Why the ordinary-rules row keeps going to Spain
The matrix above will hand Spain the general-rules comparison at almost any salary you type, and the reasons are structural enough to survive whatever number that is. Portugal’s scale reaches 48% once taxable income passes €86,634, with a solidarity surcharge of 2.5% stacking on the slice past €80,000 and 5% further up. Spain’s state half is still charging 22.5% through that whole range, and even with Madrid’s regional half added the combined marginal rate never reaches Portugal’s top rate.
Contributions do the rest of the work. A Portuguese employee pays 11% of gross, on every euro, with no ceiling.
A Spanish employee pays 6.5% across four payroll items, on a base that stops at €61,214 a year; above it, only solidarity slices of a fraction of a percent keep charging.
On €100,000 gross that is €11,000 of Portuguese contributions against roughly €4,060 of Spanish ones. The contribution gap alone moves the net by several points before the two scales even start arguing.
Portugal’s deduction is bigger where it matters, and it still loses
Portugal’s specific deduction is €4,587 or your mandatory social contributions, whichever is larger, never the sum.
Contributions overtake the fixed amount near €41,700 of gross, so above that line the deduction simply is your social security and grows with every raise. A Spanish employee deducts contributions plus a flat €2,000, and a further low-earner reduction that has tapered to nothing by €19,748 of net employment income. From mid-range salaries upward the Portuguese taxable base is the smaller of the two, and Portugal still collects more tax from it. That tells you where this comparison is really decided: in the brackets and the contributions, not the deductions. Spain’s personal minimum of €5,550 does quiet work too, though as a credit computed at the bottom rates rather than a chunk taken off the base.
The two regimes built to flip the verdict
The Portuguese side of the matrix carries two escapes, and they change the answer more than any assumption does. IRS Jovem exempts 100% of gross employment income in the first year of earning income, stepping down to 25% in the last three of its ten years, with the exempt amount capped at €29,542 and the exempt income still counted when setting the rate on the rest. It wants you aged thirty-five or under and inside your first ten earning years. IFICI charges a flat 20% on net employment income for ten years, and its gates were drawn for relocators: no Portuguese residence in the five preceding years, no NHR history, and work on the qualifying-activity list. The two exclude each other permanently, so this is a fork. Whether either branch actually beats the Spanish column at your salary is exactly what the matrix computes; the headline rates alone cannot answer it, because IFICI’s rate lands on net income and the IRS Jovem cap bites early on a good salary.
The Spanish regime we refuse to fake
An employee relocating to Spain hears about one regime before any other: Beckham, a flat 24% on income up to €600,000. It is not in the matrix, on purpose. Our engine models Beckham only in its self-employed variant, where it prices autónomo contributions that a payroll employee does not pay; bolting that result onto an employee comparison would be precise-looking and wrong. The Beckham page draws the same boundary in its first paragraph. Until an employee mode ships, read the Spanish column as ordinary rules only: for a qualifying impatriate it is a ceiling, not a forecast, and we would rather say that above the fold than in a footnote.
Geography moves one column and freezes the other
In Spain, regions own half the income tax scale. The matrix prices the region named in the assumptions block; Madrid is the lightest of the five regional scales we model, and any other choice narrows Spain’s lead, so re-run the numbers if the offer is in Barcelona rather than Madrid. In mainland Portugal the personal scale is national, so moving from Lisbon to Braga changes your rent, not your income tax. Madeira and the Azores are the exception: each replaces the national scale with a reduced one of its own, and the Portuguese column here assumes the mainland. If the offer is in Funchal or Ponta Delgada, price it on the Madeira or Azores calculator instead.
What changed in 2026
Portugal’s bracket table is the new one from the State Budget for 2026 (Lei n.º 73-A/2025).
The annual IAS revision to €537.13 moved everything indexed to it: the specific deduction now stands at €4,587 and the IRS Jovem cap at €29,542. Portuguese contribution rates carried over untouched. Spain’s state scale is the consolidated LIRPF table; the year’s movement is on the contribution side, where Orden PJC/297/2026 set the 2026 bases, putting the annual cap at €61,214, fixed the employee share of the intergenerational equity mechanism at 0.15% from the first of January, and set the solidarity contribution slices that apply to pay above the ceiling.