The complete Portugal tax calendar — IRS deadlines, payment dates, IFICI application window, and what happens if you miss them.
If you live in Portugal or run a company here, the tax system does not send you one clean list of dates. Deadlines for personal income tax, VAT, corporate tax, social security, and property tax sit in different laws, run on different rhythms, and carry different penalties. This page pulls them into one calendar for the 2026 filing year, which mostly deals with income earned in 2025.
Everything below applies to taxpayers whose tax year matches the calendar year, which covers almost all individuals and most companies.
| Deadline | Obligation | Who it affects |
|---|---|---|
| January 15 | IFICI application for those who became tax resident in 2025 | New residents claiming the 20% regime |
| 10th of each month | Payroll declaration (DMR) for the prior month | Employers |
| Last day of January, April, July, October | Social Security quarterly income declaration | Self-employed workers |
| February 25 | Validate and confirm invoices on e-fatura for IRS deductions | All IRS taxpayers |
| April 1 to June 30 | IRS Modelo 3 filing window for 2025 income | All resident individuals, plus non-residents with Portuguese income |
| May 31 | IMI single payment, or first installment | Property owners |
| June 30 | Modelo 22 (IRC) filing and payment for 2025, extended from May 31 | Companies |
| July 15 | IES annual accounts submission for 2025 | Companies |
| July 31 | Deadline for the tax authority to issue IRS assessments on timely returns | Individuals |
| August 31 | IRS payment or refund deadline; IMI second installment (bills over 500 euros) | Individuals; property owners |
| November 30 | IMI final installment | Property owners |
| 5th of each month | Invoice communication to the tax authority (SAF-T) | Businesses and self-employed |
| 20th of each month | VAT return, monthly regime (for the second prior month) | Larger businesses |
| 25th of each month | VAT payment, monthly regime | Larger businesses |
| February 20, May 20, September (August deferred), November 20 | VAT return, quarterly regime | Smaller businesses |
| 10th to 20th of each month | Social Security contribution payment for the prior month | Self-employed and employers |
Now the detail, because most of these dates have conditions attached.
The Modelo 3 return for income earned in 2025 must be filed between April 1 and June 30, 2026. The window is the same for everyone: employees, self-employed, landlords, investors. There is no extension for filing online because filing is already online only.
If you moved to Portugal mid-2025 and became tax resident, this is your first Portuguese return, and it covers your worldwide income for the resident portion of the year. Many expats are surprised by how much foreign income must be declared even when a treaty or the IFICI regime exempts it from actual tax. Declared and taxed are not the same thing. Declare it anyway.
For returns filed on time, the tax authority must issue the assessment (nota de liquidação) by July 31, 2026. Any tax due must be paid by August 31, 2026. Refunds follow the same outer deadline of August 31, although in practice most refunds for early filers arrive within a few weeks of submission. Filing in April rather than late June usually means a faster refund.
Two dates in February feed directly into your IRS outcome. Household composition and personal data must be updated on the Finanças portal by February 15, and invoices sitting in e-fatura must be validated by February 25 so that health, education, and general family expenses count toward your deductions. Miss the validation and you can still claim some deductions manually in the return, but it is more work and easier to get wrong.
IFICI, the Tax Incentive for Scientific Research and Innovation, is the regime that replaced NHR. It gives qualifying professionals a flat 20% rate on eligible Portuguese employment and self-employment income, plus exemptions on most foreign-source income, for up to ten years.
The deadline is the trap. You must apply by January 15 of the year following the year you became tax resident. Someone who became resident during 2025 had until January 15, 2026. Someone becoming resident during 2026 has until January 15, 2027.
This is the shortest meaningful window in the Portuguese tax calendar, and it lands two weeks into the year, when most people are not thinking about tax. Missing it does not just delay the benefit. A late registration only takes effect from the year you make it, and the missed years are cut from the 10-year window rather than added back. The difference between the 20% rate and progressive rates that reach 48% (plus solidarity surcharge) is real money. If you moved to Portugal this year, put January 15 in your calendar now.
Which regime you are on depends on turnover. Businesses with annual turnover above 650,000 euros file monthly. Below that, quarterly is the default, though you can opt into monthly.
August gets special treatment. Declarative and payment obligations falling in August are deferred to September, so the June monthly return and the Q2 quarterly return both shift into September 2026.
The standard IRC deadline is May 31 of the following year. For the 2025 tax year, the government extended it twice, first to June 19 and then, by dispatch of June 17, 2026, to June 30, 2026, covering both filing and payment with no surcharges. Companies with a tax year that does not match the calendar year file by the last day of the fifth month after their year-end.
Do not build your planning around extensions. They happen most years, but they are announced late and are never guaranteed. Treat May 31 as the working deadline.
The IES (Informação Empresarial Simplificada) bundles the annual accounts, statistical information, and registry deposit into one submission. For the 2025 financial year it is due by July 15, 2026. Every company must file it, including dormant ones. It is the filing most commonly forgotten by founders whose company had little or no activity, and it generates penalties all the same.
Self-employed workers (trabalhadores independentes) have two recurring obligations:
New freelancers get a 12-month contribution exemption from the start of activity, but the quarterly declaration obligation begins once the exemption ends. Late quarterly declarations trigger Social Security fines separate from anything the tax authority charges.
Businesses and self-employed workers must communicate issued invoices to the tax authority by the 5th of the following month, typically via SAF-T file or certified invoicing software that reports automatically. If your software communicates in real time through webservice, this deadline takes care of itself. If you export and upload manually, the 5th comes around fast, twelve times a year.
IMI is assessed on property you owned on December 31 of the prior year, and the bill arrives by April 30. Payment depends on the amount:
You can always pay the full amount in May regardless of the installment plan. Missing an installment triggers interest and can accelerate the remaining balance.
Portuguese tax penalties (coimas) are set by the RGIT, the tax infringements regime. In plain terms:
The pattern is consistent: filing late but voluntarily is cheap, filing after Finanças notices you is expensive, and not filing at all is how small problems become enforcement problems. If you have missed something, regularize it before they write to you.
This page covers the standard cases. Trusts, non-calendar tax years, exit and arrival years, and cross-border structures all add dates of their own, and extensions change year to year.
OnCorporate tracks every one of these deadlines for its clients, from the January 15 IFICI window to the November IMI installment, so nothing depends on you remembering a Portuguese tax date. If you would rather have a Lisbon firm own this calendar for you, talk to us at oncorporate.com/contact.
