What an alojamento local owes, once the registration exists

The RNAL number, and the duty to display it

Every AL establishment receives a registration number in the Registo Nacional de Alojamento Local, which forms part of the Registo Nacional de Turismo maintained by Turismo de Portugal. Under art. 17.º n.º 2 of Decreto-Lei n.º 128/2014, the number must be shown in advertising, in commercial documentation and in merchandising.

Madeira establishments appear in the same national database and are searchable publicly. That cuts both ways: a listing without a number is checkable by anyone, including a guest, a neighbour and the regional inspectorate.

The article number is reported consistently across Turismo de Portugal's own technical guides, and the consolidated Decreto-Lei n.º 128/2014 was opened directly for this page: art. 17.º reads that advertising, commercial documentation and merchandising must state the establishment's name or logo and registration number.

The category decides more than the label

Moradia, apartamento, estabelecimento de hospedagem and quartos are the categories, and the choice is not cosmetic. It determines the applicable requirements and, as set out below, the tax coefficient applied to gross receipts.

What each category means, who receives the filing, and the fire-safety rule that is specific to the Region are covered in the registration guide and the câmara/DRT split.

Civil liability insurance is mandatory, and this page publishes no minimum

Under art. 13.º-A of Decreto-Lei n.º 128/2014, the operator must hold and keep valid a civil liability insurance policy covering risks arising from the operation of the establishment, including damage to guests and third parties.

The minimum coverage amount was not established at any source for this guide, and it is deliberately omitted rather than estimated. Every English-language AL guide quotes a figure at this point. The figure has moved before, insurers quote against it, and a wrong number here would be repeated by somebody arranging cover.

The duty is certain. The amount is a question for the broker and the current text, and that is the honest state of it.

The complaints book, and whose name goes on the notice

AL establishments are subject to the complaints-book regime under Decreto-Lei n.º 156/2005, now in electronic form. The physical book and the electronic book coexist, and the establishment must display the notice informing guests of the right to complain and naming the supervising authority.

In Madeira that authority is the Inspeção Regional das Atividades Económicas, which holds in the Region the competences ASAE holds nationally under art. 2.º n.º 2 of Decreto Legislativo Regional n.º 13/2015/M.

A notice printed from a mainland template names ASAE. It is the smallest possible error and it is on the wall, in the entrance, where an inspector reads it first.

Guest registration, and who receives it now that SEF is gone

Accommodation providers must report the lodging of foreign guests. The reporting system remains SIBA, the Sistema de Informação de Boletins de Alojamento, and establishments must register as SIBA users. The underlying obligation continues to rest on art. 15.º of Lei n.º 23/2007.

What changed is the receiving structure. SEF was extinguished in 2023 by Decreto-Lei n.º 41/2023, and the SIBA registration and coordination function is now attributed to the UCFE, the Unidade de Coordenação de Fronteiras e Estrangeiros, rather than to SEF.

Three caveats belong on that paragraph, and they are unusually important. SIBA's own English help page was opened directly and still names SEF, so the official help text is itself out of date. The attribution to the UCFE is reported rather than confirmed on a page opened directly. And a submission deadline is quoted confidently across English-language guidance; it could not be confirmed at source, so no deadline is stated here.

An obligation whose own official help page is stale is exactly the kind of thing worth confirming with the authority before relying on a guide, including this one.

The EU short-term rental regulation, in application since May 2026

Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 on data collection and sharing relating to short-term rental accommodation services entered into application on 20 May 2026. It establishes harmonised registration-number and data-sharing requirements between hosts, online platforms and public authorities across the Union, and it applies to Madeira as part of Portuguese territory.

The 20 May 2026 date was confirmed directly against the European Commission's own announcement of the rules taking effect. EUR-Lex's page for the regulation's text returns an empty, client-rendered shell on every attempt and was not opened for this page — the date above rests on the Commission's confirmation, not on a reading of the regulation's own text. It is recent, it is directly relevant to anyone operating a listing on a platform, and it is the item on this page most likely to have developed since it was written.

The simplified regime runs on a coefficient

AL income is Category B business and professional income for IRS purposes. Under the regime simplificado, taxable income is a coefficient applied to gross receipts, with the remainder deemed to be expenses. Under art. 31.º n.º 1 of the Código do IRS the coefficients are:

• 0.35*, source: Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, 2026, read September 7, 2026 for a moradia or an apartamento — a bit over a third of gross receipts is taxable, and the rest is deemed expenses;
• 0.50*, source: Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, 2026, read September 7, 2026 where a moradia or apartamento sits in a designated área de contenção;
• 0.15*, source: Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, 2026, read September 7, 2026 for an estabelecimento de hospedagem, including hostels, which are treated as hotel-type activity.

The deemed-expense structure is the part that surprises people arriving from jurisdictions where actual costs are deducted. Under the simplified regime the real expenses do not decide the taxable base; the coefficient does, whether the year was cheap or expensive.

The coefficients were read directly from the art. 31.º page of the Código do IRS. The sub-paragraph letters within it have been renumbered over time, so no letter beyond the one confirmed directly (alínea a) for the 0.15 rate) is asserted here.

Madeira's own IRS table applies to that income

A tax resident of the Autonomous Region of Madeira is taxed on aggregate taxable income using Madeira's own IRS rate table, which substitutes for the general table in art. 68.º of the Código do IRS. AL income enters that computation like any other Category B income, so the regional reduction reaches it.

For 2026 the Region extended the maximum 30%*, source: AT-RAM, 2026, read August 26, 2026 differential permitted by the Lei das Finanças das Regiões Autónomas up to the ninth IRS bracket, which means the reduction now reaches every income band rather than stopping partway up. At the first band the regional normal rate is 8.75%*, source: AT-RAM, 2026, read August 26, 2026.

This is one of the few figures on this site read verbatim from the regional budget itself rather than reported. The rate table in art. 18.º of the 2026 regional budget was read directly, together with the preamble statement extending the differential.

What the regional table does not do is change the coefficient, the registration duties or the insurance. It changes the rate applied at the end of the computation, which is a real advantage and a smaller one than the marketing around Madeira's tax position usually implies. The wider picture is in the IFICI regime that replaced NHR.

Whether the licence survives a sale

As of 2026 an existing AL registration is transferable and does not lapse merely because the property is sold. A buyer can continue operating under the existing registration, subject to updating the holder's details and continuing to meet the technical, safety and municipal requirements.

That reverses a position that held for about a year. Lei n.º 56/2023 had made the registration personal and non-transferable, lapsing on transfer of the holder, on cessation of the operation, on letting or other change of operator, and on transfer of any part of the share capital of a corporate holder, with succession to heirs the only carve-out. Decreto-Lei n.º 76/2024, de 23 de outubro revoked that construction and removed the automatic lapse on transfer. The condominium can no longer refuse authorisation, but it can now object to an AL in an apartment, and how that objection works is the decisive difference between a flat and a house.

Between October 2023 and November 2024 an AL licence carried no transfer value at all. Anyone valuing a property today on the strength of its licence should know that the value of that licence is a rule from late 2024, not a permanent feature. The consolidated text of Decreto-Lei n.º 128/2014 was checked directly: art. 9.º is Cancelamento do registo, not this provision, and no other numbered article of the consolidated text matches the personal/non-transferable rule described above, so it was most likely a standalone provision of Lei n.º 56/2023 rather than an amendment to 128/2014's own article numbering. No article number is asserted here.

How that interacts with the rest of a purchase, the promissory contract, the transfer tax on the Region's own brackets, is in how a purchase actually runs.

The tourist tax is municipal, and no amount is published here

There is no region-wide Madeira tourist tax. The tax is municipal, adopted by individual câmaras municipais, and it does not exist in every municipality on the island.

Amounts, caps and exemptions are reported for several municipalities, and the underlying municipal regulations were not opened at source for this page. So no figure appears on it. The eleven municipalities need checking individually rather than generalising from Funchal, which is what almost every English-language summary of the subject does.

What this page will not publish, on purpose

No occupancy rate. No nightly rate. No yield, no return, no projection of what a unit produces in a season.

Those numbers exist in the market and every agency has a version of them. They are forecasts, they are unverifiable at the moment of publication, and they are the single most effective way to sell a property to somebody who has not read the obligations above. A page that lists the insurance duty, the complaints notice, the guest reporting and the coefficient, and then tells a reader what they might earn, has quietly changed from a reference into a pitch.

The obligations are the part a buyer cannot look up in an afternoon. The revenue is the part nobody can honestly promise.