NHR has closed. IFICI has a deadline.

The non-habitual resident regime is closed to new applicants. Those who obtained the status keep it for the remainder of their ten years, and nothing about their position changes.

What replaced it is a narrower instrument. IFICI is directed at scientific research, innovation, higher education and qualified high value-added employment. It does not extend to passive income or to pensioners, which is the difference that most often surprises people who arrive expecting the old regime under a new name.

The registration rule is the part that costs money when it is missed. Application runs to 15 January of the year following the year in which tax residence was established, through the reserved area of the Portal das Finanças. Miss it, and the benefit does not apply to the year that has passed — while the ten-year clock still runs from the year residence began. The years are lost from the end of the benefit, not added back.

For a non-resident property owner considering a move to Portugal, the sequence matters more than it looks. Tax residence, the registration window and the purchase itself interact, and the order they happen in changes the result — including, since May, the rate of transfer tax on the purchase.