127,111 Portuguese Households Cross the €100,000 IRS Threshold in 2024 — High-Income Bracket Lifts 24% on the AT Filings

The Autoridade Tributária's most recent IRS Modelo 1+2 declarations show 127,111 Portuguese households reported gross annual income above €100,000 in tax year 2024, up almost 25,000 from the prior year on what Jornal de Notícias frames as a single-year structural shift at the top of the IRS file. The €100,000-€250,000 band swelled to 114,538 households from 92,391 — a 24% lift carrying more than €13.4 billion of combined declared income — and the band above €250,000 climbed from 10,045 to 12,573, a 25.17% jump on the smallest, richest slice of the tape.

The numbers land in the middle of an IRS debate that has otherwise focused on the lower brackets. Joaquim Miranda Sarmento's Ministério das Finanças has been advancing the next leg of the 2026 IRS-Jovem extension and the indexed-bracket lift that the IMF flagged this month, but the AT files reveal that the most consequential shift in the actual income distribution is happening at the top — and concentrating geographically in a way that has not yet entered the budget debate.

Lisbon Holds the High-Income Map

The Lisbon district contains 24.39% of national household-aggregates but concentrates more than 27% of all declared combined income and nearly 46% of the income subject to special rates — dividends, interest, and capital gains taxed at 28% rather than through the progressive scale. That asymmetry is the cleanest indicator yet that the household income mix in Lisbon has shifted decisively towards financial-asset returns, which is a different macro story from the wage-led income lift that the rest of the country has been booking.

The 25% lift in the above-€250,000 bracket cannot be explained by IRS-Jovem alone. The most plausible drivers are the maturity of equity grants from the Lisbon and Porto tech and startup ecosystems, a wave of property-disposal capital gains as 2017-2021 acquisitions were sold into a tight Lisbon market in 2024, and the structural rebound in dividend distributions across the PSI-20 listed cohort. Each of those bins lands in the AT files as taxa-especial income subject to the 28% rate, which is why Lisbon's share of special-rate income runs almost twice its share of households.

The Distribution Gap That Underwrites the Budget

The 12,573 households above €250,000 represent fewer than 0.3% of taxpayers but, on AT-released aggregates from the prior cycle, contributed roughly 11% of total IRS receipts. The 2024 expansion of that band by 25.17% therefore mechanically widens the IRS take at the top end and gives Finanças headroom to push the indexed-bracket lift through without a net revenue loss. That, in turn, is the policy backbone behind the modest 2026 surplus that the broader investment pipeline assumes will hold.

What This Means for Expats

• If your file lands in the €100,000+ bracket: You are now one of 127,111 households the AT cross-checks more closely each cycle. Special-rate income — interest, dividends, capital gains — is reported on Anexo E and Anexo G of the Modelo 3, and the AT's automatic verification routines now compare bank-reported tax-at-source against your declaration before any refund is released.
• NHR holdouts: Households grandfathered under the old NHR regime sit outside this bracket for taxa-especial purposes on most foreign-source income. The 2024 file confirms what the AIMA caseload had already suggested — the post-NHR file is being repopulated faster than the rate scrap implied.
• Lisbon's 46% special-rate concentration: A household selling a Lisbon flat for a meaningful capital gain in 2024 was statistically more likely to land in this bracket than not. IMI and capital-gains exposure now move together more tightly on the file.
• Getting set up: Anyone joining the file from abroad should secure a NIF early and link it to a Portuguese resident bank account; the AT's pre-filled IRS draft only works once those two pieces are stitched together.

The Pordata historical series shows the top IRS bracket has roughly doubled in size over the last decade. The 2024 read is the steepest single-year acceleration on that line — and a reminder that Portugal's income distribution is shifting at the top end at a pace the budget debate has not yet caught.