Lisbon, July 22, 2025 (Lusa) - Companies and other employers must apply the new withholding tables to August salaries, but if they need more time that month, they can correct the amounts later, by the end of the year.
The government order setting the new withholding tables enshrines this safeguard, and the Finance Portal published it on Tuesday.
The guarantee concerns the withholding rates for August and September, which are significantly lower than those for January to July, to compensate taxpayers for the amount withheld in the first seven months of the year based on a version of the personal income tax that is different from that which will apply to income in 2025, because, in the meantime, parliament has reduced the personal income tax rates from the 1st to the 8th bracket.
The theoretical possibility of correcting the August and September withholding amounts applies to entities that pay salaries (such as companies, public services or IPSS) and to pension-paying entities (such as Social Security and Caixa Geral de Aposentações).
The text signed by the Secretary of State for Tax Affairs, Cláudia Reis Duarte, states that “situations where withholding tax on income from employment and pensions paid or made available between 1 August and 30 September 2025 requires application of the tables provided for in paragraph 2” of the order], the entity responsible for withholding may rectify the withholdings to be made in the following months, up to and including December 2025”.
The government hopes that, by making the tables known at this time, the paying entities will still be able to apply the new tables in August, including Social Security and the Caixa Geral de Aposentações (Civil Servants’ Pension Fund).
When Lusa questioned her on the matter, the Secretary of State for Tax Affairs recalled that last year the authorities announced the tables closer to income processing, and even so, “most economic agents were able to adapt their systems,” so “the expectation” for 2025 “is that they will be able to do so” in time.
“Economic agents, employers or payers who need more time than August can adjust in the following months until the end of the year, as was also the case with last year’s tables,” she said in statements to Lusa.
In 2024, the year in which the personal income tax was also lowered in the middle of the year, the authorities announced the new withholding tables on August 26, setting their application for September. Since Social Security had already processed pensions at that time, it applied the new rates in October, making the necessary corrections.
However, this year, the government expects pensioners to receive the correct amounts right from the start.
“The expectation is that pensioners will see this reduction reflected in August,” said the Secretary of State.
PCT/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
