IMT and stamp duty

IMT (imposto municipal sobre as transmissões onerosas de imóveis, the property transfer tax) is charged in bands. Each band carries a rate and a fixed deduction, and the tax is the price multiplied by the rate, less that deduction. That mechanism is what stops the bill jumping sharply as a price crosses from one band into the next.

The tax is not necessarily charged on the price written into the deed. It applies to the higher of the declared price and the VPT (valor patrimonial tributário, the property’s official rateable value). Where the rateable value is out of date the difference is immaterial, but that is not always the case, and the caderneta predial — the property’s tax record — is worth checking before relying on a figure.

Tables differ by region and by use. Mainland Portugal and the Autonomous Regions of the Azores and Madeira have their own bands, and a property bought as an own permanent home is treated differently from a second home, which starts paying in the very first band.

Stamp duty — imposto do selo — is then charged at 0.8% on the same base. On top of both sit the deed and registration costs, which are not a tax and vary with the notary or service used: that field is pre-filled with an estimate and can be edited.

IMT Jovem, the relief for buyers aged 35 and under, exempts the purchase of a first own permanent home from IMT up to a set value, and waives stamp duty within that same limit. Above it, stamp duty returns at the normal rate on the whole price rather than only on the excess — a detail that moves the result more than it might appear.

Eligibility does not turn on age alone. It requires that the property be a first own permanent home, that you have not owned another residential property in the previous three years, and that you are not a dependant for IRS purposes.

This is the part that matters most if you are buying from abroad. Since 25 May 2026, the purchase of an urban residential property by a buyer who is not tax resident in Portugal is charged at a flat 7.5% on the whole value, with no bands and no reliefs of any kind. The progressive tables and IMT Jovem simply do not apply. On a purchase where a resident buyer would pay a few per cent, the difference runs to tens of thousands of euros.

The charge applies only to urban buildings or autonomous fractions intended for housing. Building land, commercial premises and rural properties are outside it and keep the normal rates, whoever is buying.

The decree-law itself provides two ways out, both of which recover the difference between the 7.5% paid and the normal progressive rates. The first is becoming tax resident in Portugal within 2 years of the purchase, and then applying to the tax authority for the excess to be cancelled. The second is letting the property as a home at a rent of no more than 2 300 € a month, with the contract signed within 6 months of the purchase and the property let for at least 36 months over the first 5 years of ownership.

Both routes are worth planning for before the deed rather than after it, because each carries conditions that are far easier to meet by design than by accident.

It does not account for reliefs tied to urban regeneration, listed buildings, real estate investment funds or transfers between companies. Nor does it handle the purchase of a share in a property, or exchanges, where the taxable base is arrived at differently.

It also does not replace the formal assessment issued through the Portuguese tax portal, which is the document that counts on the day of the deed. What it does is give you, well before that, a reliable read on the order of magnitude, so the figure is never a surprise.

The values used are those in force in 2026 and are reviewed each year.