By: PEDRO SIMÕES
Pedro Simões is licensed in fiscal law and management, and is the Managing Director of ACOQ Consultancy Lda, based in Lisbon.
THE YEAR of 2008 is coming to its end. The actual market environment doesn’t help us, and naturally will affect taxation for companies and individuals. But, can we take any action that can minimise our tax liability for this year?
The first step to minimise our taxes is to use all tax deductions. Today we want you to make sure what the tax deductions are for all individuals.
Generally, the expenses that everyone can deduct on their IRS are: health, education and school, expenses with old people’s homes, mortgages payments, expenses with equipment for renewable energy, life and personal accident insurance, health insurance.
Besides expenses, everyone can have fiscal benefits. The fiscal benefits for individuals that people often use are the following: retirement savings account, buying computers and donations.
Please see right, put simply, for the kind of expenses that you can deduct.
Deductions
Regarding the deduction to buy computers, you can only deduct this if it is new, and only if the individual or their children, are studying. Also the Invoice must indicate the correct fiscal number, and also needs to mention the following: Uso pessoal. This means that the computer should be for private use. 2008 will be the last year for this benefit (for the moment).
The deduction of donations is extremely complex, because it will depend whether the entity that is receiving the donation is public or private. All donations to public entities don’t have a limit of deduction. For donations to private entities, just deduct a maximum of 15 per cent of the gross tax from the individual that is giving the money. Donations have a very specific regulation, and some entities do not fulfil the requirements to allow you to have the deduction. You must be very careful with these kinds of requests, if you want to take advantage of the deduction.
In conclusion, the tax to pay can be reduced if we deduct all the expenses that we have.
For more information, please email [email protected] call 219 205 225 or fax 212 468 352.
