Portugal pension tax tables: how to read them

Eleven tables, and only four are yours

Despacho 233-A/2026 of 6 January approves the withholding tables in force in mainland Portugal since 1 January 2026¹. There are eleven, and rule 1 splits them into sub-rules that are rarely quoted: 1(a) and 1(b) approve tables i to vii, applicable to employment income, and 1(c) and 1(d) approve the last four, applicable to pensions, maintenance payments excepted.

Which of the four applies depends on two things and nothing else:

• Table viii: single, or married with two earners, no disability.
• Table ix: married, single earner, no disability.
• Table x: single or married with two earners, with a disability.
• Table xi: married, single earner, with a disability.

Tables x and xi also serve holders with armed forces disability under Decree-Laws 43/76 and 314/90, who have a column of their own in them.

The formula is the one in rule 3(b): monthly pension times the bracket's top marginal rate, minus that bracket's deductible portion, never below zero. It is the same shape the employment tables use, and it is the only thing the two families share without qualification.

Where the tax starts

In tables viii and ix the first bracket runs to €920 at a rate of 0%. Below that there is no withholding at all. The figure is not a pensioner's perk: it is the same threshold as the employment tables, and it matches the national minimum wage.

Where the regime changes scale is disability. With a permanent incapacity of 60% or more, table x or xi applies and the first bracket runs to €1,816 for a single person or married couple with two earners, and to €2,257 for a married single earner¹. That is roughly double and more than two and a half times the common threshold, and it is the most consequential difference among the four tables.

It is worth saying what "no withholding" means. Withholding is an advance against the year's tax, not the tax itself. A pension below the first bracket is simply not advanced monthly, and the final result is settled in the annual return like everyone else's.

Dependants come in through a rule, not a column

Anyone who opens an employment table beside a pension table notices an absence: tables i, ii and iii carry a column called "additional deductible portion per dependant" and tables viii and ix carry no dependant column at all.

That leads many people to conclude children do not count. They do. What happens is that the rule lives outside the table, in rule 5(c) of the Despacho: in the situations covered by tables viii to xi, where there are dependants, the deductible portion is increased, per dependant, by €42.86 for a married single earner, €21.43 for a married couple with two earners and €34.29 for a single person¹.

The amounts match the employment columns. It is the mechanism that differs, and that is why reading a pension table directly never shows the effect of children. The next sub-rule covers armed forces disability, with €18.19 on table x and €36.38 on table xi, those in a column of their own.

The three-dependant rule does not reach a pensioner

Rule 5(h) of the Despacho grants a one percentage point cut in the bracket's top marginal rate to holders with three or more dependants. It is worth reading who to:

"Holders of employment income with three or more dependants who fall within the tables of rules 1(a) and 1(b) […]"¹

Rules 1(a) and 1(b) are tables i to vii, the employment ones. Pensions sit in rules 1(c) and 1(d) and are not covered. A pensioner with three children therefore does not get the cut an employee in the same family situation does.

On a €1,500 pension, that percentage point would be worth €15.00 a month, or €210.00 across the fourteen payments of the year. It is not the largest number on this page, but it is the only one that follows from an express exclusion and, as far as we can see, is explained nowhere beside the tables.

Gentler below, heavier above

The question almost every new pensioner asks in the first month is why the deduction changed. The answer has two halves, and this is the first.

Comparing table viii with table i, which serve exactly the same family situation, the marginal rates match on almost every lower row, but the pension deductible portions are always larger. The effect is a smaller withholding: on a €1,500 pension the withholding is €151.54, where the same amount of salary would lose €168.17.

Above €2,361 a month the two tables separate, and the pension one becomes the harsher:

The exact point where the advantage reverses is where the 43.10% row crosses the 38.36% one, that is about €2,681 a month. Below it a pension is withheld more gently than an identical salary; above it, more heavily. On a €3,000 pension the withholding is €678.26 against €663.14 on the same salary.

For the married single earner pair, table ix against table iii, the reversal comes far earlier, at around €1,227 a month, because the two tables have quite different brackets from the start.

The second half: there is no Social Security

A pension pays no Social Security. The 11% contribution exists to fund the future benefits of people who work, and those already drawing them do not pay it. This is easily forgotten because, on a payslip, the two deductions appear side by side.

It is worth seeing both effects on the same gross €1,500 a month:

That is €181.63 of difference in the same month, and IRS explains only €16.63 of it. The larger part is the contribution that no longer exists.

Fourteen payments, and the month you receive two

A general-scheme pension is paid fourteen times a year, with the additional amounts in July and December. The natural worry is whether the month with two pensions is withheld at a much higher rate, as it would be if the two amounts were added together before looking up the table row.

It is not. Rule 10 of the Despacho requires that, where a payment includes more than one remuneration (as in the months of the holiday and Christmas amounts), the payer state the effective monthly rate of each separately¹. Each pension is withheld as though it stood alone.

The practical consequence is simple: the tax advanced over the year is fourteen times one month's withholding. On that €1,500 pension, that is €21,000 gross, €2,121.56 of IRS withheld and €18,878.44 received.

What is left out, and what it is worth

Three additions exist in the Despacho and are not in this explanation or in the calculator, because they depend on an election or a proof nobody can assume. They are set out here with their exact amounts, so that anyone in one of those situations can adjust their own deductible portion:

• Dependant with an incapacity of 60% or more (rule 5(a)): €84.82 per dependant for a single person or married single earner and €42.41 for a married couple with two earners. Rules 6 and 7 allow that amount to be multiplied up to three times, or up to six for a married couple with two earners, by an option communicated to the payer before the payment.
• Spouse with an incapacity of 60% or more (rule 5(b)): for a married single earner whose spouse has no category A or H income, €135.71 is added to the deductible portion.
• Option for a higher rate (rule 5(e), and article 98(6) of the IRS Code³): you may ask to be withheld at a higher whole rate than the one due, which changes only the marginal rate and leaves the deductible portions untouched.

Also out of scope are the separate tables for the Azores and Madeira, maintenance payments, which the Despacho itself excludes from tables viii to xi², and pensioners not resident in Portugal, to whom these tables do not apply at all.

Where to see your own case

The pension tax calculator picks the table from your situation, applies the dependant rule and shows the monthly withholding, the net, the total across the fourteen payments and, beside it, what the same amount would lose as salary. For the gross pension everything starts from, use the pension calculator; for the annual increase that changes it every January, the pension increase calculator.