I would like to spend a few months in Portugal without becoming a tax resident.
As per the Government website https://www2.gov.pt/ the two main requirements to be a tax resident are-
remain for over 183 days, whether consecutive or not, within a 12-month period
have accommodation (your own or rented) that you intend to maintain and occupy as your habitual residence, on any day in the period
Does the Tax Authority have a way to find out how many days a person was in Portugal.
If a person is in Portugal and other Schengen countries for more than 183 days, how would the Tax Authority know the number of days spent only in Portugal.
If a person takes a house on lease, does it get reported to the Tax Authority.
Is the Tax Authority depending on the person to make a self declaration.
I am trying to understand the practical position so I can plan my trip and rental lease accordingly.
Have any members been notified by the Tax Authority to file a return.
I will tell you this, if someone buys a house in PT, this obviously gets reported to AT and the owner will be obliged to pay IMI in due course.
However that does not mean they would become a PT tax resident automatically. Their NIF address would not be suddenly switched by AT over to their PT house address.
If you’re required to complete a PT tax return, for whatever reason, the number of days in PT is reported by you on the return. I don’t know how or if they try to check that information
At the end of the day, these things end up being a matter of “weight of evidence”. What is “habitual residence?” There are definitions but they’re fuzzy and are based around intentions as evidenced in your actual actions in real life.
You are coming for a few months. Are you selling your current house? Where are your bills going to go, are you changing that? Do you have kids, where are they going to school? Did you buy a return ticket? Or did you start joining clubs and decorating your home like you intend to live there full time, and not buy a return ticket, and you bought a car and got a amazon.es account? Literally, where do you call “home”?
It’s really that simple. If you’re in some weird quasi-land where you don’t really have somewhere you call home, then it’s a problem - but even then… what if you’re between homes? You sell your home in the US, and put everything in storage, you stay in Portugal a couple months to take a break, you head back and buy another house. Did you sell your cars? Or move all your bank accounts? No? Nope, you didn’t move, you were just vacationing in Portugal between houses, and you can defend that, even if you had no other physical property in your home country, as long as you don’t ACT like you intend to stay.
The tax authority has ways to find out some things about when you are there, like if you have a house or someone registered a lease or what ALs you used, but that’s just one input data. You can’t prove intent on that alone.
This game plays out all over all the time. Habitual residence is one of those things that for the most part you know it when you see it, and the rest is just assembling the right argument, and any good lawyer will help you with that.
So don’t overthink this. You don’t seem to intend to move there. So don’t trigger the 183-day rule and you’re fine. My $0.02.