December 19, 2022
Background
Following the legislative changes introduced by the Portuguese State Budget for 2022, the non-resident taxable entities, when subject to the rules established by the VAT Code, are obliged, as of January 1, 2023, to communicate their invoicing to the Tax and Customs Authority (AT).
It should be noted that these changes follow the publication of Decree-Law No.28/2019, which foreseen that taxable persons without headquarters, permanent establishment, or domicile in the national territory (i.e., non-resident taxable entities) already were obliged, since June 2021, to issue invoices and other tax-relevant documents through computer programs previously certified by the AT, provided that their operations of transmission of goods and provision of services which are subject to the rules of article 35-A the VAT Code.
New Obligations
This means that, until the end of 2022, the non-resident taxable entities who carried out transactions subject to VAT in Portuguese territory, were not obliged to communicate the aforementioned elements to the AT, a circumstance that now changes as from – January 1, 2023 – as also for these taxable persons will be mandatory the periodic communication of their invoicing to the AT within the same deadlines of the other taxable persons. In general, this obligation should be complied with up until the 5th of the month following its issue (except for the flexibility provided for by law).
For more details, please see our tax alert: Tax Alert | Invoicing: Shortening the deadline for communicating invoices.
This obligation to communicate to the AT, by electronic transmission of data, the elements of the invoices and other tax-relevant documents issued under the terms of the VAT Code, may be carried out in one of the following 3 ways:
- By electronic transmission of data in real time (webservice);
- By electronic transmission of data based on the Billing SAF-T (PT) file;
- By direct insertion in the Finance Portal.
Our recommendations
In order for the non-resident taxable entities to be able to fully comply with the said obligations, we recommend that there is a:
- Verification of any necessary updates to the certified computer program have been carried out, to ensure the ability to generate a valid invoicing SAF-T (PT) file, to be accepted by the AT on the e-fatura portal;
- Regulatory compliance check of the structure and content of the Billing SAF-T (PT) file extracted from the certified computer program were carried out, and in view of the detection of observed errors, a correction plan is implemented in due time;
- Confirmation that the appropriate procedures have been operationally implemented (as of January 2023) for:
- Extracting and submitting the SAF-T (PT) invoicing file by the 5th day of the month following the issuance of invoices and other tax-relevant documents
- Implementing procedures for communicating the non-existence of operations.
Entry into force
Although this is a legislative update from the 2022 Portuguese State Budget, it only enters in force on January 1, 2023.
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The information above is not intended to be an exhaustive analysis of all the changes to the current legal regime, but a selection of those that we believe to be the most relevant, and do not dispense with consulting our Company and/or the diplomas to which they refer.
For more information contact: Catarina Breia (+351 91 7575 832 or cbreia@pt-nexia.com) from our Tax Department.
