Pulling out of GV program

Residencies & citizenships Portugal Golden Visa
1

For those of us pulling out of this charade of a process, are there any hidden steps that I may be missing? I am planning to just not renew my card when it renews next month (actually the two years has passed but I haven’t received any notification). I have ARI funds, so I just need to wait those out. Is there any other step that I need to be thinking about? thank you.

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2

Sounds like you had a bad experience. What caused you to decide not to renew?

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3

I just abandoned the process and took my money. I didn’t think I owed Portugal a break up letter.

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4

How did you get your money back

5

Unfortunately, I haven’t, I am in closed funds.

6

The pull-out method is only sometimes successful.

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7

Reviving this, also looking for a checklist as we have sold our investment property for pennies on the euro to get out of this sham program and bureaucratic hellscape. We entered the program 4 years and 40 days ago, never moved in to the property as it just finished construction after 4 years, never received any residency permit, nor did biometrics.

I’ve so far:

  • Sold the property, deed transfer was on August 25
  • Informed our 1st lawyer who was managing our GV app that we had sold the property and were withdrawing from the program. His response was “ok, will withdraw” but won’t send me confirmation that it is withdrawn
  • Owe property taxes for the past year (FY25) - our Tax rep at the same firm keeps claiming we don’t have a tax bill but charged us their €1200 tax rep fee. I understand for FY26 we will no longer owe property taxes. Property tax is all we pay/owe and we have not set foot in PT since June 2024. For FY26, we know we have to file as there was a sale of property, but since we took a large loss, will ow not taxes/cap gains.
  • Am in limbo with Novobanco never confirming the documents to keep our account current were accepted, but they also didn’t close the account. I did contact my bank rep to inform we no longer qualify for an account as we don’t own the GV investment, but have not received a response because no one responds to anything in PT. I emptied the account save for €7 euro so will no longer have enough funds in there for the monthly fees.
  • We had to turn on utilities, I have 1 outstanding bill for August to pay, my new lawyer offered to close that but I would need to DHL/Fedex her a letter stating she can close the account on our behalf. If I can do myself, I’d prefer to. Anyone able to provide advise on this?
  • NIF cannot be closed/cancelled

Anything else I am missing? We want to extricate ourselves from any and any ties to PT at this point.

Thanks!!

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