Portuguese tax authorities realize of an error in 10,000 tax returns in 2015 and require a payment of 3.5 million euros.
With almost 5 years of delay, the Portuguese tax and customs authorities (TA) identified an error in the processing of tax returns for 2015, which led to a recalculation of income tax of around 10,000 returns for one 3.5 million euros. The persons concerned are the taxpayers who started a commercial or professional activity in 2014, who were taxed in 2015 according to the simplified scheme and who, in 2015, also earned income category B, according to the information published in the portal. Finanças. This is bad news just before the holiday season for about 10,000 taxpayers who will have to repay an average amount of 350 euros. What is the reason for this error from the Portuguese tax authorities ? Are you affected by this refund request ? Lisbob, the expatriate assistant in Portugal, tells you everything about this (new) error of the Portuguese tax authorities and the consequences for the taxpayers concerned.
Portuguese tax authorities realize of an error in 10,000 tax returns in 2015 and require a payment of 3.5 million euros.
5 years to realize a miscalculation
The reason for this error from the Portuguese tax authorities is a change in the calculation rules, which came into effect on January 1, 2015 with the reform of the IRS, which resulted in a reduction of the tax payable in the first two years of the tax. activity for income from employees and professionals under the simplified scheme. This reduction of the IRS, says the IRS, could actually benefit taxpayers who started their business AFTER the entry into force of the standard and not to those who, as of January 1, 2015, had already begun.
"However, the first year of application of the new regime, the tax authorities applied a 25% reduction on the services included in the 2014 tax returns," says the tax declaration, adding that "by law this reduction should not have been applied to the extent that the taxpayers had started their activities before 1 January 2015, the date of application of the new law ". Thus, a new calculation of tax returns for 2015 had to be made for approximately 0.2% of taxpayers.
This is a bad news for 10.000 tax payers, just before Christmas
10,000 taxpayers will have to repay 3.5 million euros
The Portuguese tax office tries to minimize its error and indicates that, in the correction of this error, less than 10,000 taxpayers have been affected. This represents less than 0.2% of the total returns for the year 2015. That year, the number of tax returns amounted to 5,008,652.
Another way of minimizing this error is that the tax authorities indicate that the total amount requested from taxpayers was around 3.5 million euros, or only 0.03% of the total amount of income tax paid for 2015.
At this stage, all the statements in question have already been recalculated and the Portuguese tax authorities have already sent the taxpayers concerned a communication explaining the error in question, as well as the forms of payment accepted, by transfer or Multibanco, including the possibility to settle in several times. For the apologies, taxpayers will come back later.