Portuguese tax authority must keep offshores’ data online for four years

The Portuguese Tax and Customs Authority must maintain statistical information on offshore transfers online during four years. This is one of the points published in this Monday’s decree order, which regulates the disclosure of these data.

In May, a change to the General Tax Law (Lei Geral Tributária) determined the yearly publication of the overall amount and destination of the transfer and funds sent to territories which have a privileged taxation regime. In addition, it defined that the yearly report to be presented in Parliament by the end of June, on the evolution of the fight against fraud and tax evasion, should include the evolution of these transfers and the result of actions on the matter.

These changes were published today in the Portuguese Official Journal and will start being enforced tomorrow. The information to be published on the website each year “should include the number and amount of transfers and remittances” to those territories, grouped by “the type of sending taxable person, automatizing the information of special tax payers”. In addition, the information should also be grouped in accordance with the “destination jurisdiction” and “reason for the transfer, per operation category”.

The Portuguese Tax and Customs Authority “should keep the information available on their website for four years”, the decree order further states.

The report to be presented to the Portuguese Parliament should also include an “evolutionary analysis of the quantity and value of the operations performed in the past four years”. Concerning the procedures developed in this area, it should further indicate the number of actions concluded and the amount of corrections made, the number of disputes and contested amounts, as well as the indication of the decisions made in that year, as well as the number of lawsuits on tax evasion.