Taxpayers covered by Automatic Income Tax should receive their refund in less than two weeks after submitting their declaration, while those who opt for the traditional route may wait between three weeks and three and a half weeks, according to government forecasts.
Speaking to the Lusa agency, regarding the campaign to submit income declarations for 2025, which begins on Wednesday, April 1st, the Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs, Cláudia Reis Duarte, said that the “expectation is that the average reimbursement deadlines will be close to or similar to last year”.
“In Automatic IRS, which is generally simpler, [prevê-se] a period of less than two weeks”, he stated.
In 2025, the average refund time in the Automatic IRS “did not reach two weeks” and, in the case of “more complex declarations” – submitted under the general rule –, the average was “slightly” longer, standing at “three weeks/three and a half weeks”, he specified.
More taxpayers covered by Automatic IRS
In total, Automatic Income Tax should cover around two million declarations this year, compared to around 1.7 million last year. The increase largely results from the inclusion of workers up to 35 years of age from the Youth Income Tax in this functionality, he explained.
The Secretary of State recalled that, this year, because of the storms, entities located in the areas where the bad weather occurred have more time to comply with tax obligations (until the end of April), but “it is not expected” that the expansion “will be materially relevant” for the Income Tax campaign, although “in some specific cases” there may be “validations that take a little longer”.
Throughout 2025, three different tax withholding tables were in force, due to Income Tax changes in the middle of the year. After a first table from January to July, the Government approved a second only for the months of August and September to reflect the tax relief retroactively and, finally, a third for the months of October, November and December.
Asked about the impact of these changes on the refund values, the Secretary of State said that the Government has taken a “path of trying to bring the tax due closer to the tax actually due”, highlighting that this will not necessarily result in a lower refund value.
“The tables reflect the reduction and the approximation of the tax due. In the ideal world, people had no tax to pay or receive. It is clear that this is not possible because there are many variables”, he states, stressing that withholding tax is just “one of them”.
“Each year’s income is another and very important thing – people don’t necessarily only have income from work, they have capital gains, they have income from capital, they have other realities” that influence the final calculation, he replied.
Most statements continue to generate refunds
Data from the Tax and Customs Authority () relating to 2025, “in which this approach was already being made, show that a very significant part of the declarations presented continue to generate refunds”, he stressed, detailing that this happens with around two thirds of the declarations in which there is a settlement of accounts.
This year “shouldn’t be much different from last year”, he stressed.
The deadline for submitting Income Tax begins on Wednesday, April 1st, and lasts three months, until June 30th.
As a rule, the Finance Portal has two access peaks, on the first and last days.
Asked about the matter, Reis Duarte said that “the ideal, as a taxpayer, is to use the middle of the term”, without the burden of these days.
“If there are three million households that, on the same day or at the same time, try to submit, they overload the system and, therefore, there may be some failures. My advice would be – if you have a refund to receive and are in a big hurry to receive it – to do it in the first few days, not necessarily on April 1st, but wait for the intermediate days in this long period”, she suggested, when asked about the matter.
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