Portugal: from company profit to money in your pocket
If you own the company you work through, two taxes hit the same money in turn. The company pays corporate tax on its profit. Then you pay income tax on the dividend you take out of what is left. In Portugal the second tax gives you no credit for the first one — the two stack. That is what the numbers below are showing you, and it is why a calculator that works out only one of them is telling you half the story.
€200,000 of profit, taken out in full
| Your company | Corporate tax | Tax on the dividend | You keep | Total rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turnover under €50,000,000 | €36,000 | €45,080 | €115,920 | 42.0% |
The gap between the best and worst case here is €0 on the same €200,000 of profit — decided by how long the company has been profitable and how much it turns over, not by anything you do differently in the year.
Where the money goes, step by step
Taking the middle case — turnover under €50,000,000:
| Company profit | €200,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate income tax | -€36,000 | PME / Small Mid Cap (reduced rate on the first EUR 50,000) |
| Derrama municipal (municipal surtax) | -€3,000 | Lisboa — 1.5% of taxable profit |
| Tax on dividends | -€45,080 | Final withholding tax of 28% — nothing more to declare |
| In your hands | €115,920 | Total tax rate 42.0% |
What this assumes
- One owner, resident in Portugal, taking the whole post-tax profit as a dividend.
- A small owner-operated company — no group, no consolidation, no transfer pricing.
- Under “Final withholding tax (taxa liberatória)” the rate does not depend on the rest of your income: the tax is taken at payout and that is the end of it.
- The table uses “Final withholding tax (taxa liberatória)”. Portugal lets you choose how the dividend is taxed, and the other route wins or loses depending on your other income — the dividend calculator lets you switch between them.
- Salary you pay yourself is a different route with different numbers — see the income tax calculator.
All Portugal taxes · Corporate tax on its own · Dividend tax on its own · How we calculate
Figures not yet fixed for this tax year
These amounts are applied in practice, but the text that fixes them for this tax year does not exist yet: either the statute has not been passed, or the body that sets the figure publishes it later than the year it applies to. We show them because leaving them out would give you a worse answer, not a safer one — and we show you exactly what each one rests on.
- surcharges[derrama_municipal].localities[].rate — These are the rates levied on the 2025 tax period, not 2026. A Portuguese municipal council sets its derrama municipal rate for a year during that year and reports it to the tax authority, which publishes the consolidated national table only in the February that follows: the 2025 table appeared on 2 February 2026, so the 2026 table is not due until around February 2027. No 2026 rate therefore exists for any municipality today. All eleven rates offered here (Lisboa 1.50%, Porto 1.50%, Cascais 1.00%, Oeiras 1.50%, Sintra 1.50%, Braga 1.50%, Coimbra 1.45%, Faro 1.20%, Matosinhos 1.50%, Vila Nova de Gaia 1.25%, Setúbal 1.50%) come from that one official 2025 list. A derrama deliberation stays in force until the council passes a new one (art. 18.º/1 of Lei n.º 73/2013), and most councils leave their rate unchanged for years, so last year's rate is the best available estimate for 2026 — but it is an estimate, not the 2026 rate: a council is free to raise or cut it, and you would not learn of the change until 2027. The alternative was to omit the surcharge, which would understate the tax of a company based in Lisboa by 1.5% of its taxable profit. (what we relied on) · we re-check after 2027-02-01
What this calculator does not model
Every rule below is real and is left out on purpose — modelling it would need information this form does not ask you for, or a mechanism we have not built yet. What matters is not that something is missing, but which way it moves your number, so that is what we tell you.
- Your real tax may be LOWER — Most councils charge no municipal surcharge at all on companies whose prior-year turnover was EUR 150,000 or less (Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia charge a reduced rate instead). The calculator applies the full municipal rate to everyone, so it shows a surcharge you may not owe. Applies to: Companies with prior-year turnover of EUR 150,000 or less — which is most founders in their first year.
- Your real tax may be LOWER — The reduced 15% band is granted by a headcount test (fewer than 250 staff, or fewer than 500 for a small mid cap), not purely by turnover. We approximate it with the EUR 50,000,000 turnover limit, so a small mid cap above that turnover is denied the band here even though the law may grant it. Applies to: Companies above EUR 50,000,000 turnover with fewer than 500 staff.
- Your real tax may be HIGHER — Autonomous taxation (tributacoes autonomas) is a real corporate charge, but it falls on certain expenses — company cars, entertainment, undocumented spending — rather than on profit, so it cannot be derived from the numbers this form asks for. Applies to: Companies that run cars or incur entertainment expenses.
- Your real tax may be HIGHER — The reduced 15% band is granted here to every company at or below the turnover limit, but the law also demands a headcount test and a commercial, industrial or agricultural main activity. A company under the turnover limit that fails either test would not get the band. Applies to: Companies below the turnover limit with 500 or more staff, or whose main activity is not commercial, industrial or agricultural.
- May not apply to you — Corporate tax is charged on the taxable base after carried-forward losses and tax benefits, while both surcharges are charged on taxable profit before them. This calculator uses one profit figure for all three, so the numbers diverge once you carry losses forward. Applies to: Companies carrying losses forward or claiming tax benefits.
- Your real tax may be HIGHER — Aggregation (englobamento) is not a per-dividend choice: electing it drags every item of your investment income for the year — other dividends, bank interest, bond coupons — onto the scale as well, and those enter in full, while only company profits enter at 50%. This page compares the two routes for one dividend in isolation, so it understates what aggregation really costs you. Applies to: Anyone with investment income beyond this dividend who is considering aggregation.