Ohio — Bright-Line Residency (213 Contact Periods)

Summary

Safe zone

212 or fewer contact periods / tax year

Unit

Contact period (a two-day pattern, not a day)

Window

Calendar / tax year (Jan 1 – Dec 31)

Also required

Out-of-Ohio abode + 3 more conditions + Nonresident Statement (IT 10 / IT 1040)

Basis

Ohio Rev. Code § 5747.24

Ohio gives you a bright-line way to be presumed a nonresident for state income tax. Under Ohio Rev. Code § 5747.24, if you have no more than 212 contact periods in Ohio during the tax year — that is, fewer than 213 — and you meet four other conditions and file the right statement, Ohio presumes you are not domiciled in Ohio. The catch is that a contact period is not a day: it is a two-consecutive-day pattern that counts as one. Bounded tracks your days in Ohio as a deliberately conservative stand-in for contact periods, so it treats 213 days or fewer as safe: at that count your real contact-period number is at most 212.

Who it applies to

This matters most if you have a foot in two states and want Ohio to treat you as a nonresident:

• Someone who has moved out of Ohio but still comes back often for work, family, or business.
• A snowbird or dual-home resident who splits the year between Ohio and another state.
• A remote worker or frequent traveler whose trips keep touching Ohio across the calendar.

It applies to individuals regardless of citizenship or immigration status — this is about Ohio state income tax residency, not federal tax, visas, or any other jurisdiction. If Ohio treats you as a resident, it can tax your income as a resident; the bright-line test is how you keep a clean nonresident position.

The rule — and why it exists

The core of § 5747.24 is a count, but the count is only the first of five gates. To claim the nonresident (non-domicile) presumption for a tax year, you must meet all five conditions:

1. 1212 or fewer contact periods in Ohio during the tax year (fewer than 213).
2. 2At least one abode outside Ohio for the entire year on which you claimed no depreciation — and, per the Department, not a vacation home, rental, or other income-generating property.
3. 3No Ohio driver's license or Ohio state ID at any point during the year.
4. 4No Ohio homestead exemption or owner-occupied property-tax reduction claimed for the year.
5. 5No in-state Ohio tuition claimed on the basis of an Ohio abode.

Meet all five and make a timely Ohio Nonresident Statement — from tax year 2025 a checkbox on Form IT 10 or IT 1040, which replaced the separate Form IT NRS — and you are irrebuttably presumed a nonresident for that year (unless the statement is false). Meet the count but claim nothing, and if you had an abode in Ohio at any time during the year Ohio flips it around: you are presumed domiciled in Ohio and have to rebut that with evidence. The bright-line route is not available for a year in which your domicile actually changes; that year you are a part-year resident.

Without the irrebuttable presumption, the number sets your burden of proof. If you had an Ohio abode during the year and fewer than 213 contact periods, you rebut the presumption of Ohio domicile by a preponderance of the evidence (more likely than not). At 213 or more, you must rebut it with clear and convincing evidence — a much harder climb. If the Department challenges your count, you must prove it by a preponderance of the evidence, and any period you can't account for is presumed to be a contact period.

Why it exists: a pure day count is easy to argue over, so Ohio built a defined, countable unit (the contact period) paired with hard facts about your license, your home, and your tax benefits. Together they draw a line the state can administer and you can plan around — while still tying the outcome to whether your real home is outside Ohio.

Counting the days — and what a contact period really is

This is the part that trips people up. The statutory unit is a contact period, and the statute defines it precisely:

• You must be away overnight from an abode located outside Ohio — the two-day test only runs while your home base for the trip is out of state.
• You then have one contact period when you spend some portion, however minimal, of each of two consecutive days in Ohio.
• That single contact period can consume up to two calendar days, but it counts as one.
• Presence on non-consecutive days — say Monday and Wednesday but not Tuesday — does not create a contact period.
• Contact periods across the year need not be consecutive with each other; you tally them over the calendar/tax year (Jan 1 – Dec 31).

Why Bounded counts calendar days instead

A day counter on your phone can see when you are in Ohio, but it cannot always know whether you were away overnight from your out-of-state home between two of those days. Each contact period needs two consecutive Ohio days, so counting days does not under-count: within a tax year, a continuous stay of N days in Ohio yields at most N − 1 contact periods, and a day trip home by nightfall yields none. The gap is small on long stays and large for frequent short trips. That is why a 213-day limit is a conservative proxy: as long as you stay at or under it, your contact-period count is at most 212. Treat the app's count as "days in Ohio," and remember your true contact-period number is lower. The one grey area is a stay over New Year: the statute does not say which tax year a contact period spanning 31 December and 1 January belongs to, so allow a margin of a period or two in that case.

1. 1Count the calendar days you are physically present in Ohio during the tax year (Jan 1 – Dec 31).
2. 2Because a contact period needs two consecutive Ohio days and an overnight absence from your out-of-state home, each stay that starts and ends within the tax year adds at least one more day than contact periods.
3. 3Staying at or under 213 days therefore keeps you at or under 212 contact periods — the conservative safe zone.
4. 4The tally resets to zero each January 1; it is a fresh annual count, not a rolling window.

Examples

Example 1 — a clean bright-line nonresident

Dana keeps her real home in Nashville all year, holds a Tennessee driver's license, and claims no Ohio homestead or tuition benefit. She drives up to Columbus for work about twice a month, each time on an overnight trip, touching Ohio on two consecutive days each visit — about 24 trips, so about 24 contact periods (and 48 Ohio days) for the year. Well under 212. She checks the Ohio Nonresident Statement box on her IT 10 by October 15, and Ohio irrebuttably presumes she is a nonresident.

Example 2 — days look scary, contact periods don't

Marcus, who lives in Kentucky, spends about 300 calendar days in Ohio over the year, but almost always in day trips — he crosses the river in the morning and is home by night. Because he is never away overnight from his Kentucky home on those days, they create no contact periods at all, so his contact-period count is far below 300. Bounded would flag him once he passed 213 days — that is the conservative alert doing its job — but his actual contact-period figure may still be inside the safe zone. The alert tells him it is time to check the real count, not that he has already failed.

Example 3 — the count is fine, the abode is not

Priya has only 90 contact periods in Ohio, but her only genuine home is in Cleveland; the "out-of-state abode" she points to is a lakeside cabin she rents out most of the year. Because that is an income property, not a real home available to her all year, she fails the abode condition. Her low count cannot save the bright-line presumption — she does not qualify no matter how few contact periods she logs.

Exceptions & edge cases

• The count alone is never enough. All five conditions must hold — 212 or fewer contact periods, an out-of-Ohio abode for the full year, no Ohio license or state ID, no Ohio homestead or owner-occupied reduction, and no Ohio-abode-based in-state tuition. Treat them as a checklist, not a single number.
• You must claim it to lock it in. The Ohio Nonresident Statement — a checkbox on Form IT 10 or IT 1040 — must be made by October 15 after year-end (the 15th day of the 10th month). Claim it truthfully and the presumption becomes irrebuttable for that year only; skip it and, if you had an Ohio abode during the year, Ohio presumes domicile even when your count and abode qualify.
• Not for the year you move. The bright-line presumption does not apply to someone whose domicile changes during the year; that person is domiciled in Ohio for the part of the year before or after the change.
• The affidavit changed names — and teeth. The old "Affidavit of Non-Ohio Residency/Domicile" (Form IT DA) was replaced by the Nonresident Statement (Form IT NRS) in Ohio's 2018 rewrite (H.B. 292, effective for tax years 2018 forward). If you are working from old guidance mentioning the IT DA, note that the IT NRS has itself been retired: beginning with tax year 2025 the statement is a checkbox on Form IT 10 or IT 1040. The 2018 rewrite followed the Ohio Supreme Court's decision in Cunningham v. Testa (2015), which had held the old affidavit did not by itself defeat a common-law domicile finding.
• The threshold has moved over time. R.C. 5747.24 dates from 1993; when a 2006 amendment (H.B. 73) created the irrebuttable nonresident presumption, the cap was 182 contact periods. H.B. 494 raised it to the current 212 (nonresident presumption at 212 or fewer, so 213+ triggers the clear-and-convincing standard) effective 20 March 2015. The statute was last amended in 2018 (H.B. 292), leaving the 212/213 line unchanged.
• Ohio state tax only. This governs Ohio income tax residency. It has nothing to do with federal tax residency, visas, or any other state's rules.

The count and the checklist are the parts you can plan for yourself. Where professional advice genuinely earns its keep is the softer edges — whether a particular property counts as a real out-of-Ohio abode, or how strong your domicile case is if you land at or above 213 and have to rebut "clear and convincing" evidence. A tax adviser is worth it there, not for the day count itself.

Common misconceptions

• "A contact period is just a day in Ohio." No — it is a two-consecutive-day pattern that counts as one, and only while you are away overnight from a home outside Ohio. Your contact-period count is lower than your days-in-Ohio count.
• "Under 213 and I'm automatically a nonresident." Not on its own. You also need the out-of-Ohio abode, no Ohio license or ID, no Ohio homestead reduction, no Ohio-abode tuition — and a timely Nonresident Statement on your IT 10 or IT 1040.
• "The app's 213 is the exact legal number." The app counts calendar days as a conservative proxy; the legal 212/213 counts contact periods. Within a tax year your days outnumber your contact periods, so while the app shows you at or under 213 days you are at or under 212 contact periods — that is a safety margin, not an error (allow a period or two extra if you were in Ohio over New Year).
• "I meet the conditions, so I don't need to file anything." You do. Without a timely Ohio Nonresident Statement, Ohio presumes you are domiciled there if you had an Ohio abode during the year, even if your count and out-of-state abode qualify.
• "I still file the old IT DA affidavit or the IT NRS." The IT DA was replaced by the IT NRS in 2018, and the IT NRS was retired from tax year 2025 — check the Ohio Nonresident Statement box on your IT 10 or IT 1040 instead.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Ohio Department of Taxation — FAQ: Income – Ohio Residency and Residency Credits
• Ohio Department of Taxation — What's New (IT NRS discontinued from tax year 2025)
• Ohio Department of Taxation — 2025 Ohio IT 1040 instructions (Ohio Nonresident Statement)
• Ohio Revised Code § 5747.24 — Presumption of domicile
• Ohio Department of Taxation — Information Release IT 2018-01, Residency Guidelines (tax years 2018 and forward)
• Supreme Court of Ohio — Cunningham v. Testa, 2015-Ohio-2744