Portugal removes Hong Kong, Liechtenstein and Uruguay from its list of tax havens

Portugal will remove Hong Kong, Liechtenstein and Uruguay from the list of countries, territories or regions with clearly more favourable tax regimes, known as tax havens. This amendment, published on Friday, will take effect from January 2026.

“In order to ensure that the list of countries, territories or regions with clearly more favourable tax regimes is up to date”, it is established that “jurisdictions included in the list may request the member of the Government responsible for finance to review their classification, based, in particular, on their failure to meet the criteria set out”, according to the amendment signed by Cláudia Reis Duarte, Secretary of State for Tax Affairs.

The criteria for inclusion on this list include the absence of a tax of an identical or similar nature to corporate income tax, the existence of special regimes or tax benefits, namely exemptions, deductions or tax credits, that are more favourable than those established in national legislation, resulting in a substantial reduction in taxation, or when legislation or administrative practice does not allow access to and effective exchange of information relevant for tax purposes.

“The governments of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Principality of Liechtenstein and the Eastern Republic of Uruguay have submitted formal requests” for “a review of their status on the list, which have been given a positive opinion by the Tax and Customs Authority, thus considering that the conditions for excluding those jurisdictions from the list of countries, territories or regions with clearly more favourable tax regimes, as legally established, have been met”, it states.

Hong Kong had asked Portugal last summer to remove it from this list, considering that it already complied with European Union standards for combating tax evasion.

In the order published on Friday, which comes into force the day after its publication and takes effect from 1 January 2026, it is also recalled that Hong Kong, Liechtenstein and Uruguay “are not included in the European Union’s list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes, adopted by the Council of the European Union, which was last updated on 18 February 2025”.