Portugal’s Tax Haven List: is a reform coming?
On 25 June 2026 the Council of Ministers approved a government bill seeking authorisation to rewrite the criteria that place a jurisdiction on Portugal’s list of privileged tax regimes. The stated purpose is alignment with the European Union’s list of non-cooperative jurisdictions, with a nod to the wider profit-shifting agenda.
Nothing has changed yet. What exists is a request for legislative authorisation, now before the Assembleia da República. If Parliament grants it, the Government legislates the new criteria by decree-law, and thereafter adds or removes jurisdictions by ordinance.
The last change actually in force is unrelated to the new criteria: Portaria 292/2025/1 took Hong Kong, Liechtenstein and Uruguay off the list with effect from 1 January 2026, on the familiar Article 63.º-D route of a jurisdiction asking to be reassessed.
The list itself is an old instrument, Portaria 150/2004, amended more than once. It runs to some 77 jurisdictions, among the longest in the Union and well beyond the EU’s own list, which stood at ten territories at the start of 2026. A fair number of Member States keep no national list at all and rely on the EU one. That gap is the political premise of the whole exercise.
The proposal does not replace the current test, but builds on it.
The existing benchmark stays: no income tax comparable to IRC, or a rate under 60% of the Portuguese rate. To that are added four criteria drawn from the EU and OECD vocabulary:
- no qualified domestic top-up tax under the global minimum tax;
- advantages granted without adequate economic substance;
- regimes that produce double, or multiple, non-taxation;
- divergence from the standards of the EU, the OECD Global Forum and the FATF
Anyone expecting the list to shrink should read the mechanics rather than the headline.
Because the domestic criteria are kept and the EU criteria layered over them, the combined test is wider, not narrower. Most EU-listed jurisdictions already sit on the Portuguese list, so in practice convergence chiefly means adding the two that do not, Russia and Vietnam.
The criteria will be fixed at the decree-law stage, not now, so the text that ultimately matters does not yet exist, and the version enacted may not match the current wording. Removals, meanwhile, are to run through an ordinance. That is presented as flexibility, and it is, but it leaves untouched the asymmetry that has always characterised this regime: a jurisdiction is listed by the application of broad criteria, while coming off the list still depends on asking, and on a favourable view being taken.
The reason any of this repays attention is that the label is expensive. Dividends, interest and royalties paid to a resident of a listed jurisdiction bear 35% withholding rather than 25%, and relevant capital income of individuals is taxed at 35%. Payments to entities established there attract 35% autonomous taxation and are disallowed for IRC purposes unless the taxpayer shows the operation was real and neither abnormal nor excessive, which in practice is not a light burden. Property held through such entities carries IMI at 7.5% and a 10% IMT surcharge with no relief. The CFC rules and a set of anti-abuse presumptions do the rest. A single line in a portaria can therefore rework the economics of a holding, a financing arrangement or a real-estate structure.
On the merits the direction is unobjectionable, and arguably overdue. Tying the criteria to the global minimum tax and to recognised international standards follows where the ground has been moving, and the 2025 delisting showed the review mechanism is not merely decorative. The reservation is one of technique rather than aim. Adding open-textured tests such as “adequate economic substance” and “double non-taxation” to an already broad list invites interpretation, and interpretation, until the Tax Authority and in due course the courts settle it, is a cost the taxpayer carries. How large a cost depends entirely on the decree-law’s final wording, which we have not seen.
For the moment the prudent approach is an unglamorous one. Treat the criteria as provisional, and Russia and Vietnam as likely rather than settled, until the decree-law appears. Identify exposure to any jurisdiction that could be caught, and put figures to the withholding, deductibility and property consequences before the change bites rather than after. Where a position will stand or fall on substance, build and document that substance now, on the ordinary principle that it persuades far better assembled in advance than reconstructed under enquiry.
Our comments
For groups paying dividends, interest or royalties abroad, for individuals holding assets through offshore entities and for owners of Portuguese property held via foreign structures, the listing rules translate directly into cost.
For assistance with the impact of the new rules or with future changes to the list, our tax team is available.
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