I spent a year in Portugal, also due to the tax breaks. Rent and cost of living in modestly desirable areas are in the realm of the delusional, which is why we left as soon as we could. In our case, we signed our rental lease right before the war broke out in Ukraine, which triggered a significant increase in rents across Europe, accelerating a trend that was going on for some years thanks to AirBnB.

In some areas in Portugal these increases were, again, absurd. Rent increases of 800% were common. The owner of the place we rented wanted us out before we even moved in because they felt they missed out on some lucrative get-rich-quick scheme, and they harassed us for 10 months. Many of these places never rented out at all for the asking prices (think “150 m2 3 bedroom house, 12.000 EUR per month”, lol)

Few of those that move to Portugal participate in the local business environment, at least not in IT. Wages and contracting rates are absurdly low, so those folks coming from abroad do so with non-Portuguese contracts in hand. The low wages are why international companies settle there in the first placed. Everyone wants to near-shore (look at eastern europe) and all these businesses look for the proverbial “25 years experience with K8S” and are offering EUR 15 per hour. Many skilled Portuguese leave the country to try their luck in other places.

Getting rid of these tax breaks won’t do anything for the problem they need to solve, because the housing problems are not due to the kind of professionals that are looking to benefit from these tax breaks. The housing situation in Portugal is _dire_ as there simply isn’t enough housing stock that targets “normal” Portuguese. New builds are all for the “exclusive” and AirBnB markets. The measures the Portuguese Govt. needs to take (improve wages, increase affordable housing stock) to resolve this issue are unpopular with the monied crowd, so they do something like this that makes everyone feel good, but will not move the needle in terms of resolving the issue.