Analysis with the arithmetic shown
Nineteen pieces on Portuguese corporate structure, tax, banking and market entry. Each one is written from the statute or the official fee table rather than from somebody else’s summary, and each one shows the working, including when the working contradicts what we would like to sell you. No email gate, no download form.
The Madeira window closes this year. Here is exactly how much time is left
The International Business Centre’s 5% rate is not open-ended: new licences stop at the end of 2026, and the regime has always run on substance, not on an address. What a company has to put in place before the date, and what happens to those already inside it.
Portugal’s corporate rate is falling. What that actually changes for you
The headline reduction is real but narrower than the press coverage suggests. Which companies see it, which pay the same as before, and why the autonomous regions still beat the mainland by a wide margin.
Read → Compliance · DeadlinesEvery deadline a Portuguese company lives by, counted from today
SAF-T on the fifth, VAT on the twentieth, Modelo 22 in May, IES in July, payments on account three times a year. A live calendar rather than a list, so you can see what is actually next.
Read → IRS · Owner payEveryone argues salary versus dividends. The money is in an election almost nobody makes
We modelled both routes across income levels and the usual debate turned out to be the wrong one. The aggregation election dominates the result so completely that we rewrote the conclusion to match the arithmetic.
Read → Treaty · Portugal–USThe treaty exists. That does not mean you are in it
Article 17(6) excludes Madeira free-zone companies from the Portugal–US treaty altogether — a fact absent from every commercial guide we checked. What that does to withholding, and who is affected.
Read → IVA · Cross-borderVAT, VIES and selling across the EU without tripping over it
Reverse charge for B2B, the €10,000 EU-wide threshold for B2C, and the One Stop Shop. Which rule applies to which sale, and the registration that quietly becomes compulsory once you grow.
Read → Remote · PayrollA Brazilian on a Portuguese permit, working remotely for a US company: where does the tax land?
Three jurisdictions, one person and nobody willing to give a straight answer. Worked through properly: income tax, social security, and the permanent-establishment risk the US employer did not know it had.
Read → MIBC · DeadlineThe Madeira window closes this year. Here is exactly how much time is left
New licences for the 5% regime stop at the end of 2026. What has to be in place before then, what the substance requirements really demand, and what happens to companies already inside.
Read → Madeira · DividendsA 5% company is worth nothing if the dividend is taxed at 35%
The corporate rate is the part everyone quotes. The part that decides what you actually keep is what happens when the money leaves Portugal and arrives wherever the owner lives.
Read → Holding · ParticipationThe regime nobody sells you, because nobody earns a fee explaining it
Portugal’s participation exemption is competitive, unexciting and free. It gets less airtime than offshore structures precisely because there is no product attached to it.
Read → Substance · StructuringSubstance in the EU: why the nameplate company stopped working
Banks, tax authorities and preferential regimes now ask the same question in three different forms: is anything actually happening here? What counts as an answer, and what no longer does.
Read → PE · RiskYou can owe tax in a country you never incorporated in
One salesperson closing deals from Berlin, one warehouse, one director signing from Paris. Each can create a taxable presence nobody budgeted for. The tests, and where they bite in practice.
Read → PT / ES / AE · ComparisonPortugal vs Spain vs UAE for your first international entity
We built the cost model and it showed the UAE cheapest in almost every configuration, which was not the conclusion we expected. So the comparison shows two winners: cheapest, and best inside the EU.
Read → Dissolution · ExitYou cannot simply stop. The company keeps costing money until you close it
An abandoned company still owes filings, still accrues penalties and still has a gerente attached to it. What dissolution actually involves, what it costs, and how long it really takes.
Read → IBAN · BankingOpening a business bank account in Portugal as a non-resident company
The step that quietly delays more launches than any filing. What banks actually ask for, which refusals are about you and which are about your sector, and how to clear compliance the first time.
Read → NIF · Tax numberA nine-digit number, and one question that decides what it costs you
Whether you need a fiscal representative changes the price, the paperwork and the timeline. The question is simpler than the advice around it suggests, and the answer is usually free.
Read → RH · EmploymentHiring your first employee in Portugal: the salary is about two thirds of what it costs
Employer social security at 23.75%, fourteen payments a year, holiday and Christmas subsidies, insurance. The real cost of a hire, and the contract types that decide how hard it is to undo.
Read → Visas · ResidencyResidency in Portugal: the routes that work, and the one change that reset the maths
Which permits exist for founders and the people they move, how each interacts with your company structure, and the administrative reality behind the published processing times.
Read → CAC · Market entryYour European CAC is not one number. It is one number per country
Published CPC figures vary by multiples depending on who you ask, so this one is anchored to a figure you supply and applies relative indices across markets. Honest about what cannot be known.
Read → Data · DemographicsOne in seven people here arrived from somewhere else
Who actually moves to Portugal, from where, and what that means for anyone selling here. AIMA and INE disagree below the top three nationalities, so those rankings are marked “do not cite”.
Read →Filtering happens in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, and the page works with JavaScript switched off — you simply see all nineteen at once.
Two things that are not articles
The weekly digest
What changed this week in Portuguese corporate, tax and migration rules, including Madeira and the Azores. Published Tuesdays, written for people who have to act on it rather than read about it.
- Every item traced to the diploma or decree that created it
- Marked law, bill or withdrawn — never blurred together
- Archive open, no signup
Calculators
Sixteen of them, and none wants your email address. Employment cost, dividend leakage, VAT thresholds, formation cost, the reporting calendar. They run entirely in your browser.
- No account, no gate, no “get your results by email”
- Assumptions shown, so you can disagree with them
- Figures from official tables, dated
How these are written, and why that matters to you
Who writes these?
The same people who do the client work: corporate and tax advisers in Lisbon. Nothing here is produced by a content agency, which is why the pieces have numbers in them and occasionally reach conclusions that cost us a sale.
How current are the figures?
Every rate, fee and deadline is checked against the primary source before publication — the Código do IRC, the official INPI and EUIPO fee tables, the decree that created the rule. Where sources disagree, we say so rather than picking the convenient one.
Do I have to give you an email address to read them?
No. There is no gate, no download form and no newsletter signup on any of these pages. If you want to talk to us afterwards, the contact page is there; if you do not, read and leave.
Reading is free. So is the first answer
If one of these raised a question about your own structure, send it. You will get a written answer within a working day — and if the honest answer is that you do not need us, that is what the reply will say.