“The IMI (Municipal Property Tax) is a real tax levied on the patrimonial value of properties, regardless of the personal or economic situation of the owner.
This property taxation finds constitutional basis in Article 103 of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, which enshrines the principle of taxation as a means to finance public expenses.
The IMI realizes the principle of contributive capacity by taxing real estate assets according to their value, reflecting the economic ability of the owner to contribute to public expenses.
The principle of contributive capacity is a cornerstone of Portuguese and European tax law and is implicitly provided for in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic. It means that each citizen must contribute to taxes according to their wealth or income.
The IMI is, therefore, a form of redistribution: those who own property contribute to the financing of public goods, being closely linked to the principle of tax equality, ensuring that those with more resources contribute more to the funding of the state.”
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Dantas Rodrigues has been a lawyer since 1993 and a partner at Dantas Rodrigues & Associados. He has also been a professor of Law at the Polytechnic Higher Education since 1995.
