IRS Automático in Portugal: Who Qualifies, and What Freelancers Should Do Instead

If you have been in Portugal for a tax season or two, you have probably seen "IRS Automático" in your Portal das Finanças notifications. It sounds like AT is offering to fill in your tax return for you. For a freelancer it applies only when three narrow conditions all hold, and for anyone with income from abroad it does not apply at all.

Here is what it is, who it covers, and what to file instead.

What IRS Automático is

IRS Automático is AT's pre-filled IRS return (declaração automática de rendimentos), set up in Art. 58.º-A CIRS. AT builds the declaration from data it already holds, and you review it and confirm it, or replace it by filing the Modelo 3 yourself. If you do neither by 30 June, the pre-filled return counts as filed by you, and you can still replace it within 30 days of the assessment without a penalty. It covers wages (Categoria A), pensions (Categoria H) and, under strict conditions, some self-employment income (Categoria B). Who is covered is set by decree: Decreto Regulamentar 1/2021 first brought in some simplified-regime freelancers, and Decreto Regulamentar 3/2024 now holds the rule. The 2026 campaign added IRS Jovem beneficiaries through Decreto Regulamentar 5-A/2026.

You may have read that it is for employees only. That is incomplete, but the freelancer exception is narrow.

The conditions a freelancer has to meet

For a freelancer, three conditions apply on top of the general ones, and all of them have to hold at once:

1. You are on the simplified regime. Organized accounting rules you out.
2. Every activity you are registered for is listed in the Art. 151 CIRS table, and none of them is code 1519 ("Outros prestadores de serviços"). Code 1519 is the catch-all for activities the table does not list, and it excludes you.
3. Every invoice, invoice-receipt and receipt was issued through Portal das Finanças, not through external invoicing software.

The general conditions apply to everyone. Among them, you are out if you have:

• Income from abroad. IRS Automático needs Portuguese-source income only. Any income from abroad puts you outside it, whether it is interest from a foreign bank account or a pension from your previous country. Interest and pensions like these belong in Anexo J.
• NHR or IFICI status.
• Residence in Portugal for only part of the year. This catches most people in their arrival year.
• Certain deductions or charges, such as deductions for ascendants or alimony paid, and tax benefits outside a short list of exceptions.

What you file instead

The standard Modelo 3, with the annexes that match your income. Every trabalhador independente also files Anexo SS (Segurança Social).

Anexo B for your Categoria B income from work done in Portugal, meaning the Recibos Verdes and invoices you issued under your NIF. That includes work for clients abroad: fees for work you do here are not foreign income. Work you perform outside Portugal goes in Anexo J instead. On the simplified regime, AT applies a coefficient to your gross income to reach the taxable amount. The Anexo B field guide goes through it field by field.

Anexo J for foreign-source income, such as interest from a foreign bank account or a foreign pension.

The full list of annexes and which one covers what is in the IRS annexes guide. For the filing steps, start with how to file IRS in Portugal.

It is still self-service on Portal das Finanças. It takes longer than confirming a pre-filled return, mostly the first time.

To see what last year's declaration contained before you start, the IRS declaration reader explains each field of your comprovativo PDF. For a rough estimate of this year's result, there is the tax calculator.

If AT does offer it to you

Being offered it does not mean you should accept it. Check the pre-filled income against what you actually invoiced, check the withholding, and check that nothing foreign is missing. If a Recibo Verde did not register correctly, or an income source AT cannot see is absent, the pre-fill will not fix that for you. File the Modelo 3 instead, because doing nothing is not neutral: by 30 June the pre-fill becomes your filed return.

Under-declaring is the failure to avoid. When in doubt, file the full Modelo 3 yourself.

Timing

The Modelo 3 is filed from 1 April to 30 June each year, for the income of the previous calendar year. If you decide to file manually, that is the window to use. A Portuguese-language guide on the same question is IRS Automático para Recibos Verdes em 2026.