CIRS 8010, 8011, and 8012: Tax Obligations for Private Tutors, Trainers, and Teachers in Portugal

Three codes sit in consecutive rows of the CIRS Art. 151 table: 8010 for explicadores (private tutors), 8011 for formadores (professional trainers), and 8012 for professores (teachers). If you work in education independently in Portugal, one of these is probably your registered activity code. One more sits in the same group and is easy to miss: Portaria 23/2022 added 8013, professores ou educadores artísticos, and a music or art teacher may belong there instead.

The distinction between them is real but narrow. All three carry identical tax mechanics under the simplified regime: the same coefficient, the same withholding rate, the same Social Security structure. So if you have been wondering whether you registered under the right one, the practical consequences are small. But it still matters for your AT registration description, and the right one is the one that actually matches your work.

Which code covers your work

CIRS 8010, explicadores (private tutors). This is supplementary instruction delivered directly to students outside a formal school setting. You meet a student at their home, a library, or online. You cover a specific subject, prepare them for an exam, or teach a language. The student or their family pays you directly. This is the explicador's code.

CIRS 8011, formadores (professional trainers). This is structured learning delivered to adults in a professional or workplace context. You run corporate training sessions, deliver accredited vocational courses (formacao profissional), or facilitate workshops for organizations. Companies often commission formadores and claim the training costs as a business expense. If you hold a Certificado de Competencias Pedagogicas (CCP), you are almost certainly in this category.

CIRS 8012, professores (teachers). This is teaching activity that does not fit cleanly into the other two. A language teacher with private students, a yoga teacher running group classes, a private swimming coach. A music or art teacher may belong under 8013 instead; AT classifies on the activity actually performed, not on the label. If you teach independently and your work is neither structured corporate training nor school-subject tutoring for students in a formal program, 8012 is where you land.

The practical test: who are you teaching, and in what setting? Adults in a professional or workplace context = 8011. Individual learners you work with directly on a school subject = 8010. Teaching that is neither = 8012.

If your work spans categories, register the code for your primary income source.

The tax coefficient: 75% taxable for all three

This is where the article simplifies considerably. All three codes appear in the Art. 151 CIRS table, which means all three carry the 0.75 simplified regime coefficient.

Under the simplified regime (regime simplificado), 75% of your gross revenue is taxable. The remaining 25% is treated as assumed business costs: you do not need receipts for it, and you cannot replace it with actual documented expenses even if your real costs were higher. Social Security is deductible only in part: Art. 31.º n.º 2 deducts the share exceeding 10% of your gross, from net income, and only for services.

First-year discount. In your first calendar year of activity, only 37.5% of gross revenue is taxable. Year two: 56.25%. From year three onward, the full 75% applies. These thresholds are based on the calendar year, not 12 months from when you opened your activity.

To qualify: no employment or pension income in the same tax year, and no similar activity closed in the last five years.

The 15% expense proof. Under Art. 31 n.13 CIRS, you must show 15% of gross services income in documented expenses, invoices with your NIF registered in the e-Fatura system. An automatic specific deduction of €4,587.09 (2026) counts toward this, or your Social Security contributions up to a cap of 10% of your gross, whichever is larger. For most tutors and trainers at lower income levels, the floor alone clears the threshold. At higher income, documented expenses become a real requirement. See the 15% expense rule fact page for the full mechanics.

Withholding from clients

From Portuguese business clients: 23% withheld at source. When a Portuguese entity, a school, a training company, a corporate client, pays you for services, they withhold 23% and send it directly to AT. You receive the net amount. This rate has applied since 1 January 2025, set by OE2025 (Lei 45-A/2024, Art. 101 CIRS). You can be exempt from it: Art. 101-B CIRS releases a taxpayer whose previous-year income was below the Art. 53 threshold, and the first year of activity, provided you tell the client.

From private individuals: no withholding required. Parents paying for their child's tutoring, individuals paying for language lessons, private music students, none of them are required to withhold. They pay you the full amount, and you settle the IRS liability at filing.

From foreign clients: nothing withheld. If a Dutch parent commissions online tutoring sessions, or a German company books your corporate training, the full payment arrives in your account. No tax has been pre-paid to AT. The IRS liability on that income is real and arrives as a lump sum at filing time. Budget separately and consider quarterly provisions.

VAT obligations

Start here, because most articles skip it: if you teach school or higher-education subject matter, your VAT answer is not the €15,000 threshold. Art. 9.º n.º 11 CIVA exempts "as prestações de serviços que consistam em lições ministradas sobre matérias do ensino escolar ou superior", and Art. 9.º carries no turnover condition at all. That is exemption code 065, and it does not run out. An explicador teaching maths, or a language teacher working on school-curriculum material, stays exempt at any revenue. Lei 82/2023 widened it further by deleting the old "a título pessoal" qualifier.

This cuts the other way for formadores. Art. 9.º n.º 10 exempts formação profissional, but only when delivered by a public body or by an entity the competent ministries recognise as having competence in the field. A freelance trainer without that recognition is outside n.º 10 and falls back on Art. 53.

One asymmetry worth knowing before you plan around either: Art. 12.º lets a taxpayer renounce the n.º 10 exemption and charge VAT by choice, for at least five years. It does not list n.º 11. So a trainer inside n.º 10 can opt into VAT; a tutor inside n.º 11 cannot.

If Art. 9.º does not cover your work, Art. 53 is the fallback. Below €15,000 in annual revenue from Portuguese clients you charge no IVA on domestic invoices and file no Declaracao Periodica for them. One thing still reaches you below it: buying services from a foreign supplier means you self-assess that VAT yourself and file a Declaracao Periodica for any period in which you did.

Crossing the threshold is not the same day as registering. Go past €15,000 but stay under the €18,750 tolerance ceiling and the exemption runs to 31 December; registration bites on 1 January. Go past the tolerance ceiling and it is immediate, on the invoice that crosses it. Then you charge 23% IVA on services to Portuguese clients.

If you invoice business clients in other EU countries whose VAT number validates in VIES, those invoices go out at 0% VAT: the service is not located in Portugal at all, and the invoice carries exemption code 115 with the mention IVA - autoliquidação, which is printed with its diacritics exactly as shown. Register for intra-EU operations before the first one. You do not file a Declaracao Recapitulativa for them while you are on the Art. 53 exemption: DL 35/2025 revoked that obligation for exempt taxpayers, for operations from 1 July 2025 onward.

Social Security

As a trabalhador independente, you pay Social Security at 21.4% of your relevant income. For services that is 70% of your quarterly gross. You submit the Declaracao Trimestral in April, July, October, and January, and pay monthly, between the 10th and the 20th of the month after the one each payment covers.

You can adjust your relevant income up or down by up to 25%, in 5-point steps. The base is capped at twelve times the IAS per month, which limits the maximum monthly contribution regardless of how high your income goes.

If this is your first ever activity, your Social Security contributions do not start until the first day of the 12th month after you open it. You are in the regime from the day you open activity; it is the obligation to pay that is deferred, so you file nothing and owe nothing until that date. A reinicio has no such window, and contributes from the first day of the month it restarts in.

Invoicing requirements

Every invoice you issue, to students, to parents, to companies, must come from AT-certified software. Certified software assigns an ATCUD code to each document, communicates with AT systems, and produces the SAF-T audit file required for tax compliance.

The AT portal itself (Portal das Financas, "Faturas e Recibos Verdes") is certified and free, though it issues Portuguese-language documents whatever its interface language, so an English invoice needs third-party software. Descodify's free Starter tier covers invoicing, a read-only view of your eFatura expenses, a calendar of every VAT, IRS and Social Security deadline, your income and tax numbers in one place, and IRS preparation and filing, free during early access. Completo adds full expense tracking, guided VAT and Social Security submissions, and reminders before each deadline.

For occasional, one-off services, a single training session with no ongoing client relationship, an Ato Isolado (isolated act) issued directly through the Portal das Financas may be appropriate instead of registering a full activity. See the Ato Isolado glossary entry for the conditions.

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Related: CIRS: what the Codigo do IRS governs and how Art. 151 classifies your activity

Related: Art. 53 VAT exemption: threshold, scope, and what it actually covers

Related: Social Security for self-employed workers in Portugal: the quarterly contribution cycle