During a parliamentary hearing on the State Budget Bill for 2026 (OE2026), Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento was questioned by PS deputies António Mendonça Mendes and Sofia Pereira regarding the delay in the payment of a salary bonus. They insisted that the measure is legally combinable with the IRS Jovem.
The hearing concluded without Miranda Sarmento clarifying when the next applications would open. The salary bonus serves as a reimbursement of tuition fees for young people up to 35 years old.
António Mendonça Mendes, Deputy and former Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs, stressed that the law granting the bonus is currently in effect and challenged the minister to indicate whether he plans to revoke it.
“It is in the law that [the State] has to pay the salary bonus to thousands of young people,” he noted, questioning when the Tax and Customs Authority (AT) will pay the bonus owed this year.
The Finance Minister did not clarify the status of the 2025 bonus, which remains unpaid, merely stating that the 2024 bonus was distributed. “Those who applied for the 2024 salary bonus have already received it this year,” Miranda Sarmento affirmed.
These inquiries from PS followed a statement in September by Fernando Alexandre, the Minister of Education, Science, and Innovation, indicating that graduates will in the future need to choose between the salary bonus and IRS Jovem for new applications.
The bonus is issued annually by the Ministry of Finance upon request by young individuals for a number of years proportional to the duration of their academic degree.
Applications, as stipulated by law, are to be submitted annually until May 31, but this year, the Government has not yet initiated the process.
The current government website message concerning this policy reads: “Currently, no new applications for the salary bonus to value qualifications are being accepted. The deadline for submitting requests in 2025 has not yet been announced.”
Back in July, amid the delay, the PS sought to affirm in law that a young worker under the age of 35 could benefit from IRS Jovem concurrently with receiving the salary bonus, which acts as a tuition fee reimbursement. However, this proposal was rejected in parliament on July 16 by the PSD, CDS-PP, and Chega.
In today’s hearing, António Mendonça Mendes recalled that during the debate on that proposal, PSD deputy Hugo Carneiro justified the social-democratic faction’s opposition by noting that the bonus is already in effect and that legally clarifying the measures as combinable would raise interpretative doubts about whether young people can simultaneously benefit from both supports.
The incentive was established by António Costa’s government in 2023 to allow young workers, until the year they turn 35, to request reimbursement of tuition fees from the State as recognition for completing a bachelor’s or master’s degree.
For a bachelor’s degree, the amount paid is 697 euros, while for a master’s degree, it is 1,500 euros (in an integrated master’s program, the years attributed to the bachelor’s net 697 euros and those corresponding to the master’s, 1,500 euros).
The IRS Jovem is a special tax regime that enables taxpayers to benefit from a reduced tax rate over a period, through partial tax exemption on a portion of the income.
This exemption fluctuates over time, with the fiscal incentive potentially lasting up to ten years, provided that the beneficiaries do not exceed 35 years of age.
