THE PORTUGUESE Directorate-General of Taxes has issued an order to its offices to increase the pressure on people owing outstanding payments.
The orders were sent out on Monday last week to Inland Revenue offices throughout Portugal after it was discovered that tax receipts for the first half of the year were “below expectations”.
Offices have been ordered to carry out the seizure of property and goods in lieu of outstanding taxes via the courts.
Up until now, people with taxes in arrears have been informed via telephone calls and emails to pay off their debts.
If they showed a willingness to make an accommodation with the authorities to pay back taxes and were meeting their current obligations, no further action was taken.
Now those in arrears who are not paying off some of the shortfall in addition to falling behind on current tax obligations face having their goods and property seized and sold off at auction.
The instructions to send out the bailiffs contained in a document were leaked to the daily newspaper Público last week.
The order was issued by the Directorate of Tax Credit Management Services, Direcção de Serviços de Gestão dos Creditos Tributários – DSGCT.
Staff at tax offices have been given sweeping powers to “force sales of properties in cases where debtors have not up until now made payments or agreed to make scheduled payments to liquidate the debts.”
According to sources within the tax administration, offices are being asked to take action against tax payers failing to meet agreed outstanding arrears even if they are now paying their current taxes in full.
After having achieved an outstanding tax claw-back of 1.6 billion euros in 2007, the tax authorities have lowered their receipt objectives to 1.5 billion euros for 2008.
In the first six months of the year, the tax authorities succeeded in collecting 91 per cent of its stated objectives in terms of outstanding tax payments.
However, nine tax districts in Portugal have displayed less than positive results so far for 2008 including Lisbon, Porto, Aveiro, Braga, Coimbra, Portalegre, Santarém, and Setúbal.
Público questioned the Ministry of Finances about the legality of the new measures but has yet to receive a response.
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