Portugal Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

What a payroll engine gets wrong in Portugal, in order of how much money it costs: 1. THERE IS ONE RATE, NOT A SET OF BRANCH RATES, AND IT IS 34,75 %. Article 53.º of the Código Contributivo states it in terms: «A taxa contributiva global do regime geral correspondente ao elenco das eventualidades protegidas é de 34,75 %, cabendo 23,75 % à entidade empregadora e 11 % ao trabalhador.» It covers sickness, parenthood, unemployment, occupational disease, invalidity, old age and death together. Article 51.º disaggregates it across those seven eventualidades for actuarial purposes, and requires that disaggregation to be revised every five years, but the split has no effect on what is deducted or remitted and it does not divide between payer sides. Anyone looking for a Portuguese pension rate or a Portuguese unemployment rate is looking for something that does not exist as an operative figure. 2. NOTHING IS CAPPED. No monthly ceiling, no annual ceiling, on either side, for any category. Portugal is one of the small group of EU states with an entirely uncapped contribution base. An engine that carries a plafond for Portugal has invented one. 3. THE FUNDO DE COMPENSAÇÃO DO TRABALHO NO LONGER EXISTS AND ITS 0,925 % IS STILL BEING CHARGED IN THE WILD. Decreto-Lei n.º 115/2023 extinguished the FCT and FGCT and ended employer contributions. Employer cost models, payroll templates and published Portuguese cost-of-employment figures that still add 0,925 % are overstating employer cost by nearly a percentage point. Accumulated balances may be drawn down until the end of 2026, but that is a withdrawal, not a contribution. 4. ARTICLE 55.º IS NOT IN FORCE, AND IT LOOKS AS THOUGH IT IS. The Code contains a rule reducing the employer's share by one percentage point for open-ended contracts and increasing it by three points for fixed-term contracts, with carve-outs for contracts replacing workers on parental leave or on sick leave of 90 days or more. It has been suspended by successive annual State Budget laws and has never been applied. What IS in force is article 55.º-A, added by Lei n.º 93/2019 — an employer-specific addition of up to two percentage points where the employer's use of fixed-term contracts exceeds its sector's published indicator. The two are routinely confused and they are not the same rule, not the same size and not the same trigger. 5. THE BASE EXPRESSLY INCLUDES COMMISSIONS AND BONUSES. Article 46.º n.º 2 alínea c) brings in «as comissões, os bónus e outras prestações de natureza análoga», and alínea d) the productivity, attendance, collection, driving and economy premiums. Portugal does NOT carve commission out of the base the way South Africa does. The statutory subsídio de Natal and subsídio de férias are also in the base, so contributions run on fourteen months of pay a year. 6. THE RATE DEPENDS ON THE CATEGORY OF WORKER, NOT ON THE COUNTRY. 34,75 % is the general rate. Members of statutory bodies without management functions pay 29,6 % (20,3 % / 9,3 %); those with management functions pay the general rate. Workers aged 65 or over with 40 years of service pay 25,3 % (17,3 % / 8 %). Workers with a disability reducing working capacity below 80 % pay 22,9 % (11,9 % / 11 %) — note the WORKER's 11 % is unchanged and the whole relief is on the employer side. Employees of IPSS and other non-profit entities pay 33,3 % (22,3 % / 11 %). Domestic workers pay 33,3 % or 28,3 % depending on whether unemployment protection is included. Contracts of very short duration attract an employer-only 26,1 %. Pre-retirement, agricultural, fishing and professional-sport workers each have their own rates. 7. WORK-ACCIDENT COVER IS COMMERCIALLY UNDERWRITTEN AND IS NOT IN THE 34,75 %. Occupational DISEASES are inside the global contribution; occupational ACCIDENTS must be insured with a private insurer under Lei n.º 98/2009 at a premium set by the insurer. A Portuguese employer-cost figure of 23,75 % is therefore always an understatement, by an amount that depends entirely on the industry. 8. DEDUCTIBILITY. The worker's 11 % quotização is deducted from employment income before IRS is computed, so taxable income is gross less 11 %. The employer's 23,75 % is a deductible business expense and is never a deduction from the worker. 9. FIVE PER CENT OF CONTRIBUTIONS IS EARMARKED FOR ACTIVE EMPLOYMENT POLICIES under article 52.º, and the Autonomous Regions of Madeira and the Azores keep 5 % of the contributions budgeted in their own territories for the same purpose. This is an allocation of revenue, not an additional charge — it does not change the 34,75 %. 10. WHAT DOES NOT EXIST. There is no separate employer health contribution, no separate unemployment contribution, no long-term-care contribution and no mandatory second-pillar pension. The Serviço Nacional de Saúde is tax-financed. Occupational pensions exist but are contractual. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: none in the rates. The taxa contributiva global is national and applies unchanged in mainland Portugal, Madeira and the Azores. Article 52.º gives the Autonomous Regions 5 % of the contributions budgeted in their territories as own revenue for active employment policies, but that is a revenue allocation and does not alter what any employer or worker pays. The only differentiation is by CATEGORY OF WORKER and by TYPE OF EMPLOYER, never by geography. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON: 1. The article 51.º disaggregation of the 34,75 % across the seven eventualidades — NOT SERVED, because the table in article 51.º is reproduced as an image in the consolidated text that could be retrieved and could not be read. The eventualidades themselves are named, and the disaggregation in any event has no operative effect on deductions. Figures for it circulate widely in commentary; none is served here because none was verified. RE-VERIFY against a readable consolidated text or the Instituto da Segurança Social's Folheto Taxas Contributivas at the next refresh. 2. Work accident insurance premiums — null. Compulsory but commercially underwritten with no statutory tariff. 3. The contribuição adicional por rotatividade excessiva — null. It depends on the employer's own contract mix against a sectoral indicator and is capped at two percentage points; it cannot be stated as a rate. 4. Occupational pension schemes — not modelled. There is no statutory percentage. 5. Contributions for trabalhadores independentes (21,4 % on a notional base) and for entidades contratantes (up to 10 % of the service value) — outside the scope of an employee record and not served. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE: 1. THE FCT AND FGCT BALANCES MUST BE MOBILISED BY THE END OF 2026 — employers with balances up to EUR 400.000 may draw down in up to two instalments, above that in up to four. This is a drawdown deadline, not a contribution, but it is the one hard date in the Portuguese set. RE-VERIFY FROM 2026-11-01. 2. ARTICLE 55.º REMAINS SUSPENDED BY THE ANNUAL BUDGET LAW. Its suspension has been renewed every year since 2011 and would have to be renewed again for 2027. If a budget law ever omits the renewal, the employer share moves by −1 point for open-ended contracts and +3 points for fixed-term contracts overnight. RE-VERIFY AFTER EACH ANNUAL STATE BUDGET, i.e. FROM 2026-12-01. 3. Article 51.º requires the disaggregation of the global rate to be revised every five years on the basis of actuarial studies. A revision changes the internal allocation, not the 34,75 %. No change to the 34,75 % / 23,75 % / 11 % rate set is on the statute book. It has been stable since the Código Contributivo came into force in 2011. SOURCING CAVEATS: VERIFIED BY FETCHING AND READING THE PRIMARY TEXT — the Código dos Regimes Contributivos was retrieved as a PDF and its text extracted. Article 53.º was read verbatim, giving the 34,75 % global rate and the 23,75 % / 11 % split; articles 44.º, 45.º and 46.º were read for the contribution base including the express inclusion of commissions, bonuses and productivity premiums; article 51.º was read for the requirement of disaggregation by eventualidade and five-yearly revision, though its table did not extract; article 52.º was read for the 5 % consignation to active employment policies and the Autonomous Regions' share; articles 54.º and 55.º were read verbatim, including the one-point reduction for open-ended contracts and the three-point increase for fixed-term contracts with its two carve-outs. SECONDARY, AND FLAGGED AS SUCH: the special-category rates (members of statutory bodies 29,6 %, workers aged 65 with 40 years of service 25,3 %, disability 22,9 %, IPSS and non-profit 33,3 %, domestic service 33,3 % / 28,3 %, very short duration contracts 26,1 %, pre-retirement, agricultural, fishing and professional sport) are taken from a published consolidated rate table attributed to LexPoint and dated 2015. Those rates are long-standing and none is believed to have moved, but they were not confirmed against the Instituto da Segurança Social's current Folheto Taxas Contributivas, which could not be retrieved in this pass. The general 34,75 % rate served in the main branch is from the Code itself and is not affected. The suspension of article 55.º by successive budget laws, and the existence and 2 percentage-point cap of the article 55.º-A rotatividade contribution added by Lei n.º 93/2019, are from professional commentary rather than from the budget laws and Lei n.º 93/2019 themselves. The abolition of the FCT by Decreto-Lei n.º 115/2023 and the end-2026 drawdown deadline are likewise commentary-sourced; the decree itself was not opened. COULD NOT READ: seg-social.pt serves its rate pages behind a cookie interstitial that returns no content to a fetch; pwc.pt and gov.pt returned HTTP 403 or a cross-host redirect. The consolidated Código on dre.pt was not reached; the version read is a Direcção-Geral da Segurança Social print of Lei n.º 110/2009 as approved, so amendments after that print — including the addition of article 55.º-A — are not reflected in the text read, only in the commentary relied on for them. Reported branches are those applying to an ordinary private-sector employee (trabalhador por conta de outrem) in the regime geral. Not covered: trabalhadores independentes, entidades contratantes, members of statutory bodies, domestic workers, agricultural, fishing and sports categories, workers on contracts of very short duration, the public-service Caixa Geral de Aposentações regime, and posted workers whose applicable law is determined by Regulation (EC) No 883/2004. Employee and employer shares are stated separately: the employee figure is what leaves the payslip, the employer figure is cost of employment and is not a deduction.

Get it programmatically

curl https://euroref.dev/v1/pt/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://euroref.dev/v1/pt/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://euroref.dev/provenance/pt/social-contributions

Other Portugal series: Policy Rate (ECB Deposit Facility Rate) · Value Added Tax (Imposto sobre o Valor Acrescentado - IVA) · VAT registration threshold · minimum wage · Public Holidays (Feriados obrigatorios) · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · Withholding tax rates · income tax rates · ECB main refinancing operations rate (fixed rate) · Late-payment interest (EU Late Payment Directive) · Statutory legal interest (juros legais)

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