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Regulation explainer

Modelo 30 for alojamento local hosts: who must file it, deadlines, and how

Paying commissions to Airbnb or Booking? Portugal's tax authority confirmed it in 2026: Modelo 30 applies to you — even under the simplified regime. Deadlines, withholding, the 21-RFI and fines, with official sources.

There's a tax declaration almost no host has heard of until the day they discover they should already have filed it several times: Modelo 30. It has nothing to do with your annual IRS return — it's a declaration about the payments you make to foreign companies. And if you pay commissions to Airbnb or Booking.com, that's exactly what you're doing, reservation after reservation.

What Modelo 30 is and why it catches you

Modelo 30 is the declaration reporting to the tax authority (AT) the income paid or made available to non-resident entities (article 119(7) of the IRS Code, extended to IRC withholding by article 128 of the IRC Code).

Where do you come in? The commissions you pay Airbnb (Ireland) or Booking.com (Netherlands) are intermediation commissions — income obtained in Portuguese territory by non-resident entities (article 4(3)(c)(6) of the IRC Code). The "paying entity" of that income is you.

This isn't our interpretation: the AT answered this exact case in a binding ruling from January 2026 (Processo 29555), requested by an individual AL host exempt from VAT under article 53. The AT's position — held since 2017 — is worth quoting almost verbatim: it falls to hosts, "whether they are IRC taxpayers or IRS taxpayers (and regardless of whether they have organised accounting)", to withhold at source, and "in any circumstance, the obligation to submit the Modelo 30 declaration always remains".

An honest note: this is AT doctrine — it binds the tax administration, which is who you'll be dealing with. The commissions themselves are just the most common trigger; the invoice the platform issues you for them also has a VAT side, covered in our invoicing article.

Who is caught — even under the simplified regime

The short answer: any host with an open activity who pays commissions to non-resident platforms. The simplified regime doesn't exempt you; organised accounting isn't the criterion; being an individual isn't the criterion. If you're in the simplified regime and still weighing whether it suits you, that's another article — but Modelo 30 applies either way.

The deadlines (there are two, and they get mixed up)

  • Modelo 30: by the end of the 2nd month following the month of payment or making-available. Commissions paid in July → declaration by 30 September.
  • Withholding at source (when due): the withheld tax is paid over by the 20th of the following month (article 94(6) of the IRC Code).

Two distinct obligations with distinct calendars — and the second disappears with the right form (coming up), but the first never does.

How to fill it in, step by step

The declaration is submitted electronically on the Portal das Finanças (the official instructions are in the Sources). The fields that raise the most questions, per those instructions:

  1. Identifying the beneficiary: field 31 asks for the Portuguese NIF of the non-resident entity — platforms operating here have a number assigned under Decree-Law no. 14/2013; field 32 takes the NIF in the country of residence and field 33 the country code.
  2. Income type: commissions = code 08 in the official table.
  3. Tax regime: if you applied a double-taxation treaty, code 02.
  4. Amounts: the gross income paid in the period and the withholding made (zero, if dispensed under a treaty).

The 21-RFI: when withholding disappears (and what never does)

Absent anything else, you'd have to withhold 25% on the commissions (articles 94 and 87(4) of the IRC Code) — money you'd have to claw back from the platform, in practice. That's where the treaties come in: Portugal has double-taxation agreements with Ireland and the Netherlands, and withholding is dispensed when the platform provides you the 21-RFI form together with its certificate of tax residence for the year in question (article 98 of the IRC Code). The platforms make these documents available — look for them in your account's tax documentation and keep them per calendar year.

The point nobody tells you: the 21-RFI dispenses the withholding, not the Modelo 30. The declaration is always filed — with zero withholding, but filed.

Fines for not filing

Failing to submit declarations to the AT, or submitting them late, is punishable with a fine of €150 to €3,750 (article 117(1) of the RGIT; doubled for companies). Where it's negligence — the typical scenario of simply not knowing — the applicable maximum halves. Not the end of the world; also not the kind of letter you want to receive over an obligation that's satisfied with one form.

One more calendar obligation — the fix is the same

Modelo 30 has everything that makes an obligation easy to miss: it's irregularly monthly (only in months following payments), it doesn't show up in your IRS return, and nobody asks for it until the day the AT does. The same pattern as the INE's monthly survey, incidentally.

This is exactly the kind of obligation ALerta was designed to take off your mind: the commissions come out of your reservations, the deadlines are known, and invoicing (with the InvoiceXpress integration) lives in the same place. Join the waitlist — and meanwhile, go over the history with your accountant: Modelo 30 can also be filed late, and better on your own initiative.

Sources