Finanças || Portugal’s tax authorities want to make sure businesses are complying with invoicing rules implemented in 2013 and will be making special visits to check that their electronic invoicing systems are certified by the government.
In fact, workers at the local Finanças offices will be having an unusually busy next few months as all of the country’s commercial establishments have to be checked.
The plan is to have 50% of the Finanças’ workers out of the office, visiting businesses at times that they are most likely to be busy.
According to the director-general of tax revenue José Azevedo Pereira, the goal is not only to see if businesses are ‘playing it by the book’, but also to clear any doubts that may still remain regarding the new invoicing rules.
The mega operation, entitled ‘Plano de Ações Externas Locais’, or PAELAC, is deemed by the tax authorities as their “most ambitious project in the fight against tax evasion and the parallel economy”. Although the president of the national tax workers’ union says the idea is “excellent”, he believes it is “unfeasible” due to the tax authorities’ current resources.
“There aren’t enough financial and human resources. There aren’t even enough workers for the day-to-day office work,” Paulo Ralha told online newspaper Dinheiro Vivo.
He also stresses that while office workers have the “technical capabilities” needed for the job, they do not have the authority to fill out official reports or the on-the-ground experience for the project to be “successful”.
Nonetheless, the operation is expected to be carried out across the country in the coming months and comes only a couple of months after thousands of bars, cafés, hotels and restaurants were surprised by teams from the government’s ‘fraud squad’, aiming to fine businesses still using the iECR invoicing system, withdrawn in April for not being ‘bullet-proof’ against tax fraud.
