Portugal Contractor Day Rate Calculator

An agency/umbrella structure withholds exactly like a permanent employee: progressive IRS bands plus the flat 11% employee Social Security rate, after the agency's fee comes off the top. Recibos verdes under the simplified regime is a genuinely different mechanic: IRS applies to only 75% of gross revenue (a 25% notional-expense allowance built into the regime), and Social Security is 21.4% on 70% of quarterly income, a materially different rate and base than the employee's flat 11% of gross. On a EUR 350/day rate over 218 billable days, agency retains about 58.0% of contract revenue as net take-home, while recibos verdes retains about 63.0%.

The simplified regime (regime simplificado) applies a statutory coefficient to services income: only 75% of gross revenue counts as taxable profit for IRS purposes, the remaining 25% is a notional-expense allowance you get automatically, without needing to track or justify real costs. That's a smaller taxable base than the same revenue would face under employment, which is why recibos verdes contractors compare their effective rate against employee taxation so directly.

Social Security for recibos verdes is 21.4% applied to 70% of your quarterly income, a different rate and base entirely from the employee's flat 11% of gross salary. This calculator models that mechanic explicitly rather than approximating it with the employee rate.

This calculator runs that comparison directly: enter your rate and structure, and the permanent-equivalent-salary figure shows what gross salaried pay (taxed via progressive IRS plus 11% Social Security, exactly like the agency structure) would be needed to match your contractor net take-home. For a EUR 350/day rate on 218 billable days via agency, the equivalent permanent gross salary works out to roughly 72 700 €/year.

No. New recibos verdes registrants get a Social Security exemption for their first 12 months of activity in practice, but this calculator models the standard ongoing recibos verdes mechanic instead, matching the site's established-professional convention used elsewhere (Spain's autónomo tarifa plana and the Netherlands' ZZP starters' deduction follow the same approach). It's built for comparing steady-state income once that introductory period ends.

218 days is a common working-year reference (365 days minus weekends, public holidays, and 22 statutory annual leave days, plus a margin for gaps between contracts). Adjust the billable-days input to your own realistic figure, especially if you have longer gaps between recibos verdes clients.