is all-or-nothing. A statutory resident is taxed on all income like any other Maine resident, at rates up to 7.15%. Income from Florida sources becomes taxable in Maine too, plus interest and penalties.
Where 200 days comes from
The guide calls the roughly 200-day snowbird summer the classic mistake, and the arithmetic is ordinary. Mid-April to late October at the Maine house is about 200 days. Nothing about that season is extreme. It is simply a Maine summer spent at a house that stays open all year.
MRS's example is built on that pattern, which is why its guidance treats the case as routine rather than unusual. The line sits at 183: day 184 is the day that makes someone a resident, as long as the year-round abode exists.
How a day is counted
Maine's counting rule is explicit: any portion of a day in Maine counts as a full day. The guide's example is a flight landing at Portland Jetport at 11 p.m. That is a Maine day.
Three things follow from that rule for anyone counting against the 183 line:
- Travel days count at both ends. The arrival day and the departure day are both Maine days, however few hours of each were spent in the state.
- Short visits add up faster than they feel. A weekend visit arriving Friday evening and leaving Sunday is three Maine days, not two nights.
- The threshold is more than 183. Exactly 183 is under the line, but the guide is blunt that 183 exactly with no records is a losing position anyway.
The same any-portion rule applies to Maine's safe-harbor caps of 30 and 90 days. Those caps apply to people still domiciled in Maine, not to people domiciled elsewhere.
A count rebuilt from nights slept, or from the dates on travel bookings, can miss days that the any-portion rule includes. The gap is small on any one trip but not over a whole year.
What the record has to show
When someone keeps a Maine abode and says they stayed under the line, MRS's guidance calls for adequate records showing that more than half the year was spent in another state. It names the kinds of evidence it means: planners, calendars, plane tickets, canceled checks and credit-card receipts. The burden of proof is on the taxpayer, not on MRS.
Two features of that standard stand out.
First, the record is as much about time spent elsewhere as time in Maine. A list of Maine days is only half the picture. The guidance asks for proof of where more than half the year went.
Second, the records it names were made at the time. The guide's list of common mistakes includes reconstructing days from memory, and its conclusion is direct: a day log built after the audit letter arrives convinces no one. The guide describes the snowbird audit as standardised, which means the request for this evidence can be expected. For what happens in a residency audit more generally, see tax residency audits: what to expect. To see where a running count stands against the 183 line, try the free 183-day calculator.
iReside's role here is narrow. It records which country and state an iPhone was in on each calendar day, using location in the background. It keeps the day count for each tracked rule up to date from that record, so the number builds up as the year goes rather than being reconstructed in December. The day-by-day record exports as CSV or PDF, with each day labelled by its source: GPS, manual entry, or a planned future day.
What a day count does not settle
The 183-day test is one of two routes to Maine residency, and it is the only one a day count answers directly.
Domicile is separate. Maine treats someone as a domiciled resident until they establish a new domicile elsewhere, and the burden of proving the change is on the taxpayer. MRS weighs all the facts and circumstances, from principal residence and voter registration to where a spouse and children live. A bare statement of intent is not conclusive. Domicile also survives the sale of a Maine house if no new domicile has been established. Whether a domicile has moved is not a question of counting days, and a clean day count does not decide it. For Florida movers, the Florida side of that question is covered in the Florida residency guide, and the state residency lookup compares Maine with any other state.
Married couples are presumed to share a residency status, although the presumption can be overcome.
The safe harbors work in the opposite direction. They are exits for people who are still domiciled in Maine. The General Safe Harbor allows no more than 30 days in Maine in total, for someone with no Maine abode and a permanent abode elsewhere all year. The Foreign Safe Harbor requires at least 450 days in foreign countries within a 548-consecutive-day window, with no more than 90 in Maine. Both are day counts with extra conditions of their own, set out in the Maine guide's safe-harbor section.
The short version
Maine's 183-day rule is a two-part test. The days count only if a permanent place of abode in Maine was kept for the whole year. A seasonal camp used only for vacations generally does not qualify, and a year-round house, owned or rented, does. When both parts are met, any portion of a day counts and day 184 is the line. The evidence MRS asks for is a record, made at the time, of where more than half the year was spent.