IRS 2026: Tax Brackets, Filing Deadlines, and How to Submit Your Modelo 3

• The Modelo 3 window is 1 April – 30 June, and it does not move if 30 June is a weekend (art. 60.º n.º 1).
• 2026 rates run from 12.5% to 48% across nine brackets (art. 68.º), plus a solidarity surcharge above €80,000.
• The AT assesses by 31 July; you pay by 31 August — those are two different dates, often reported as one.
• Foreign income with a tax credit your source country hasn't finalised? Your deadline moves to 31 December — if you tell the AT in time.
• Two earlier deadlines feed your return: confirm your household by 15 February, validate e-Fatura invoices by 25 February.

IRS (Imposto sobre o Rendimento das Pessoas Singulares) is Portugal's personal income tax, filed annually via Modelo 3 on the Portal das Finanças. The submission window is fixed by law — 1 April to 30 June — but several smaller deadlines earlier in the year decide what your return actually says, and a handful of later ones decide when you pay or get paid.

The 2026 IRS brackets

The rates below are the general rates in Article 68.º of the Código do IRS, in force for 2026 under Lei n.º 73-A/2025, for mainland Portugal. Madeira and the Azores set their own reduced rates.

Note the two columns. Most sites publish a single rate plus a "parcela a abater" (an amount to subtract) — that is a shorthand the statute does not use. Article 68.º splits your taxable income in two: everything up to the highest bracket ceiling you clear is taxed at that bracket's column B rate, and only the excess above it is taxed at the next bracket's column A rate.

A worked example

Take a single filer with €30,000 of rendimento coletável — that is income after the specific deduction and any other subtractions, not gross salary. The highest ceiling they clear is €29,397, so:

• €29,397 taxed at that bracket's column B rate of 20.579% = €6,049.61
• The remaining €603 taxed at the next bracket's column A rate of 34.9% = €210.45
• Total collecta: €6,260.06 — an effective rate of about 20.9%, well below the 34.9% marginal rate

That gap between marginal and effective is the single most misunderstood thing about IRS. Moving into a higher bracket never reduces your take-home pay — the higher rate applies only to the euros above the threshold. What comes off this figure next are the deduções à coleta (health, education, housing, dependants, invoice requests), and then whatever your employer already withheld.

The solidarity surcharge

On top of the ordinary tax, Article 68.º-A adds a taxa adicional de solidariedade on high incomes: 2.5% on taxable income between €80,000 and €250,000, and 5% on anything above €250,000. Like the brackets, it applies only to the excess.

The floor: mínimo de existência

If your income is low enough, Article 70.º is designed to leave it effectively untaxed. The reference value for 2026 is the greater of €12,880 or 1.5 × 14 × IAS (Lei n.º 73-A/2025) — with the 2026 IAS at €537.13 the formula gives about €11,280, so €12,880 is the figure that applies. The mechanism works as an abatement rather than a simple exemption, and it covers income predominantly from employment, pensions, or the activities listed in the Portaria 1011/2001 table.

The IRS calendar, start to finish

The 30 June deadline does not move

This is worth stating on its own, because the usual summary is wrong. The general rule in Portuguese tax procedure is that a deadline falling on a weekend or public holiday rolls to the next business day. Article 60.º n.º 1 explicitly disapplies it for Modelo 3: the window runs from 1 April to 30 June "independentemente de este dia ser útil ou não útil" — regardless of whether that day is a business day. If 30 June is a Sunday, the deadline is that Sunday.

The extension most people never hear about

If you have foreign-source income and you're entitled to a credit for tax paid abroad, but the source country hasn't determined that amount by 30 June, Article 60.º n.º 3 extends your deadline to 31 December of that year. It is not automatic: n.º 4 requires you to tell the AT, within the normal window, that you meet the conditions, naming the type of income and the source country.

This matters to anyone whose home country's tax year doesn't align with Portugal's — a UK filer waiting on a 5 April-year assessment, or a US filer on extension. Missing the notification and then filing in December is a late filing; making the notification and filing in December is not.

Why the February deadlines matter

Everything before April feeds into your actual return. If your household composition is wrong on 15 February, or an invoice is missing from e-Fatura by 25 February, your pre-filled Modelo 3 and deduction totals will be wrong too — and it's much easier to fix upstream than to correct after filing. The 15 March expense summary is your last easy checkpoint: you can contest the AT's calculated figures until 31 March.

How to submit

File through the Portal das Finanças — log in with your NIF and AT password, Cartão de Cidadão, or Chave Móvel Digital, then use the pre-filled Modelo 3 as your starting point rather than building it from scratch. Review every field before submitting; the pre-fill reflects what third parties (employers, banks, e-Fatura) reported, not necessarily your complete picture. Foreign income, in particular, is never pre-filled — nobody reports it to the AT on your behalf.

If you spot a mistake after submitting, you can file a substitute return. Article 60.º n.º 2 also gives you 30 days to declare any later event that changes income you already reported.

If you're self-employed (Categoria B)

You have extra obligations layered on top of the standard calendar: quarterly VAT declarations (20th of the month following each quarter), quarterly Social Security declarations, and — depending on prior-year income — three payments on account under Article 102.º, due by the 20th of July, September and December.

• The three instalments together come to 65% of a figure derived from your assessment two years back, scaled by the share of your income that was Categoria B.
• The AT tells you the amount on your assessment notice, and sends a payment document the month before each is due.
• Nothing is payable if the instalment works out under €50.
• You can stop paying once your withholding plus instalments already cover the tax you'll owe, or if you stop earning Categoria B income altogether.

After you file: assessment, payment, refund

Two different dates get reported as one. Article 77.º a) gives the AT until 31 July to issue your liquidação (assessment) when you filed on time. Article 97.º n.º 1 a) then gives you until 31 August to pay whatever it says you owe. If you file late enough that the AT assesses you itself, both dates shift: assessment by 30 November, payment by 31 December.

If you overpaid, the refund carries interest. Article 102.º-A pays you 72% of the 12-month EURIBOR rate as at 31 December of the year the withholding happened, running from the month you went into credit until the month before assessment. There is a catch worth knowing: that entitlement is extinguished entirely if you filed outside the legal deadline.

What happens if you're late — or don't file at all

Late filing is a contraordenação under Article 116.º of the RGIT, punishable by a fine of €150 to €3,750 for a missing or late income declaration. The often-quoted "minimum €25" is not the fine for this offence — it's the floor under Article 26.º n.º 3 that applies only when a reduction for voluntary regularisation kicks in. Filing yourself, before the AT chases you, is what gets you into that reduced band.

Separately, compensatory interest accrues under LGT Article 35.º, counted day by day from the end of the filing deadline until the shortfall is made good — currently at the statutory 4% a year, a rate set outside the CIRS and worth re-checking for the year in question.

Not filing at all is the expensive option. Article 76.º lets the AT assess you on whatever data it holds, and Article 76.º n.º 2 values Categoria B income using the simplified regime with a 0.75 coefficient regardless of what you actually earned. You also lose most deduções à coleta, because the AT only applies the handful it can see on its own.

Rates change every year — check the year you're filing for

The brackets on this page are the 2026 table, and they are drawn directly from the same source our calculators use, so the two can't disagree. Deduction ceilings and special-regime caps (IRS Jovem, NHR, IFICI) are adjusted every year in the State Budget. If you are filing for a different year, use the table for that year — a filed or corrected return is always judged against the rates in force at the time.