Council of Ministers Reworks the IVA Liquidation Regime on Combustíveis to Choke Out Fuel-Sector Fraud — Leitão Amaro Backs the CIVA Adjustment as the Same 11 June Vote Wraps an SME Capital-Markets Simplification Package

The Council of Ministers (Conselho de Ministros) on Thursday 11 June 2026 approved a draft legislative proposal that reworks the IVA (Imposto sobre o Valor Acrescentado — Portugal's VAT) liquidation regime on combustíveis (fuels) to choke out a fraud problem the government characterised as 'expressively significant.' Minister of the Presidency António Leitão Amaro confirmed the package at the post-Council briefing, framing the change as a structural adjustment to both the Código do IVA (CIVA — the VAT code) and 'the functioning of the national petroleum system.' The proposal will be tabled at the Assembleia da República in the coming weeks. The same Council of Ministers session also approved a separate SME capital-markets simplification package that transposes recent EU directives on the Listing-Act framework into Portuguese securities law — a paired pro-business move on the day.

The Fuel-Sector Fraud Problem — Why CIVA Needs the Rework

Fuel-sector VAT fraud in Portugal — as across the southern European peer group — runs primarily through the missing-trader (carousel) and reverse-charge dislocation architectures. Under the standard CIVA Artigo 8.º regime, VAT on combustíveis is charged at the wholesale-to-retail handover, with the wholesale-side intermediary collecting VAT and remitting it to the Autoridade Tributária (AT — the tax authority). The fraud mechanism inserts a missing-trader entity into the wholesale chain: the entity collects VAT from the next link, then disappears before remitting to AT, leaving the chain with a downstream VAT credit and AT carrying the un-collected revenue. Leitão Amaro did not put a euro number on the magnitude — the AT-published estimate sits in the high-three-digit millions per year — but the Minister characterised it as substantial enough that 'when some don't pay [tax], the bill falls to others, and that is unjust.'

The proposed CIVA rework moves the VAT liquidation upstream toward the entrepôt aduaneiro (customs warehouse) and the entreposto fiscal (fiscal warehouse) entry points — the wholesale-supply gateway where the fuel enters the Portuguese market from the Sines refinery, the Leixões terminal and the cross-border road-tanker imports from Spain. By shifting the liquidation point upstream, AT collects the VAT at the entry boundary where the entrepôt operator (CLC Pipeline, Sines Refinaria Galp, Leixões terminal) is a known and balance-sheet-anchored counterparty — closing the missing-trader gap downstream. The mechanism mirrors changes implemented across Italy, Greece, Hungary and Romania over the 2018-2024 cycle inside the broader EU VAT-Action-Plan framework on the petroleum sector.

The Petroleum-System Functioning Side — ENMC, ENSE and the Wholesale Chain

Leitão Amaro framed the proposal as also touching 'the functioning of the national petroleum system' — a reference to the ENMC (Entidade Nacional para o Mercado dos Combustíveis — the national fuel-market authority, succeeded operationally in 2023 by the ENSE / Entidade Nacional para o Setor Energético) regulatory framework. The wholesale-side architecture covers refinery output, terminal storage, pipeline transport (the CLC Aveiras–Sines pipeline), road-tanker distribution and the retail-station handover. Each layer has a distinct VAT-incidence point under the current CIVA architecture; the rework simplifies the liquidation moment to a single upstream gateway, reducing the number of VAT-incidence handovers from four-to-five down to one or two. The simplification also reduces the legitimate-operator compliance burden — fewer VAT registration and reporting steps in the wholesale chain.

The implementation will need a portaria (ministerial order) from the Ministério das Finanças to set the technical-implementation parameters: which warehouses count as the new liquidation gateway, what the transitional period looks like for stocks already inside the chain, and how the AT's electronic-tracking architecture (the SAF-T XML files and the e-Fatura submission window) integrates with the new collection moment. The portaria typically follows the law's promulgation by two-to-four weeks; the Assembleia debate is expected across the second half of June with the law's promulgation by the Presidente da República in early July if Chega and PS abstain on the floor vote.

The Southern European Peer Context

Leitão Amaro positioned Portugal's move inside the broader southern European VAT-fraud framework, noting that fuel-sector VAT evasion 'is not just in Portugal, it's also in other southern European countries.' Italy ran the largest comparable rework across the 2018-2021 cycle, with the Italian Agenzia delle Entrate moving the VAT-liquidation point on combustibili upstream to the refinery / customs gateway under the so-called 'Reverse Charge on Petroleum' regime. Spain implemented a similar mechanism through the Régimen Especial del Grupo de Entidades in 2021-2023. Greece, Hungary and Romania each moved over the 2019-2024 window. The European Commission's VAT Action Plan (COM(2016) 148 final and its 2020 update) and Directive (EU) 2018/2057 (the Quick Fixes package on cross-border supplies) frame the broader anti-fraud architecture; Portugal is implementing the petroleum-sector-specific component late but on the same general direction-of-travel.

The cross-border tanker-import dimension matters: a non-trivial slice of the missing-trader fraud architecture in the Iberian context runs through cross-border Spanish road-tanker imports that exploit the intra-EU acquisition VAT-reverse-charge mechanic under Articles 4 and 7 of CIVA. Moving the liquidation moment to the entrepôt aduaneiro entry point closes the cross-border missing-trader vector by making the entry-warehouse operator the VAT-collecting counterparty — and the entry-warehouse operator is balance-sheet-anchored and licensed by the ENSE / IAPMEI, not a thinly-capitalised intermediary the fraud architecture can churn through quickly.

The Paired SME Capital-Markets Simplification Package

The same Council of Ministers session approved a separate package simplifying the listing and capital-markets-access framework for SMEs (Pequenas e Médias Empresas — small and medium enterprises). The package transposes the EU Listing Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/2809 amending the Prospectus Regulation, the Market Abuse Regulation and the MiFID II framework) into Portuguese law, with corresponding amendments to the Código dos Valores Mobiliários (Securities Code) and the CMVM (Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários — Portuguese securities-and-markets supervisor) regulatory framework. The principal SME-friendly adjustments cover: (i) reduced prospectus disclosure burden for issuances below €12 million, (ii) simplified rules around investment-research distribution under MiFID II's research-unbundling sub-regime, (iii) softer ongoing-disclosure rules for SME Growth Market listed issuers, and (iv) recalibrated insider-list maintenance burdens.

The SME capital-markets package is the Portuguese implementation of the European Listing Act's broader effort to deepen the EU Capital Markets Union (CMU) by making the listed-equity route a viable financing channel for SMEs against the deep bank-dependence of the European financing mix. Portugal's listed-equity universe is structurally narrow (the PSI runs sixteen names; the broader Euronext Lisbon listed pool is in the low hundreds) and the SME Growth Market segment (Easynext, Euronext Access Lisbon) has been under-utilised — the package is sized to widen the funnel. The simplification matters for Portuguese-headquartered SME founders considering an IPO inside 2026-2028 and for expat angel and venture investors deploying into the Portuguese tech and life-sciences pipelines.

The Political Trajectory at the Assembleia

The VAT-fuel package and the SME capital-markets simplification both head to the Assembleia da República for floor debate across the second half of June, with the Ministério das Finanças carrying the technical-defence on both files. The PSD-CDS-PP minority government holds 81 seats in the 230-seat Assembleia; passage on either file requires either Chega's abstention (the standard pattern across the 2025-2026 minority-government cycle) or the PS Socialist Party's tacit support. The VAT-fuel package reads as straightforwardly Chega-friendly on the anti-fraud framing and PS-friendly on the revenue-protection angle — and the SME capital-markets simplification reads as broadly cross-party-acceptable on the EU-transposition framing. Both files are likely to pass without major contestation; the principal political question is the calendar — Chega is using the calendar to extract political concessions on the Lei dos Estrangeiros and the PSU files (covered in this notebook over the past two days).

What This Means For Expats and Residents

• Retail fuel prices at the pump should not move materially on the rework alone: The VAT incidence stays the same — the standard 23% VAT rate continues to apply on the full retail price — but the collection moment shifts upstream. Consumers pay the same final price; the change is in who collects the VAT and when in the wholesale chain. Marginal upside on prices is possible if some legitimate wholesalers carry higher working-capital costs under the upstream-liquidation regime, but the magnitude is sub-1% on the final pump price in the comparable southern European jurisdictions that ran the same rework.
• Independent fuel-retailer compliance burdens should ease slightly: Independent service-station operators (the non-major-brand cooperativa de combustíveis network and the small-format independent operators across the Norte and Centro regions) carry the compliance burden of the current downstream VAT-liquidation framework. The rework reduces the number of VAT-incidence handovers and should simplify the SAF-T XML and e-Fatura submission window for the retail-side operators. Expat-owned small-format service stations (where they exist) gain on the simplification.
• The Autoridade Tributária enforcement dial is going up across the energy sector: The rework is one of three AT-led fiscal-tightening moves in the cycle, sitting alongside the 7.5% OE2027 cativações cap (logged 11 June) and the broader ENMC / ENSE compliance-enforcement push. Expat self-employed contractors and small-format Portuguese-resident SMEs operating across energy adjacent sectors (electrical-contracting, HVAC, EV-charger installation under the Fundo Ambiental incentive) should expect tighter AT documentation requests across the rest of 2026.
• The SME capital-markets simplification opens a new financing channel for expat-founded Portuguese SMEs: Expat founders running Portuguese-incorporated SMEs (Sociedade por Quotas, Sociedade Anónima) eyeing equity-financing routes other than the standard bank-debt and venture-capital paths gain a more accessible Euronext Lisbon SME Growth Market route under the new framework. The reduced prospectus burden for sub-€12M issuances is the principal practical lever; the IFICI and the IRS Jovem regimes (covered in this notebook across the past three days) remain the load-bearing income-side anchors for expat-founder structuring on the personal-income side.
• Portuguese-resident retail investors gain a wider listed-equity pool to deploy into: If the SME capital-markets package successfully deepens the Euronext Lisbon SME Growth Market segment, the listed-equity pool available to Portuguese-resident retail investors expands beyond the current PSI-16 universe. The IRS Categoria E mais-valias treatment (28% flat for short-term and the half-rate-for-365-days-plus tweak) continues to apply on the gains side; expat retail investors using Portuguese broker channels (ActivoBank, BiG, Banco Best, Banco Carregosa) carry the same incentive-side treatment.

The Ministério da Presidência institutional file with the Leitão Amaro post-Council briefing readout is at portugal.gov.pt/pt/gc24/area-de-governo/presidencia; the Ministério das Finanças tax-policy file is at portugal.gov.pt/pt/gc24/area-de-governo/financas. The CIVA legislative file lives at info.portaldasfinancas.gov.pt/pt/informacao_fiscal/codigos_tributarios/civa/Pages/default.aspx. The next watch-item is the Assembleia floor debate timetable across the second half of June, the portaria from Ministério das Finanças setting the technical-implementation parameters, and the CMVM rule-making timeline on the SME capital-markets transposition.