The average value of declared gross income deducted from the IRS stood at €9,665 in 2020, a 1.3% rise over the year before, despite the impact of the Covid crisis. 

Data from Portugal’s National Statistics Institute (INE) showed that the three municipalities with the highest values are Oeiras (€14,091), Lisbon (€12,938) and Cascais (€11,827). 

The report out this week, featuring income statistics at local level for 2020 reveals “about one fifth of municipalities with a median value of income per taxable person higher than that of the country.”

Between 2019 and 2020, there was a fall in the annual rate of change in the average income value in 268 municipalities, the findings showed. The National Statistics Institute added that “this group included 10 of the 18 municipalities in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, eight of the 15 municipalities in the Algarve and four of the 17 in the Porto Metropolitan Area.” 

In addition, only 11 municipalities registered a decline in the median value of income per taxable person compared to 2019, Portugal News reports. Six areas in the Algarve are highlighted, with Albufeira logging the largest annual fall (-3.0%), and in terms of metropolitan areas, São João da Madeira (-0.4%) and Cascais (-0.3%). 

Furthermore, some 68 areas of the country recorded higher median income values than the national reference. The report states that these are the 18 municipalities in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, 21 municipalities in the Centre, 13 in the Alentejo, seven in the North, five in the Azores, three in Madeira and one in the Algarve.

This data is founded on “anonymised tax data from the Tax and Customs Authority (AT) relating to the tax assessment note on personal income tax (IRS – Model 3), obtained under a protocol signed between the two entities”.