Portugal's Tax Authority Wraps Up This Year's IRS Settlements, With Refunds Due by 31 August
Portugal's tax office had until Friday to issue every IRS settlement note for 2025 income. Refunds must be paid by 31 August. Here is how to read your nota de liquidacao, where to find it, and what to do if it is wrong.
Friday was the legal deadline for Portugal's Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira (Tax and Customs Authority, AT) to issue the last of this year's IRS settlement notes — the notas de liquidação that close out the annual income-tax campaign for 2025 earnings. If you filed a return this spring and have not yet seen your result, it should now be available, and the money side of the process is about to move.
The settlement note is the state's final word on your return. It states, in black and white, whether you are owed a refund or must pay more, and it sets out the arithmetic behind that figure — your taxable income, the tax due, the deductions and withholdings applied, and the balance. Two dates now matter:
- 31 July: the deadline for AT to emit all settlement notes.
- 31 August: the deadline for the state to pay refunds — and, for those with tax to pay, the usual due date to settle the balance.
How to find and read yours
Log in to the Portal das Finanças with your access credentials or Chave Móvel Digital (Digital Mobile Key). Search for "IRS," choose consultar declaração (check declaration), then ver detalhe (view detail). That screen shows your settlement number and links to a PDF of the note itself. Read past the headline number to the breakdown: it is where you can confirm that your deductible expenses, dependants and withholdings were all counted as you expected.
One catch worth knowing: if you have outstanding tax debts in an execução fiscal (tax-enforcement proceeding), the AT applies your refund against those debts first, and only pays out any surplus. A refund that does not arrive may have been absorbed by an old bill rather than lost.
If the figure looks wrong
Errors are correctable, but the clock and the method both matter. Submitting a replacement return (declaração de substituição) is straightforward within the campaign window; do it after the deadline and you expose yourself to heavier penalties. The cleaner route to challenge a settlement you believe is mistaken is the reclamação graciosa — a formal administrative complaint asking the tax office to review its own act. We set out that process, and the appeals that follow it, in our guide to contesting a tax assessment from the Autoridade Tributária.
What This Means for Expats
- Check before you spend a refund: A payment can still be clawed toward an unrelated debt right up to 31 August, so confirm the note, not just your bank balance.
- Watch for scams: The refund season is prime time for fraud. The tax office recently warned of fake emails targeting freelancers; the AT does not ask for passwords or bank details by email.
- New residents: If 2025 was your first full tax year here, this is the settlement that reconciles your worldwide-income reporting and any double-taxation relief. Keep the PDF — it is the document banks and consulates ask for.
- Know your reliefs: Deductions and regimes change year to year. The government has, for now, kept the youth tax break even as it hedges on broader cuts.
For most filers the settlement will be uneventful — a modest refund landing in August. But it is worth the ten minutes to open the note and read the breakdown. The window to fix a genuine error cheaply is narrow, and it has just started to close.
