In 2009, the Portuguese Government created the tax regime for non-habitual residents with the aim of attracting qualified professionals in high value-added activities to Portugal, as well as beneficiaries of pensions obtained abroad.
This statute grants several tax advantages to those who establish their tax residence in Portugal. To be recognized as a Non-Habitual Resident, you need to go through an application process where you will be required to stay in Portugal for 183 days or own your own home in this country.
Anyone, who can be a legal resident in Portugal.
The required conditions are as follows:
The candidate must reside abroad at the time of application.
The candidate cannot have resided in Portugal in the 5 years preceding the application.
The candidate wants to move his/her residence to Portugal.
After obtaining the status, the tax benefits will apply for a period of 10 years, which vary according to the situation of each candidate.
The first of the situations is in the case of coming to work in Portugal. In this case, with the non-habitual resident status, you will benefit from a fixed tax rate of 20% on the net income of categories A (dependent work) and B (independent work). This fee applies only to professionals in high value-added activities, which include professions such as Doctors, Teachers, Architects, Tax Consultants, Designers, among many others.
Category A (dependent work) income earned abroad will be exempt, provided that:
Category B (independent work), as well as Category F (capital income) and Category G (property income) that non-habitual residents earn abroad will be exempt, provided that
Another situation is the possibility of being retired. Here, all pensions from a non-Portuguese source, but domiciled in Portugal, benefit from exemption from paying taxes, due to agreements between Portugal and several other countries, which aim to prevent double taxation of income.
Net income from pensions obtained abroad from contributions, by non-habitual residents, and which have not been considered as a tax deduction, are taxed at the rate of 10%.
We know that all this information can be confusing for those who don’t know the Portugal fiscal regime. For that reason, our consultants are available to answer all your questions.
