Autoridade Tributária Confirms TVDE Drivers Deduct Full IVA on Manutenção and 50% on Gasóleo But Pay the Full Hit on Gasolina
The Autoridade Tributária's 26 May informação vinculativa confirms TVDE drivers recover full IVA on manutenção, peças, pneus and inspections plus 50% on gasóleo, LPG and biofuels — but gasolina IVA stays unrecoverable because TVDE is excluded from serviço público de transporte.
The Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira on Tuesday 26 May published an informação vinculativa confirming that drivers operating in Portugal's TVDE platform-ride sector — Uber, Bolt, FREENOW and Cabify partners — can recover the full IVA on maintenance, repair, parts, tyres and inspections, plus 50% of the IVA on diesel, LPG, natural gas and biofuels. Gasoline stays at zero.
The ruling lands in response to a query from a single TVDE operator but functions as general guidance for the sector, the AT VAT services director signalled in the directive posted on the Portal das Finanças. The reasoning hinges on a precise legal distinction: gasoline IVA recovery is reserved for passenger transport vehicles operating as serviço público de transporte, and the TVDE regime under Law 45/2018 explicitly excludes the activity from that classification.
For a driver running 30,000 kilometres a year at €1.70 per litre of diesel and consuming roughly 1,500 litres, the 50% IVA recovery on combustível is worth around €293 a year at the 23% rate. Layered on top, full recovery of IVA on tyre changes, brake pads, oil services, IPO inspection fees and minor accident repairs typically delivers another €400-€600 of recoverable IVA for a moderate-mileage operator.
The clarification matters because Portugal's TVDE fleet operates under two parallel fiscal regimes. Most drivers run as self-employed Categoria B taxpayers on simplified regime or organised accounting, while a smaller cohort works through limited companies — Lda or Unipessoal. The IVA recovery rules apply identically to both, provided the vehicle's operation constitutes the object of the activity, meaning the car is used substantively for the TVDE service rather than as a household runabout.
What changes day-to-day is the receipt discipline. To recover the IVA, drivers must obtain factura com NIF on every fuel, parts and service transaction — a workflow most platform operators already enforce through their partner contabilistas. Terminals at MEO, Galp, BP, Repsol and Cepsa stations automate the NIF capture; smaller independent stations sometimes do not, which is where IVA leakage typically happens.
The exclusion of gasoline traces back to the Código do IVA's framing of vehicle fuel deductibility. The Code allows 50% IVA recovery on diesel, LPG, natural gas and biofuels in vehicles licensed for passenger transport, but limits gasoline recovery to vehicles classified as serviço público — taxis, urban bus operators, school transport. TVDE platform-ride sits in a separate regime created precisely to compete with taxis while avoiding the public-service obligations, and that regulatory choice now carries the IVA consequence.
For TVDE drivers running petrol-hybrid platforms — increasingly common as Toyota Corolla and Yaris hybrids dominate the partner fleet — the rule effectively pushes the fiscal calculation back toward diesel models or fully electric vehicles, where IVA recovery on charging electricity follows separate but generally more favourable rules.
The Ordem dos Contabilistas Certificados has previously flagged this asymmetry as a structural penalty on the sector. Tuesday's vinculativa removes the ambiguity but not the gap.
