NHR closed to new applicants in 2024. What the regime gives the people who still hold it, and what to do when the ten years end.
Short answer. NHR closed to new applicants on 1 January 2024, so nobody can apply now. If you registered in time, you keep the regime for the rest of your ten years, under the rules that applied then. If you are moving to Portugal now, the regime to look at is IFICI.
No. The 2024 State Budget, Lei n.º 82/2023, revoked the provisions that created the regime, and numbers 8 to 12 of article 16.º of the IRS Code now read "(Revogado.)" on the tax authority's own consolidated text. Closed means closed here: there is no late window and no discretionary exception.
A transitional route did exist, and it is worth knowing about only because it decides who is a holder today. It covered people already registered as non habitual residents, people who met the residence conditions on 31 December 2023, and people who became resident by 31 December 2024 and could show one of a listed set of commitments, such as a promise or contract of employment signed by 31 December 2023, a lease or a promissory purchase of a Portuguese property signed by 10 October 2023, a school enrolment completed by that date, or a residence visa valid at the end of 2023 (article 236.º, n.º 3, of Lei n.º 82/2023). Registration under that route closed on 31 March 2025.
If you are arriving now, the successor regime is IFICI, and it is a different animal: built around qualifying work rather than around anyone who moves. Start with our IFICI guide, and for the fuller account of what changed, read NHR in Portugal has ended: what replaced it.
Three things, all of them kept alive for holders by article 236.º, n.º 3, of Lei n.º 82/2023, which preserves the pre-2024 wording of the relevant provisions until each holder's period runs out.
The regime was generous. It was never the blanket tax holiday of the dinner party version, and the gap between the two has cost people money.
Not by default, and this is the single most misunderstood part of the regime.
Foreign employment income (category A) is exempt if it is taxed in the other state under a double tax treaty with Portugal, or, where there is no treaty, if it is actually taxed there and is not treated as Portuguese source income under article 18.º (article 81.º, n.º 4).
Foreign self-employment income from high value added services, from intellectual or industrial property or from know how, together with investment, rental and capital gains income (categories E, F and G), is exempt if it may be taxed in the other state under a treaty, or, absent a treaty, if it may be taxed there under the OECD model convention, provided the country is not on the Portuguese list of privileged tax regimes and the income is not Portuguese source (article 81.º, n.º 5).
The difference between "is taxed" and "may be taxed" is not pedantry. Employment income has to be taxed abroad for the exemption to apply. The other categories only have to be taxable there, which is why dividends from a country whose treaty with Portugal allows it to tax them can be exempt here even if that country charges nothing, and why a salary that nobody taxed anywhere is not.
Yes, where your other income is taxed on the general scale. Income exempt under n.os 4 and 5 is mandatorily added in when fixing the rate on your remaining income, with the exceptions that provision lists, which include income taxed at the special rates of article 72.º and the 20% rate on high value added work (article 81.º, n.º 7). So the exempt income does not inflate that 20%, and it can decide which bracket applies to Portuguese income taxed on the scale.
There is also a choice most holders never hear about. Instead of the exemption, the holder may elect the foreign tax credit method, in which case the income is brought in and taxed, with a credit for the tax paid abroad (article 81.º, n.º 8). Which route wins depends on your numbers, and it can change from one year to the next.
The period runs for ten years from the date you became resident in Portugal, which article 236.º, n.º 3, expresses as the period in the old article 16.º, n.º 9, counted from that date.
A worked example, with the assumption stated plainly: if you registered as resident in Portugal during 2021 and were accepted as a non habitual resident for that year, your ten years cover 2021 to 2030 inclusive, and from 2031 you are taxed as an ordinary resident. Nothing renews.
Two situations need a closer look rather than arithmetic. If there were years in between when you were not resident here, the count turns on the old article 16.º rules and on your own registration record, so check it rather than assume. And if you registered late under the transitional route, the regime applies from the year of registration for whatever remains of the period, not from the year you arrived (article 236.º, n.os 4 and 5). Registering as a resident starts with a tax number, which our NIF guide covers.
Worth checking yearly, because everything above depends on it. You are resident in a given year if you spent more than 183 days in Portugal, consecutive or not, in any 12 month period beginning or ending in that year. You are also resident if, having spent less time here, you had a home available on any day of that period in conditions that suggest you intend to keep and occupy it as your habitual residence (article 16.º, n.º 1, a) and b)). A day counts if any part of it included a night spent in Portugal (n.º 2).
This page previously said 183 days within the tax year and a permanent home in Portugal on 31 December. Both were wrong, and both have been corrected here.
You become an ordinary Portuguese resident, taxed on worldwide income on the general scale, which runs up to 48% at the top. Our guide to the 2026 income tax rates sets out the brackets, and capital gains tax in Portugal covers disposals, which is where the end of a regime usually hurts most.
The useful point is one of timing. A holder whose final year is next year has choices this year that will not exist afterwards, on when to realise a gain, when to draw a pension and where to be resident. Those choices are worth a conversation twelve months out, not in the June after the event.
If you are not a holder but the person arriving now, the comparison you want is IFICI versus NHR. Either way, we look at the dates and the documents before saying anything definite, and we send a written proposal by email after the first assessment: get in touch.
Written by OnCorporate Editorial Team. Tax review by Luiz Augusto Teixeira de Freitas, Director: in progress. Applies to tax year 2026, Portugal. Last substantively reviewed 20 October 2026.
