Guides

Filing the IRS Annual Income-Tax Return in Portugal in 2026 — A Practical Guide to the 1 April–30 June Window, the Modelo 3 Anexos Stack, the Portal das Finanças Pre-Filled Declaration and the Reembolso Pipeline

The IRS (Imposto sobre o Rendimento das Pessoas Singulares, Personal Income Tax) annual return — Modelo 3 — covers the calendar-year 2025 income of every resident taxpayer (and certain non-resident taxpayers with Portuguese-source income) and must be filed between 1 April and 30 June 2026 through the Portal das Finanças (Tax Authority's online portal) at portaldasfinancas.gov.pt. The window is the same regardless of income profile — employees on Categoria A income, self-employed on Categoria B income (recibos verdes), pensioners on Categoria H income, landlords on Categoria F rental income, and households with Categoria E investment income or Categoria G capital gains all file inside the single 91-day envelope. Filing is exclusively electronic since 2017 — paper Modelo 3 forms are no longer accepted at any Finanças service desk.

The 1 April–30 June window and what the deadlines actually bind

The Código do IRS (Personal Income Tax Code) Article 60 sets the filing window at 1 April to 30 June of the year following the tax year. The 2026 return therefore covers 2025 income. Three secondary deadlines orbit the main window: the deduções à coleta (tax-credit deductions) confirmation window inside e-fatura closed on 31 March 2026 — too late to add invoices to the deduction pool; the 30 September 2026 IRS payment deadline (or first instalment date for households on the prestações plan) for taxpayers who file with a balance due; and the 31 July 2026 first-reembolso (refund) batch for early-filed straightforward declarations. Filing past 30 June without a justified extension triggers a Categoria-A coima (administrative fine) starting at €25 and rising to €112 for negligent late filing, plus a default interest charge at the AT (Autoridade Tributária, Tax Authority) reference rate. Filers who miss the window entirely are pushed onto an oficiosa (automatic-assessment) trajectory under which AT calculates IRS using only third-party-reported data — typically punitive for households with deductions or losses to offset.

The IRS Automático opt-in versus the full Modelo 3 declaration

The Portal das Finanças offers two filing tracks. IRS Automático (Automatic IRS) is a pre-filled, one-click declaration available to a defined subset of households — Portuguese resident taxpayers with only Categoria A (dependent employment) or Categoria H (pensions) income, no Categoria B (self-employment), F (rental) or G (capital gains) income, no dependents abroad, no preferential-status flags (NHR, IFICI, IRS Jovem), and no Categoria E investment income above the autonomous-taxation withholding line. Eligible filers receive an SMS or email notification once the pre-filled declaration is available — typically by the second week of April — and need only review, accept and submit. The system then generates the demonstração de liquidação (assessment statement) automatically. The full Modelo 3 declaration is the default for every other profile and is also accessible to IRS Automático-eligible filers who prefer the manual path (which lets the taxpayer add donations, retirement-savings PPR contributions, or other deductions not always pre-filled). Roughly 1.4 million IRS Automático declarations were submitted in 2025 against a total of 6.1 million IRS declarations in the same campaign.

The Modelo 3 Anexos stack and which one each profile needs

The Modelo 3 declaration is a frame (Folha do Rosto, Cover Sheet) plus a stack of Anexos (Annexes) attached according to income type:

Anexo A — Categoria A and H income. Dependent-employment salary, subsídio de Natal, subsídio de férias, pensions, alimony (pensão de alimentos). The Folha do Rosto plus Anexo A is the minimum stack for an employee or pensioner.
Anexo B — Simplified-regime Categoria B income. Recibos verdes self-employed filers under the regime simplificado (turnover under €200,000 in 2024 / 2025). Includes prestadores de serviços, profissionais liberais and the standard recibo verde freelance population. Coefficients apply to the turnover line (0.75 for services, 0.15 for trade, 0.10 for accommodation).
Anexo C — Organised-accounting Categoria B income. Self-employed filers under the regime de contabilidade organizada (mandatory above the €200,000 turnover line or by election). Requires a Técnico Oficial de Contas (TOC, Certified Accountant) signature.
Anexo D — Imputed income from transparent entities and undistributed company profits. Largely for shareholders in transparent sociedades.
Anexo E — Categoria E investment income. Bond interest, dividends, royalties, lump-sum life-insurance redemption. Generally subject to autonomous taxation at 28% (35% if paid from blacklisted jurisdictions) — Anexo E enters only if the taxpayer opts out of liberatory withholding to aggregate with general IRS brackets.
Anexo F — Categoria F rental income. Long-term residential rentals, commercial rentals, alojamento local under the categoria-F option. Autonomous rate of 25% on long-term residentials (reduced to 5%/10%/15% by contract length under the 2023 Mais Habitação package), 28% on the alojamento local default.
Anexo G — Categoria G capital gains. Real-estate sales, securities sales above the personal allowance line. Real-estate gains on permanent residences may roll over into reinvestment exemption; securities gains held for over a year qualify for the 50% inclusão (50% inclusion in the taxable base).
Anexo G1 — Capital gains exempt by rollover. Tracks the reinvestment-relief mechanics for habitação própria permanente (own-permanent-residence) sales.
Anexo H — Tax-credit deductions and benefits. The big one. Health (15% up to €1,000), education (30% up to €800), housing rents (15% up to €600 for ordinary-housing households, €502 for short-term housing), elderly home care (25% up to €403), general family expenses (35% of any e-fatura invoice up to €250 per household member), IVA dedutível em qualquer fatura (15% of VAT on selected sectors, capped at €250), PPR / retirement-savings contributions, donations to qualified entities, dependants and ascendentes (ascendant relatives) credits.
Anexo I — Income from inheritance. For undivided herança (estate) shares.
Anexo J — Foreign-source income. Every taxpayer with overseas salary, pension, capital gains, rents, dividends, interest or company profits must complete Anexo J — including NHR / IFICI status holders, even where the foreign income is exempt. Country-by-country breakout with totals in euros at the BCE (European Central Bank) average annual exchange rate.
Anexo L — NHR (Non-Habitual Resident) and IFICI regime declarations. The dedicated annex for the 2009-launched NHR pensioner / high-value-activity regime (still applies to pre-2024 entrants for the duration of the 10-year window) and for the 2024 IFICI (Incentivo Fiscal à Investigação Científica e Inovação) successor regime. Lists the qualifying activity, the contractual source country, and the regime tax election.
Anexo SS — Social Security contributions for Categoria B. Required for self-employed filers contributing to Segurança Social on the trabalhador independente regime.

The Portal das Finanças pre-filled declaration mechanics

From early April onward, the Portal das Finanças pre-populates the Modelo 3 with third-party-reported data — every employer's annual declaration (DMR, Declaração Mensal de Remunerações), every pension payer, every bank that reports interest under the AIMC (Automatic Information Exchange) frame, every notário (notary) that registered a real-estate sale, every Segurança Social contribution payment, every e-fatura invoice flagged as deductible. The taxpayer logs in with NIF (Número de Identificação Fiscal, Tax Identification Number) + senha, Cartão de Cidadão chip, or Chave Móvel Digital (CMD, Digital Mobile Key) and reviews each line, accepts or corrects, adds any missing line, attaches scanned documentation only if AT requests it (typically not until after the liquidação). The Simulador (simulator) inside the same Modelo 3 page calculates the provisional IRS due or refund before final submission — most experienced filers run the simulator at the end of each Anexo to spot data-entry errors.

The 2026 IRS brackets, escalões and the personal allowance

The 2026 IRS brackets (Lei 82/2024 of 31 December and Lei do Orçamento do Estado 2026 mid-year update) apply to the 2025 income covered by the current campaign:

1.º escalão: up to €8,059 — 13.0%
2.º escalão: €8,059 – €12,160 — 16.5%
3.º escalão: €12,160 – €17,233 — 22.0%
4.º escalão: €17,233 – €22,306 — 25.0%
5.º escalão: €22,306 – €28,400 — 32.0%
6.º escalão: €28,400 – €41,629 — 35.5%
7.º escalão: €41,629 – €44,987 — 43.5%
8.º escalão: €44,987 – €83,696 — 45.0%
9.º escalão: above €83,696 — 48.0%

The personal allowance (dedução específica) is €4,462.15 for both Categoria A and Categoria H income in 2026 (set at one-times the IAS minimum or 8.54% of the year's earned income, whichever is higher — the IAS minimum binds for most filers). A solidarity surcharge of 2.5% applies to taxable income between €80,000 and €250,000, and 5% above €250,000. The general autonomous taxation rates apply outside the bracket arithmetic — 28% on Categoria E (investment), 28%/25%/15%/10%/5% on Categoria F (rental, by contract length), 28% on Categoria G short-term securities, and so on.

The IRS Jovem 2026 update and how it interacts with the Modelo 3

The IRS Jovem (Youth IRS) regime — restructured by Lei 31/2024 and confirmed in the 2026 Orçamento do Estado — now exempts Categoria A and Categoria B income for taxpayers between 18 and 35 (broadened from the prior 26-cap) on a sliding 10-year schedule: 100% in the first year, 75% in years 2-4, 50% in years 5-7, and 25% in years 8-10. The exemption applies up to a cap of 55× IAS = €29,542 in 2026. Eligible filers must opt in via the Modelo 3 Folha do Rosto checkbox and complete an Anexo B-specific or Anexo A-specific declaration confirming the qualifying-year count. The interaction with NHR / IFICI is mutually exclusive — a taxpayer cannot stack IRS Jovem with NHR or IFICI in the same year.

The NHR (legacy) and IFICI (current) regime filers

Taxpayers on the pre-2024 NHR (Regime do Residente Não Habitual) continue to file the Anexo L through the end of their 10-year regime window, with foreign-source pensions taxed at the 10% flat rate (post-2020 amendment), foreign-source professional income from listed high-value activities exempted by treaty election, and Portuguese-source professional income from the listed activities taxed at the 20% flat rate. The 2024 IFICI (Incentivo Fiscal à Investigação Científica e Inovação) successor regime — open to new arrivals after 1 January 2024 — applies the 20% flat rate on Portuguese-source professional income from qualifying R&D / innovation activities for 10 years, with foreign-source income taxed at the regular rates (no foreign-pension exemption). Both regimes require the Anexo L. The 2025 campaign saw 38,400 IFICI Anexo L filings against 71,200 legacy-NHR Anexo L filings — the IFICI population is still growing into the legacy regime's footprint.

The reembolso pipeline and what to expect on the IRS refund

AT (Autoridade Tributária) reads the demonstração de liquidação for each filed declaration in three rolling batches: the first batch lands typically 17–25 days after filing for IRS Automático declarations submitted in early April, the second batch in late June / early July for standard early-filer Modelo 3 declarations, and the third batch in August-September for late-window filers. The reembolso is paid into the IBAN registered with AT (Dados Pessoais → IBAN inside Portal das Finanças). The average refund in the 2025 campaign was €1,118; the median was €635. Refunds for IRS Automático filers typically land within three weeks of filing if the declaration is uncontested. The risk profile for delay: any anomalia (anomaly) flag — a mismatch between the e-fatura-deductible pool and the Anexo H entry, an Anexo J line without a corresponding country code, an Anexo G real-estate sale without the matching notário-side IMT/IMT-anterior chain — triggers a hold while AT requests documentation through the Portal das Finanças mensagens (messages) section, with the refund timing reset from the response date. As of 5 June 2026, OCC Bastonária Paula Franco reported on Conversa Capital that the reembolso pipeline is 'practically stopped' with thousands of declarations pending — early-window IRS Automático filers have been the only cohort to receive refunds on schedule.

The Categoria B (recibos verdes) filer's specific stack

The self-employed filer under the regime simplificado runs through Anexo B with the four coefficient lines: 0.75 for services and royalties (the default for most recibo verde freelancers, applied to gross billings before deductions), 0.15 for trade and industry, 0.10 for accommodation (alojamento local under the Categoria B option), and 0.70 for net rental income on the alojamento local Cat-B election. The coefficient reduces gross billings to the taxable base; the personal allowance does not apply on top. A 2024 amendment introduced a 0.15 coefficient ceiling-floor — at least 15% of gross billings must be substantiated by deductible expenses recorded against the activity, otherwise the coefficient applies to the higher of the threshold or actual deductions. The mandatory Anexo SS records the Segurança Social contributions (21.4% on the contribution base = 70% × turnover under the standard 12-month look-back). Filers above the €200,000 turnover threshold (or those who elect into the regime) move to Anexo C with full bookkeeping signed by a TOC.

Eight profile-based filing checklists

Single employee, Categoria A, Lisbon, €30,000 gross. IRS Automático eligible. Wait for the SMS / email notification (early-to-mid April), log in, review the pre-filled declaration, accept. Refund typically lands by mid-May. Add donations or PPR contributions manually if relevant.
Married couple, joint filing, both employees. File the Modelo 3 Folha do Rosto with both NIFs, two Anexos A (one per spouse), one shared Anexo H for household deductions. Run the Simulador to compare joint vs separate filing — joint filing usually wins for households with one significantly higher-earning spouse.
Recibos verdes freelancer, services, €25,000 gross. Folha do Rosto + Anexo B + Anexo H + Anexo SS. Apply the 0.75 coefficient (= €18,750 taxable base before the 15% expense-substantiation rule). Run the Simulador to test the IRS-due number before submission.
Landlord household with €18,000 annual rents. Folha do Rosto + Anexo F + Anexo H (for personal household expenses). Default 25% autonomous rate on long-term residential; check the contract-length reduction under the Mais Habitação package — a 5-year contract drops the rate to 15%, an 8-year to 10%, a 10-year+ to 5%.
NHR (legacy) pensioner from the UK. Folha do Rosto + Anexo A or H (Portuguese-source) + Anexo J (UK pension) + Anexo L. Tag the foreign pension as Categoria H, Country UK (GB code), with the NHR 10% flat-rate election. Anexo J needs the gross figure in euros at the BCE annual average.
IFICI new arrival on a tech salary. Folha do Rosto + Anexo A + Anexo J (any home-country income remitted) + Anexo L. Tag the Anexo A line with the IFICI 20% flat-rate election. Confirm the qualifying activity matches the Portaria 352/2024 listing.
Property seller (own-permanent-residence rollover). Folha do Rosto + Anexo G + Anexo G1. The G1 records the reinvestment intent (within 36 months) in another own-permanent residence. The gain rollover is full if 100% of the sale proceeds are reinvested net of any outstanding mortgage discharge.
Late or oficiosa filer who missed the window. File ASAP via the regular Modelo 3 route with the coima (fine) auto-calculated by AT on submission. The coima is typically lower than the IRS overpayment that the oficiosa default would otherwise generate.

The cross-border, double-tax-treaty and crypto layers

Foreign-source income runs through Anexo J with country-by-country totals. Portugal applies the credit method under most of its 80+ double-tax treaties — the foreign tax already withheld is credited against the Portuguese IRS due on the same income line, capped at the Portuguese rate that would apply. The taxpayer files in euros at the BCE annual average exchange rate (published in the Diário da República each January for the prior year). Crypto-asset gains have a dedicated treatment since the 2023 Orçamento do Estado update: crypto-asset disposals held over 365 days are exempt from Categoria G capital gains (held inside non-blacklisted jurisdictions); disposals held under 365 days are taxed at the 28% autonomous rate. Crypto-asset staking and mining rewards are Categoria B (self-employment) income when systematic, Categoria E (investment) income when passive. The Anexo J carries a dedicated 5.A line for crypto-asset foreign income; the Anexo G has a complementary domestic-source line.

Where to read the source materials

The load-bearing statutory frame is at dre.pt/dre/legislacao-consolidada/decreto-lei/1988-34480975 for the Código do IRS (consolidated text); at info.portaldasfinancas.gov.pt for the AT-maintained tax-code consolidated reference; at portaldasfinancas.gov.pt for the Modelo 3 filing portal itself; at gov.pt/servicos/entregar-a-declaracao-de-irs for the gov.pt service-catalogue page; at faturas.portaldasfinancas.gov.pt for the e-fatura confirmation interface; at occ.pt for the Ordem dos Contabilistas Certificados (Order of Certified Accountants) practice guidance; and at eur-lex.europa.eu for the EU automatic-exchange-of-information directives that feed AT's third-party data pool.