Take-home pay€36,495≈ €3,041 a month· effective rate 27.0%
Gross salary
€50,000
Social security — Segurança Social (employee)
-€5,500
11.00%
Income tax
-€8,005
Taxable base €44,500
Take-home pay
€36,495
Effective rate 27.0%
Which regime is mine?
Each regime below is checked against the amounts and activity you entered in the form.
The conditions the calculator cannot see — how long you have been in the country, what
you did before — you confirm yourself.
General IRS scale — The default progressive scale — how you are taxed unless you qualify for and choose a special regime.
Fits what you entered in the form.
Take-home pay: €36,495
IRS Jovem — partial exemption for young taxpayers — You are 35 or under and within your first 10 years of earning employment or self-employment income (closed to anyone who has used NHR or IFICI).
IFICI — tax incentive for scientific research and innovation — You have just become a Portuguese tax resident (not resident in the five preceding years, never on NHR) and work in a qualifying research or innovation activity.
The Azores do not have a tax table. They have a formula.
Madeira writes its own IRS table into its budget every year. The Azores never do. A regional decree from 1999, in its current wording in force since 2022, says one thing:
the national IRS rates in force in each year are reduced by 30%. That single sentence is the entire regional tax system for salaries.
The consequence people miss: the cut floats. When the 2026 budget law rewrote the national scale, all nine Azorean rates moved the same day, automatically, with no vote in Ponta Delgada. The first bracket runs at 8.75% against the mainland’s 12.5%; the top rate is 33.6% against 48%, from the same €86,634 threshold. Bracket limits, the two-column method, deductions, credits, IRS Jovem, IFICI: all national, all unchanged. Only the rates shrink.
The surcharge is where the Azores beat Madeira
On the bracket scale the two archipelagos are identical. The one numeric divergence sits above €80,000 of taxable income, where Portugal charges its additional solidarity rate. Because the Azorean rule cuts all national IRS rates, the surcharge falls too: 1.75% up to €250,000 and 3.5% beyond, where Madeira applies the full national 2.5% and 5%. Under the threshold, picking between the islands on tax grounds is a coin toss. Over it, the Azores win on every euro.
Nobody has printed the resulting table. Including the government.
Portugal’s two-part method taxes the lower slice of your income at a printed average rate, column B of the table. The Azores have no printed column B: the tax authority’s own rate leaflets show only the reduction rule for the region. So we derive it, multiplying the national column by 0.7. Every product terminates cleanly at four decimals, so there is no rounding choice to make, and the deduction amounts published by PwC for the Azores reproduce from our column exactly. The residual risk is the liquidation software rounding a step its own way, a cents-level effect disclosed in the calculator’s limitations. Madeira, which prints its own roundings, can sit about a thousandth of a percentage point away from the strict formula on one bracket.
Residency follows you, not your employer
You are an Azores resident for IRS when you spend more than 183 days of the tax year in the region, with your habitual home there and your tax registration there. The regional rule applies to residents regardless of where they exercise their activity: a developer in São Miguel invoicing a Lisbon or foreign employer gets the reduced scale on that salary in full. Proof, when asked, is a residence certificate from the tax authority.
Take €40,000 gross in Ponta Delgada, single, no children. Social security takes €4,400, the specific deduction removes €4,587, leaving €35,413 of taxable income. The Azorean scale charges about €5,704 of IRS where the mainland scale charges €8,149 on the identical base: precisely the formula at work, and roughly €2,445 a year that stays on the island with you.
What changed in 2026
The national scale changed, so the Azorean one followed: the 2026 budget law reset all nine national rates, and the formula repriced the region overnight. That is the change. The rule’s vigency for 2026 is not an assumption: the February dispatch approving this year’s regional withholding tables and the tax authority circular distributing them both cite the reduction decree in their opening lines. One honest caveat for low earners: the minimum-existence relief takes the first-bracket rate as an input, and whether the authority feeds it the reduced regional rate has not been verifiable anywhere official, so the calculator applies the national parameters there.
Questions people actually ask
Do the Azores set their own income tax brackets?
No, and that is the region's whole trick. A standing regional decree cuts the national IRS rates in force each year by a fixed share; there is no separately voted Azorean table. When Lisbon rewrites the national scale, the Azorean rates move with it automatically, in the same proportion, with no new regional legislation. The bracket thresholds and the calculation method stay national; only the rates shrink. That is also why no official printed Azores table exists anywhere: the law states a formula, and everyone, this site included, derives the numbers from it.
Is income tax lower in the Azores than in Madeira?
On the bracket scale, no: both regions land on exactly the same reduced rates, though by different legal routes. Madeira votes its table; the Azores derive theirs. The difference appears higher up. The solidarity surcharge on high incomes is reduced in the Azores but charged at the full national rate in Madeira, so above the surcharge threshold the same salary nets more in the Azores. Below that threshold the two archipelagos tax a salary identically, and the choice between them stops being a tax question at all.
Who counts as an Azores resident for tax purposes?
A Portuguese tax resident who spends the greater part of the tax year in the archipelago, keeps their habitual home there and is registered with the regional tax office; if the day count fails, the tie-breaker is where your principal centre of interests sits. Where your employer or your clients sit is irrelevant. The regional rule says the reduction applies to residents regardless of where they exercise their activity, which is precisely the remote-work case. The tax authority issues a certificate of regional residence when you need to prove it.
Why does my Azorean payslip not match this page?
Because monthly withholding for Azores residents comes from its own regional tables, approved every year by government dispatch, a separate instrument from the annual scale. Withholding exists to collect an approximation of your bill in instalments; the annual return then settles the difference against the real scale, which is what this page computes. Two different documents, two different sets of numbers, one final bill.
How reliable are the Azores figures in this calculator?
The marginal rates are certain: they follow arithmetically from the formula in the regional decree and match the tables the big advisory firms publish. The average-rate column that Portugal's two-part method needs has never been officially printed for the Azores, so we derive it from the same formula. The derivation involves no rounding choice and reproduces the published deduction figures exactly; the only residual risk is the tax authority's own software rounding a step differently, which would move a bill by cents, not euros.
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 — Tax credits for documented expenses — health, education, rent, and the general family expenses credit — are not modelled, and neither is the income-dependent cap on them. The tax shown is therefore an upper bound: it is what you would pay if you claimed nothing. This also means a small tax is shown at incomes just above the minimum-existence threshold, where the general family expenses credit would in practice cancel it. Applies to: Residents who file receipts — which is nearly everyone.
Your real tax may be LOWER — Married couples and civil partners may elect to be taxed jointly, which splits the income between two taxpayers and usually lowers the total tax when one partner earns much more than the other. We model a single taxpayer only. Applies to: Couples filing jointly, especially where incomes are unequal.
Your real tax may be LOWER — Madeira and the Azores replace the national IRS scale with their own, lower one — select your region in the form and the calculator applies it. Two island details stay approximate: the mínimo de existência (the low-income abatement) is applied with the national parameters, because no citable regional norm settles how the islands adjust it; and the Azores scale's average-rate column is derived from the statutory 30% reduction formula, since no official table of it exists, so the tax authority's own software could round a step differently — a cents-level effect. Applies to: Residents of Madeira or the Azores — the abatement point only matters on low salaries.
Your real tax may be LOWER — The dependant credit is higher for a second and further child aged up to six, and the ascendant credit is higher when only one ascendant lives with you. We apply the base amounts only. Applies to: Families with more than one young child, or with a single ascendant in the household.
Your real tax may be LOWER — The specific deduction can be raised above the fixed amount for fees paid to a professional order, when membership is required for the job. We apply the standard amount. Applies to: Employees who must belong to a professional order — lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects.
This calculator is for information only and is not tax advice. Rates and thresholds
change; check the methodology page for sources and
verification dates, and confirm your own situation with a qualified adviser.