IMI: what each Madeiran council actually charges

The rate is a council decision inside a national range

National law fixes the range and the assembleia municipal picks a point inside it. For urban property the range runs from 0.30%*, source: Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, 2026, read August 26, 2026 to 0.45%*, source: Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, 2026, read August 26, 2026, A council inside a financial-assistance programme may go as high as 0.50%*, source: Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, Artigo 112.º n.º 18, read August 29, 2026, which raises what the council may charge rather than penalising an owner. The consequence for leaving a building empty is separate and much larger: an urban building vacant for more than a year, or in ruins, is charged three times the rate*, source: Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, Artigo 112.º n.º 3, read August 29, 2026. Rustic property is different: the rate is 0.80%*, source: Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, 2026, read August 26, 2026, fixed nationally, and no council chooses it.

There is also a punitive rate of 7.5%*, source: Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, 2026, read August 26, 2026 where the owner is resident in, or controlled from, a jurisdiction with a privileged tax regime. It is not a rate a private owner meets by accident, but it is the reason ownership structures get asked about.

Each council communicates its choice to the Autoridade Tributária before the end of the preceding year. That is the mechanism, and it is also why any rate quoted without a year attached is worthless.

What the Madeiran councils set for 2026

Almost all of them sat at the floor. Funchal is at 0.30%*, source: Economia e Finanças, 2026, read August 26, 2026, and the same rate appears for Santa Cruz, Machico, Calheta, Ribeira Brava, Santana, São Vicente, Ponta do Sol and Porto Moniz. Nationally this is common rather than remarkable: 199 councils*, source: Economia e Finanças, 2026, read August 26, 2026 municipalities across the country charge the minimum.

Two municipalities are missing from that list, and the reason matters

Câmara de Lobos is not on it. Two sources give conflicting rates for 2026, the council's own site confirms the lower figure for 2025 and reports the 2026 rate as still going to an assembly vote, and the tax authority's own lookup form could not be queried to settle it. So this site carries no Câmara de Lobos rate. Porto Santo is not on it either, for a different reason: its rate is differentiated by freguesia rather than set as one number for the municipality.

Where these figures came from, stated plainly

The per-municipality rates were read at a named Portuguese finance publisher which states it extracted them from the tax authority's portal. They were not read at the Autoridade Tributária, because the portal's rate lookup runs on a form that could not be driven from outside a browser. That is a weaker chain than everything else on this site, and it is written here rather than buried, because a rate that turns out to be wrong is a bill that turns out to be wrong.

The rateable value is not the purchase price

This is where most estimates go wrong. IMI is charged on the valor patrimonial tributário, the rateable value the tax authority assigns to the property. It is calculated by formula from floor area, construction type, location, age and quality coefficients, and it is normally well below what the property changes hands for.

Applying a council rate to a purchase price therefore overstates the annual bill, often substantially. The rateable value is on the caderneta predial for the property, which a seller can produce, and it is the only figure that belongs in the calculation.

The same distinction runs the other way at purchase. Transfer tax is charged on the price or the rateable value, whichever is higher, so a property whose rateable value has drifted above a low agreed price is taxed on the higher of the two. How the Madeira transfer tax brackets work covers that, and what the deed day costs in total puts it next to the rest of the cash needed on the day.

AIMI, the surcharge that starts where IMI stops

Above a threshold, residential property attracts a second annual charge on top of IMI. An individual owner deducts €600,000*, source: Lexit, 2026, read August 26, 2026 of rateable value before anything is due, and a married couple or de facto partners opting for joint taxation deduct €1,200,000*, source: Lexit, 2026, read August 26, 2026, with the band thresholds doubling and the rates unchanged.

Above the deduction the rate runs at 0.7%*, source: Lexit, 2026, read August 26, 2026, rising to 1.0%*, source: Lexit, 2026, read August 26, 2026 and then 1.5%*, source: Lexit, 2026, read August 26, 2026 in the higher bands. A company holding residential property pays 0.4%*, source: Lexit, 2026, read August 26, 2026 on the whole rateable value with no deduction at all, which is the detail that undoes a lot of casual advice about buying through a company.

The base is the sum of the rateable value of residential urban buildings and building land held anywhere in the country, taken as at the first of January. Owners, usufructuaries and superficiaries are all liable.

One caveat on this section: the article was read at a legal-database rendering of the code plus corroborating summaries, not at the Diário da República text. The deduction and the three individual rates are corroborated across sources; the exact band boundaries and the corporate rate carry slightly less corroboration.

What is regional here, and what is not

Very little of this is regional, and that is worth saying because Madeira genuinely does diverge elsewhere. IMI itself is a national tax with municipal rate-setting, and the Madeiran councils happen to sit at the national floor. AIMI is national with no regional variation.

The regional divergences on tax sit elsewhere: the transfer tax brackets are widened for the autonomous regions, and the income tax table is replaced outright. The regional income tax table is where the island actually is cheaper, and it is a much larger effect on a household budget than the property tax is. Set against the published utility rates, the annual property tax on an ordinary Madeiran home is a small line, and the electricity bill is not.