Hiring a Domestic Worker (Empregado/a Doméstico/a) in Portugal in 2026 — A Practical Guide to the Decreto-Lei 235/92 Contract Regime, the Segurança Social Doméstico Code, the IRS Categoria A Reporting Path and the Multiple-Employer Acumulação Mechanics

Hiring a domestic worker in Portugal — whether a full-time housekeeper, a part-time cleaner, a live-in carer for an elderly relative or a multi-employer hourly aide — sits inside a distinct statutory regime, the Regime Jurídico do Contrato de Serviço Doméstico codified in Decreto-Lei n.º 235/92 (as updated by successive reforms, most recently Lei n.º 13/2025 and the 2025 Código do Trabalho consolidation). It is not the same as a regular employee under the standard Código do Trabalho, and it is not the same as a freelance services contract under the Recibos Verdes regime. The classification matters: it sets the contributory rate, the contract-form rules, the holiday-and-leave entitlements, the severance-and-termination architecture and the IRS reporting path.

This guide walks the full procedural arc — what the regime is, who qualifies as a domestic worker, the contract-form options, the Segurança Social registration and contributory mechanics, the IRS reporting line, the multiple-employer acumulação scenario and the practical-resident profile-based action items.

What the regime covers — who is a 'trabalhador doméstico'

Decreto-Lei n.º 235/92 defines a domestic worker as anyone employed to provide services within the household of an individual or family to satisfy the household's own needs. The classic categories include:

• Empregada / empregado de limpeza — cleaner.
• Cozinheira / cozinheiro — cook.
• Governanta / governante — housekeeper / household manager.
• Ama — child carer / nanny (note: separately also possible to engage an Ama under the public Segurança Social-funded Ama regime for child-minding services from one's own home, which is a different vehicle).
• Cuidador / cuidadora — carer for an elderly or dependent household member.
• Mordomo / mordoma — butler.
• Jardineiro / jardineira — gardener (when working within the residential household, not as part of a separately-contracted gardening company).
• Motorista particular — personal driver attached to the household.

The decisive test is whether the service is provided directly to the household of an individual or family. A cleaner who works for a company that the household contracts is not a domestic worker — the cleaner is the company's employee. The Decreto-Lei 235/92 regime applies only when the household itself is the employer.

The two contract options

The household can engage a domestic worker under one of two contract structures:

Option 1 — Contrato a Tempo Inteiro (full-time domestic contract)

• Standard 40-hour-per-week schedule (or the schedule agreed up to that ceiling).
• Monthly fixed wage at or above the Retribuição Mínima Mensal Garantida (RMMG — the Portuguese national minimum wage), set at €870 a month in 2026 for the standard 40-hour schedule. The proportional adjustment applies for shorter weekly schedules.
• Either com alojamento (live-in, where the household provides accommodation and meals as part of the package — with the cash-wage portion separated from the in-kind component for reporting purposes) or sem alojamento (live-out).
• Indefinite-term by default. Term-limited contracts are allowed only in the specific cases identified in the Código do Trabalho (replacing an absent worker, seasonal task, etc.).
• Required to be in writing if it is term-limited, part-time below 30 hours a week, or live-in. Indefinite-term full-time live-out contracts can be verbal (though a written contract is universally advisable for both sides).

Option 2 — Contrato Doméstico ao Serviço de Várias Entidades (multi-employer hourly contract)

• The classic 'few hours a week, multiple households' arrangement — typical for cleaning services where the worker rotates through three or four households on different days.
• Hourly wage with no full-time minimum-wage anchor; the practical floor is the hourly equivalent of the RMMG (€870 ÷ 173.33 hours ≈ €5.02/hour as the 2026 base, though market rates for cleaners in Lisboa, Porto and the Algarve sit higher).
• Each employer registers the worker separately at Segurança Social and contributes proportionally to the hours worked at that household.
• This is the Acumulação case — the worker accumulates contribution credits across multiple employers, with all employers feeding the same Segurança Social NISS.

Segurança Social — registration and contribution mechanics

The household is the employer. The household must:

1. Open a household-employer Segurança Social account — through Segurança Social Direta with the household's NIF, registering as an entidade empregadora particular. This step is one-off.
2. Register the worker — link the worker's NISS to the household-employer account, with the contract details (full-time / part-time, hourly / monthly, com / sem alojamento).
3. Choose the contributory base. The Regime do Serviço Doméstico permits two distinct contributory bases:The Remuneração Convencional path is the historical norm for the regime, and is the lower-cost option for both household and worker when the actual wage sits above the IAS. The trade-off is that the worker's pension and unemployment benefits are calculated on the lower notional base — which materially compresses the eventual pension and the unemployment-benefit replacement rate. Many workers and many households now prefer the Remuneração Real path for that reason.
   • Remuneração Real — contributions calculated on the actual cash wage paid, plus the in-kind alojamento-and-alimentação component for live-in contracts (the latter valued at the regulatorily-fixed rate).
   • Remuneração Convencional — contributions calculated on a notional fixed base equal to the Indexante dos Apoios Sociais (IAS), set at €522.50 a month in 2026, regardless of the actual wage paid.
4. Pay the monthly contributions — via Segurança Social Direta, by the 20th of the month following the work month. The standard contributory rate stack is:
   • Employer (household): 18.9% of the contributory base.
   • Worker: 9.4% of the contributory base (withheld at source by the household and paid to Segurança Social).
   • Combined: 28.3% of the contributory base — comfortably below the 34.75% combined rate on a standard non-domestic Código do Trabalho contract (23.75% employer + 11% worker), which is one of the reasons the regime exists as a distinct category.
5. Pay or pass through unemployment-benefit contributions if applicable. Domestic-service workers were historically excluded from Subsídio de Desemprego. Following the 2017 regime overhaul and the further 2023-2025 refinements, workers on the Remuneração Real basis can now elect into unemployment coverage at the standard contributory mark-up; workers on Remuneração Convencional generally remain outside the Subsídio Desemprego perimeter.

IRS — how the income is taxed and reported

The wages a domestic worker receives are Categoria A income (rendimento do trabalho dependente) for IRS purposes — they sit in the same Categoria A box as any salary income. Practical mechanics:

• Quarterly NIF reporting by the household: the household, as employer, must declare the wages paid through the AT's Portal das Finanças. The quarterly reporting cadence is the practical norm for low-volume single-employer households.
• Retenção na fonte (withholding at source): the household is in principle required to operate IRS withholding at source. In practice, for single-employer households at or near the RMMG, the withholding tables yield zero or near-zero withholding because the worker's income sits below the IRS threshold or inside the first escalão. Many households pay the gross wage and leave the IRS settlement to the worker's annual Modelo 3.
• Anexo A of the worker's Modelo 3: the worker reports the full Categoria A income from each employer through Anexo A of the annual Modelo 3 IRS declaration. For multi-employer workers, all employer-reported wages aggregate into a single Categoria A line.
• Dedução à colecta: the worker receives the standard Categoria A automatic deduction of €4,462.15 in 2026 (covering RMMG-band wage compression at the first escalão), plus the regular IRS Jovem / IFICI / NHR-residual stacks where applicable.
• Household-side deductions: Portuguese IRS does not currently provide a household-side deduction for domestic-worker employment costs (unlike some EU peers — France's CESU credit-d'impôt, Spain's deducción por empleada de hogar, Italy's badanti credito d'imposta). The household-side benefit sits in the lower combined contributory rate of the regime, not in an IRS credit.

Working time, holidays and the standard entitlements

The Decreto-Lei 235/92 holiday-and-leave architecture broadly mirrors the standard Código do Trabalho, with regime-specific carve-outs:

• Working week: 40 hours for full-time, scaled proportionally for part-time.
• Daily rest: 11 consecutive hours.
• Weekly rest: one full day plus a half-day (typically Sunday plus Saturday or Monday afternoon).
• Holiday entitlement: 22 working days per year of paid holiday, plus the Subsídio de Férias (a paid holiday bonus equal to one month's wage).
• Christmas bonus (Subsídio de Natal): one month's wage paid by 15 December.
• National holidays: the worker is entitled to paid time off on the 13 national feriados plus any locally-decreed municipal feriado.
• Parental leave: the standard Lei do Trabalho parental-leave entitlements apply, with the Segurança Social pass-through for the cash-benefit portion (Subsídio Parental).
• Sickness leave: the standard Segurança Social Subsídio de Doença applies for absences beyond three days.
• Live-in workers (com alojamento): the household must provide adequate accommodation and meals; the cash wage cannot fall below 75% of the equivalent RMMG-anchored sem-alojamento wage.

Termination — notice periods and severance

The termination architecture is somewhat lighter than under the standard Código do Trabalho:

• Termination by the worker (denúncia): 7 days' notice if the worker has been engaged for less than 6 months, 15 days if between 6 months and 2 years, 30 days if more than 2 years.
• Termination by the household (despedimento): 8 days' notice within the trial period, then 15 days up to 1 year, 30 days between 1 and 5 years, 60 days beyond 5 years.
• Trial period (período experimental): 30 days for general domestic-service contracts, extending to 60 days for live-in or specialised technical roles (cuidador, motorista, governanta).
• Severance (compensação por cessação): the indemnização for a despedimento without just cause is equivalent to one month's wage per year of service, with a minimum equivalent to three months' wage.
• Just cause: the standard Código do Trabalho just-cause categories apply — material breach by the worker (theft, repeated misconduct, abandonment of post), force majeure of the household side (death of the head of household with no continuation by heirs, prolonged household relocation, etc.).

Profile-based action items

The expat household profile shapes the right contract-form and contributory-base configuration:

(a) Lisboa or Porto household engaging a once-or-twice-a-week cleaner for 4-6 hours per visit

• Multi-employer hourly contract (Contrato Doméstico ao Serviço de Várias Entidades).
• Hourly wage at the 2026 market rate (typically €10-12 in Lisboa and Porto, €8-10 outside the main urban centres).
• Segurança Social: each employer registers separately. Remuneração Convencional is the practical norm given the part-time nature; the worker may already be on Remuneração Real with a primary full-time employer, in which case the Convencional add-on simply tops up the contributory base.
• IRS: quarterly reporting through Portal das Finanças; the worker handles the annual Modelo 3.

(b) Algarvio villa household engaging a full-time live-in housekeeper-and-cook

• Full-time Contrato a Tempo Inteiro com alojamento.
• Cash wage at or above the 75%-of-RMMG floor (€652.50 a month in 2026) for the live-in carve-out, plus the in-kind component (accommodation + meals).
• Segurança Social: Remuneração Real recommended for higher eventual pension. Combined contributory rate 28.3% on the cash wage plus the regulatorily-fixed accommodation-and-meal valuation.
• Subsídio Férias + Subsídio Natal mandatory.
• Written contract advisable; required if the agreement is term-limited.

(c) Alentejo or Beira Interior household engaging a full-time cuidador for an elderly relative

• Full-time Contrato a Tempo Inteiro, com or sem alojamento depending on the arrangement.
• Coordinate with the Segurança Social Apoio Domiciliário (home-care subsidy) pathway and the Complemento por Dependência where the elderly relative is eligible — the household-paid cuidador wage can be partially offset by the state-side support stream.
• Remuneração Real strongly recommended; the cuidador role is typically the worker's sole and main occupation, and the pension-replacement-rate compression matters disproportionately.
• Working-time architecture must respect daily-and-weekly-rest provisions; backup-cover arrangements through SAD or family rota are typically necessary.

(d) Two-working-parent Lisboa household engaging a daily nanny (Ama)

• The Decreto-Lei 235/92 Ama path (private nanny in the household) or the public Ama Familiar regime (the carer hosts up to four children at her own home).
• For the private-household path: Contrato a Tempo Inteiro sem alojamento, RMMG anchor.
• For the public Ama Familiar path: the household instead pays the Ama Familiar's service-rate to the Segurança Social-credentialled carer, and the contractual relationship is between the carer and Segurança Social rather than the household; the household pays the comparticipação parental.
• Coordinate with the Abono de Família para Crianças e Jovens monthly state-side child benefit, which scales with the household income escalão and is unaffected by Ama choice.

(e) High-net-worth expat household engaging a full household staff (motorista + governanta + cozinheiro + duas empregadas)

• Each member of staff on a separate Contrato a Tempo Inteiro, registered separately at Segurança Social through the same household-employer NIF.
• Remuneração Real for the senior roles (governanta, cozinheiro, motorista) to reflect the cash wage and the eventual-pension trajectory.
• Live-in component for any member of staff who resides on the property, with the regulatorily-fixed accommodation-and-meals valuation.
• Written contracts strongly advisable for each role, ideally with a payroll bureau or contabilista handling the monthly Segurança Social calc and the quarterly IRS reporting.
• Liability-and-domestic-employer's-insurance product through one of the standard insurers (Fidelidade, Tranquilidade, Ageas, Allianz, Generali) — the domestic-employer's liability cover is a low-cost rider on the standard home-insurance policy and covers the household-employer side in case of workplace accident or third-party damage claim.

(f) Cross-border or short-term expat household engaging a transient cleaner via a Lisboa-or-Porto cleaning agency

• If the agency invoices the household and the cleaner is the agency's employee, the household is not the Decreto-Lei 235/92 employer — the agency is. The household pays an agency invoice (typically including IVA at 23%) and stays out of the Segurança Social and IRS reporting line.
• If the cleaner sub-contracts directly under Recibos Verdes (Atividade Independente), the household pays a fatura-recibo and the cleaner reports as Categoria B. The Decreto-Lei 235/92 regime still does not apply, since the contractual frame is a services contract, not a domestic-employment contract.
• For occasional one-off cleanings (post-renovation, end-of-tenancy), the agency-and-Recibos-Verdes paths are operationally simpler than opening the household-employer Segurança Social account.

Practical pitfalls and watch list

• The 'just-pay-cash' temptation: non-registered domestic work is one of the most-policed informal-labour categories by the ACT (Autoridade para as Condições do Trabalho) and the Segurança Social inspection arm. The risk profile combines an ACT fine on the household side, a Segurança Social back-contribution demand, an IRS gross-up reassessment, and exposure to a worker-side denouncement at the Centro de Arbitragem de Conflitos. Worth doing it properly from day one.
• Confusing the Decreto-Lei 235/92 regime with Recibos Verdes: a cleaner cannot lawfully be on Recibos Verdes if the practical relationship is one of subordination — fixed weekly hours, household direction, exclusivity. Misclassification audits by the ACT have been a steady source of revenue back-claims since the 2023 worker-status overhaul.
• The Subsídio de Férias and Subsídio de Natal: easy to forget and easy to mis-calculate, particularly for multi-employer hourly workers. The two subsídios are mandatory and proportional, and the worker's complaint at the Centro de Arbitragem de Conflitos is generally upheld if they are skipped.
• Live-in board-and-lodging valuation: the in-kind component must be valued at the regulatorily-fixed rate for Segurança Social and IRS reporting. Under-reporting the in-kind component is a steady audit theme.
• The Trabalho XXI labour-law overhaul: the proposed package currently in Parliamentary discussion does not directly rewrite Decreto-Lei 235/92 but reshapes several of the cross-cutting Código do Trabalho provisions (banco de horas, teletrabalho, perdas e danos). The domestic-service regime will need to absorb the cross-cutting changes once they pass — worth watching the parliamentary calendar through Q3 2026.
• The IFICI / IRS Jovem stacking for the worker side is operationally available where the worker qualifies — particularly relevant if the household is engaging a younger Portuguese-resident cuidador or governanta who meets the IRS Jovem cohort criteria.

The bottom line

Hiring a domestic worker in Portugal is a low-friction operational exercise once the regime is clear: open the household-employer account at Segurança Social, register the worker, choose the contributory base, schedule the monthly contribution and the quarterly IRS reporting, and put the contract in writing (verbal is technically legal for the standard full-time live-out case, but practically advisable to write it down in every case). The combined 28.3% Segurança Social rate, the absence of an IRS-side household credit, the 22-day holiday entitlement and the two subsídios are the load-bearing parameters of the cost model — and the choice between Remuneração Real and Remuneração Convencional is the single biggest configuration decision.