Portugal's 7.5% purchase tax on non-residents: what it actually is

Last verified 6 September 2026 against Andersen, Vertical Advogados and ECO. Professional review pending — per our methodology, tax pages are reviewed by a licensed professional before we treat them as final.

If you are not a Portuguese tax resident and you buy a home in Portugal, you now pay a flat 7.5% IMT on the purchase — no progressive scale, no first-home reduction, no exemptions. Two things are widely reported wrong about this, and both matter if you are planning a move: it is not arriving on 1 September 2026, and it is not unavoidable for someone who is actually relocating.

1. First, the date correction

You will see "from 1 September 2026" in a lot of coverage — we had it wrong on this site's front page too, and we have corrected it. The measure comes from Decreto-Lei n.º 97/2026, the Construir Portugal housing package, published on 20 May 2026. The 7.5% IMT rule came with it. What actually starts on 1 September 2026 is a different part of the same package: the new CIA and RSAA (simplified accessible-rent) regimes.

The practical consequence: if you were treating September as a deadline to buy before the rate hits, that deadline passed in May. Anyone who completed a purchase as a non-resident after the decree took effect is already inside the new rule.

2. What it costs

IMT is the transfer tax you pay when you buy. For a non-resident buying urban residential property, it is now a flat 7.5% of the purchase value, with the ordinary progressive brackets, reductions and exemptions switched off. On top of IMT you still pay 0.8% stamp duty (Imposto do Selo), plus notary and registration costs.

So on a €400,000 apartment: €30,000 IMT plus €3,200 stamp duty — €33,200 before you have paid a lawyer or a notary. Under the ordinary progressive scale a purchase like that would have cost meaningfully less; the professional commentary describes the change as roughly doubling the IMT bill for many buyers. We are not publishing a bracket-by-bracket comparison here until we have checked the 2026 scale against the CIMT text itself, because a wrong number in that table would cost someone real money.

This is general information, not tax advice. IMT is settled before the deed and the amounts are large — have a Portuguese advogado or solicitador confirm your specific position before you sign anything.

3. The two documented ways out

The 7.5% rate is not a penalty on foreigners as such — it is a penalty on buying without living here. The decree provides two routes by which the difference between the 7.5% and the ordinary IMT can be cancelled or refunded:

Become a Portuguese tax resident within two years of the purchase. This is the one that matters for almost everyone reading this site. If you are buying because you are moving — D7, D8, retirement — you are on this path already. Buyers who were Portuguese tax residents are likewise outside the surcharge.
Let the property as moderate-rent housing. Rent of no more than €2,300/month, a residential lease signed within 6 months of the purchase, and the property kept let for at least 36 months within the first 5 years.

Read the first one carefully, because the order of events is the trap. You pay the 7.5% at purchase, as a non-resident, and reclaim the difference afterwards, once residency is established. That is a cash-flow problem, not a paperwork problem: on a €400,000 purchase you are fronting roughly €15,000–€20,000 more than the eventual cost and waiting to get it back. Budget for the gross amount, not the net one.

4. What this means if you are relocating anyway

Most people who read this page are not investors. They are moving, and the honest summary is: this rule is survivable for you and brutal for a holiday-home buyer. Three consequences worth planning around:

Rent first is now the cheaper default. Arriving on a D7, renting for a year and buying after you are tax resident sidesteps the surcharge entirely, and it is the same advice we would give anyway — you do not know which town you want to live in until you have wintered in one.
If you buy before you land, get the two-year clock in writing. Your residency timeline (AIMA appointment, residence card issue, tax-residency registration) has to land inside two years of the deed. AIMA delays are not the rule's problem; they are yours.
The two-year route depends on you actually staying. If the move does not work out and you leave before establishing tax residency, the surcharge stands.

5. What we have not verified

We publish our gaps. Two things on this page are not yet nailed to the primary text:

The exact effective-date wording. Professional summaries describe the decree as published 20 May 2026 with most provisions taking effect from 1 January 2026 and the VAT changes from 1 July 2026. Which deed dates fall under the 7.5% rule is the kind of detail that belongs to the decree's own entrada em vigor and produção de efeitos articles, and we are reading those before we state it as fact. What is solid is that 1 September 2026 is not the IMT date.
The refund mechanism in practice. The routes are documented; how quickly Finanças actually repays, and what evidence it demands, is something we would rather report from people who have been through it than from a law firm's summary.

Sources: Decreto-Lei n.º 97/2026 (Construir Portugal), published 20 May 2026 · Andersen Portugal, "Habitação – Alterações fiscais e novos regimes de incentivo", 27 May 2026 · Vertical Advogados, "Novas Medidas Para a Habitação" · ECO, "'Choque fiscal' para a habitação publicado com todas as regras", 20 May 2026 · assis.partners summary of DL 97/2026. Every figure above carries the date we checked it.