IT Glitch at Tax Authority Bounces IRS Refund Transfers — AT Falls Back on Paper Cheques as Normalisation Expected Next Week

A file-processing error inside Portugal's Tax Authority (Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, AT) has disrupted the electronic payment of IRS refunds at the start of what is normally the busiest stretch of the tax-return calendar, forcing the agency to fall back on paper cheques while its IT teams rebuild the affected transfer orders.

The problem was first flagged in a Público report on 18 April and confirmed by the Ministry of Finance over the weekend. It affects refund payment orders processed on Thursday 16 April, which left AT's systems carrying an incorrect transaction date — the previous day — and were consequently refused by the receiving banks even when the IBAN on file had been validated in earlier filings. When the banks bounced the transfers, AT's back-end automatically generated cheques to the same taxpayers, a legacy workaround dating from before the refund system went fully electronic.

How the Error Happened

AT has described the incident as a "pontual e limitada" situation — one-off and limited — caused by what a spokesperson called a "computer constraint that prevented electronic transfers from being completed". The Ministry of Finance, under Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, has not published a numerical estimate of taxpayers affected, but Público reported dozens of complaints arriving through the Portal das Finanças electronic channel and the Finance support line in the 48 hours after refunds began landing.

The mechanics are narrow but consequential. Portuguese banks run automated validation on incoming government transfers, cross-checking fields including the transaction date against the payment order's metadata. A mismatched date — even by a single day — is treated as a protocol-level irregularity and the transfer is rejected rather than posted to the customer's account. For AT's Thursday batch, the rejection was systematic.

The Cheque Workaround

Rather than hold refunds until the technical fault was resolved, AT's internal rules routed the failed transfers into physical cheques drawn on the Cofre Geral do Estado. Cheques are dispatched to the address of record on the taxpayer's fiscal file. They must be deposited at a counter at the taxpayer's bank branch — electronic mobile-deposit is not offered on state-issued cheques — and can take several business days to clear after deposit.

For taxpayers outside Portugal, or for the large share of residents whose fiscal address is a post-office box or a consultant's address, the cheque fallback is an awkward one. AT has said that cases are being actively corrected and that the refunds will be paid by bank transfer where possible, but only after the original cheque is either returned uncashed or flagged as lost. Anyone who has already received a cheque should deposit it promptly; anyone still waiting for a refund from the 16 April batch is likely to receive either a cheque or a corrected transfer in the week ahead.

Why Now, and What It Means for Refund Season

The glitch surfaces at the worst possible moment in the IRS calendar. Tax season runs from 1 April to 30 June 2026, but the first two weeks are structurally the heaviest: taxpayers who expect refunds file early, and AT's refund engine pays them early to clear the queue before the end-of-quarter crunch. A processing fault inside that early window leaves a disproportionate share of early filers — often pensioners, employees with simple returns, and expats using the automatic IRS, where the state pre-fills the form — caught in the fallback workflow.

AT has been careful to frame the incident as an isolated data-processing issue rather than a generalised failure of the refund engine, and the Ministry of Finance has not suspended payments for any other batch. The automatic IRS option, the Portal das Finanças itself, and the pre-validation of IBANs against Banco de Portugal's SIBS directory are all reported to be working normally. The issue is limited to one batch that passed through a specific processing step on Thursday.

What This Means for Expats

For foreign residents filing IRS in Portugal — including NHR holders still within their transitional regime and D7/D8 visa holders in the standard tax track — the practical risk is threefold. First, anyone whose refund from the 16 April batch has not yet landed should check the Portal das Finanças for the status of the payment order; a status of reembolso emitido with no matching bank credit is the telltale sign of the bounced transfer. Second, if a cheque arrives by post, it should be deposited at a Portuguese bank counter — cheques cannot be sent abroad for clearing and are not negotiable outside Portugal. Third, taxpayers who have moved since last year's return should update their fiscal address through the Portal immediately, as a cheque despatched to an out-of-date address can be lost in the postal system and will take weeks to reissue.

For taxpayers who filed but have not yet received any refund notice, the message from AT and the Ministry is to wait. Refunds processed after Thursday 16 April carried the correct date and are not affected. The agency has said that normalisation is expected "in the course of next week" — meaning the week beginning 20 April — after which the residual cases from Thursday's batch should be cleared.

The Bigger Picture

The incident is minor in scale but politically awkward. AT has spent the past two years projecting a message of digital maturity — the pre-filled automatic IRS, the e-fatura crosschecks, the all-online Portal das Finanças — and a Thursday batch rejected by the banking network for a date-field error cuts against that narrative. The Ministry has declined to say whether the fault originated in AT's own systems, in the bridge to SIBS, or in a scheduled software update that went live earlier in the week; Público reported that internal review was under way.

No taxpayer is expected to lose money. Cheques drawn on the Cofre Geral do Estado have an effectively unlimited validity and can be reissued if lost. What is affected is timing: refunds that would have landed on Friday 17 April in a current account will in many cases be delayed by a week or more as the paperwork resolves.

Sources: Público, "Falha informática trava reembolsos do IRS e gera atrasos", 18 April 2026; Ministry of Finance (Joaquim Miranda Sarmento) office statement reported via Público; Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira spokesperson statements via Público.