AIMI: the tax that finds higher-value owners

What it is charged on

AIMI is charged on the patrimonial value (VPT), the figure the tax authority holds for each property. That is not the price you paid and not what the property would sell for today; it is a separate figure, usually lower, calculated by formula.

All of your Portuguese residential property and building land is added together. Commercial and industrial property is outside the tax. Then €600,000 is deducted, and what remains is taxed.

One point of translation is worth making, because the name invites a comparison that only half works. British readers will hear an echo of council tax, and the echo is useful: AIMI sits on top of IMI, the annual council tax every Portuguese property pays. But it is not a local charge on the person living there. It is a national surcharge on the person who owns, above a threshold, collected by the state rather than by the municipality.

The rates

For an individual, the first €400,000 above the allowance is taxed at 0.7%. The portion between €1 million and €2 million is taxed at 1%, and anything above €2 million at 1.5%.

A married couple, or partners in a recognised de facto union, may opt to be assessed jointly. Doing so combines the properties and the allowance, giving €1.2 million before the tax begins. For a couple owning one property between them, that option frequently removes the tax altogether.

Where holding through a company changes things

A company that owns residential property pays AIMI at 0.4% on the whole of its patrimonial value. There is no €600,000 allowance for a company — the tax starts at the first euro.

For property held by an entity resident in a jurisdiction on Portugal’s list of tax havens, the rate is 7.5% of the whole patrimonial value. That is not a marginal difference, and it is one of the places where an ownership structure inherited from a previous adviser can quietly cost a great deal every year.

When it happens

AIMI is assessed in June on the position at 31 December of the previous year, and paid in September. There is no return to file: the assessment arrives, and the owner pays it.

Which makes the useful moment for this tax the moment before a purchase completes, not the September after it. Who buys, in what proportion, and whether jointly assessed, all change the bill — and all of them are fixed on the deed.