Since Sunday, July 1st, non-European tourists who visit Portugal have access to a simplified system to recover VAT, without having to take those usual trips to the counters and usual queues waiting period.
Tourists from outside Europe who make purchases in Portugal valued more than € 50, can make the necessary certification to recover their VAT through new electronic kiosks located at the airport.
This new system allows you to do so by scanning your passport on the reader and selecting the invoices that entitle you to reimbursement. Afterwards, you simply need to go to the financial intermediation companies that work at the airport to receive your reimbursement.
Only doubtful and/or uncertain cases are sent to the branches of the services of the Tax and Customs Authority (TA).
In order for this to work, the tourists only need to associate their passport with the first purchase and, from there on, all purchases are communicated to the TA and the airport.
With the new system all the procedures are dematerialized and are shared by electronic means and in real time from the obligation of the vendor to communicate to the AT, the elements relating to the transfer of goods exempt from tax at the time of sale, until verification of the assumptions of the exemption upon departure of the tourist from the European territory.
According to Portugal’s Secretary of State for Tourism, Ana Mendes Godinho, the new e-Tax Free aims to simplify travellers’ lives while making Portugal an increasingly competitive destination for out-of-town purchases.
The system has been tested for the past several months and has joined 815 tenants and five financial intermediaries. More than 61 thousand invoices have already been communicated, of about 52 thousand tourists. Between January 1st and June 30th, € 16.7 million were invoiced for purchases, involving € 3.1 million of VAT.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us at vca@valadascoriel.com
