Portugal’s tuition fee refund: what the graduate salary premium pays

A benefit paid in pieces, not in one go

The official name is long and nobody uses it: prémio salarial de valorização das qualificações no mercado de trabalho. The name that stuck is the tuition fee refund, and it is a fair description of the idea, because the amounts were calibrated on the tuition fees of Portuguese public higher education. The purpose of Decree-Law 134/2023 is stated in its own opening: to reward the pursuit of higher study and to contribute to raising the incomes of qualified young people who work in the country¹.

What almost everyone misses is the form the support takes. It is not a single payment. It is a run of annual instalments, and their number is chosen neither by the beneficiary nor by the state: it is the length of the study cycle of the course completed.

How much it is: three amounts, not two

Article 3(1) sets the annual amounts¹:

The third row is the one that tends to fall out of summaries, and it is the one that moves the most money. A five-year integrated master’s, split into three years matching the bachelor’s and two matching the master’s, is worth 3 × 697 EUR plus 2 × 1500 EUR, that is 5091 EUR. Working it out at a single price gives 3485 EUR or 7500 EUR, and neither matches what the law requires.

There is one small rule that changes the result on courses of irregular length. Article 4 of Ministerial Order 67-A/2024 requires the number of years of the cycle to be counted “rounded up to the nearest whole number if necessary”², so a master’s lasting a year and a half pays two instalments rather than one.

The 2023 rule, and why most calculations get it wrong

If you obtained the degree in 2023 or later, the number of instalments is simply the number of years of the study cycle. There is nothing else to count.

If you obtained the degree before 2023, the transitional regime applies, and this is where the reading fails. Article 6 of the decree-law and article 7 of the order say the premium is available to anyone whose years elapsed “between the year of obtaining that academic degree and the year 2023” are fewer than the number of years of the respective study cycle, who then receives only “the remaining number of years”².

Look at the year written into that sentence. The comparison runs against 2023 and stopped there. It is not against the year you are reading this. The distinction decides entitlements: someone who finished a four-year bachelor’s in 2022 had, in 2023, a single year elapsed, kept three instalments and still has them today. Running the same sum against the current year would suggest too many years have passed and that everything is lost.

The Portuguese tax authority publishes three examples worth remembering, because they cover the three possible cases³:

• Bachelor’s finished in 2022, cycle of 4 years: one year passed from 2022 to 2023, fewer than 4, so 3 instalments.
• Master’s finished in 2022, cycle of 2 years: one year passed, fewer than 2, so 1 instalment.
• Master’s finished in 2021, cycle of 2 years: two years passed, which is not fewer than 2, so nothing at all.

The third example shows the boundary is strict. Tying is not enough: the elapsed years must be fewer than the years of the course.

A bachelor’s and a master’s are two premiums

Article 2(3)(a) defines the eligible degree as one with an “award date in the year 2023 or later, inclusive, taking as such the first academic degree obtained by the beneficiary”¹. The sentence is often read as though there were a single premium per person, for good.

That is not what the tax authority answers. Asked directly whether the premium can be received on finishing the bachelor’s and again on finishing the master’s, its published answer is yes, in respect of each academic degree obtained³. What the law blocks is repetition within the same level: someone with two bachelor’s degrees or two master’s degrees is paid only for whichever came first.

The age ceiling trims the end, not the entitlement

Age is not an entry condition checked once. Article 3(1)(b) of the order requires being 35 or younger, inclusive, “in the year of the award of the salary premium and in the year of its payment”², and article 3(3) of the decree-law adds that instalments may be received consecutively or with gaps “provided the beneficiary’s maximum age does not exceed 35, inclusive”¹.

The effect is a truncation at the end of the schedule. Someone with three instalments still to come but only two years left to the limit receives two and loses the third. Because 35 is inclusive, the year you turn 35 is still paid; the next one is not.

What it does not cost, and what it does require

Article 3(4) is short and worth money: these amounts carry no income tax and form no basis for social security contributions¹. The 697 EUR is 697 EUR in the account. A gross pay rise of the same size would not be, because it would attract withholding and an 11% contribution.

Paragraph 5 adds that the amounts are not set off against debts collected by the tax authority or by social security. That does not make a debt irrelevant, however: article 3(1)(f) of the order requires a regularised tax position, and paragraph 3 of the same article makes clear that this condition is assessed at the payment date².

How to claim, and who decides what

The claim is made once for each degree, on an electronic form on the ePortugal portal, by the end of May of the year after the one in which the conditions are met². There is no need to repeat the claim in each following year³.

From there the process runs between two bodies, and it is worth knowing which is which, because it also determines who to appeal to:

1. The Directorate-General for Higher Education verifies the academic degree and tells the tax authority the beneficiary, the degree and the number of years of the study cycle, within 30 days of the end of May, that is by 30 June.
2. The tax authority checks age, tax residence, income, the filing of the return and the tax position, and pays by bank transfer by 30 July.

Payment is made exclusively to the bank account associated with the taxpayer record and marked as “confirmed” on the Portuguese tax portal. No alternative means of payment is provided for, so an out-of-date account leaves the process pending⁴. The assessment and the transfer status can be checked on your personal page on the tax portal.

What is still open

Two notes of caution, because this is a young regime and one in motion.

The first concerns applications. The service page on the government portal records that the claim service has been unavailable and shows a closed application deadline for the first window⁵. Anyone considering a claim should confirm that the window is open directly on ePortugal and on the tax portal, rather than assuming from an article that it is.

The second concerns how this fits with the IRS Jovem regime for young workers. The relationship between the two supports was the subject of legislative initiatives during 2026 and the framework may change. At the date this article was reviewed, the list of exclusion reasons published by the tax authority does not include the IRS Jovem regime³. As with any regime under change, the source to follow is the assessment on your personal page on the tax portal, not what was written the year before.

A concrete case, start to finish

Take a three-year bachelor’s degree finished in 2023, by someone born in 2000.

• The degree is from 2023, so no transitional regime applies: there are three instalments.
• The claim is submitted on ePortugal by the end of May 2024.
• The first instalment is paid by 30 July 2024, followed by 2025 and 2026.
• That is 697 EUR in each of those years, a total of 2091 EUR, net.
• In 2026 the person is 26, well short of the ceiling, so nothing is lost to age.

Had it instead been a five-year integrated master’s, three years of bachelor’s and two of master’s, the payments would be 697 EUR in the first three years and 1500 EUR in the last two: 5091 EUR in all. And had that same integrated master’s been finished in 2021, the transitional regime would have consumed the first two instalments, the bachelor ones, leaving 697 EUR in one year and 1500 EUR in each of the two that follow, that is 3697 EUR.

You can run your own case, including the effect of the age ceiling, in the graduate salary premium calculator.