- Funding Programme
- Year
- 2021
Increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of Tax Courts in Portugal
The commission helped the Tax and Customs Administration of Portugal (AT) review existing procedural and substantive tax legislation. The goal was to propose revisions to significantly reduce the number of cases pending before the Tax Courts and decrease the average duration of completed proceedings, addressing the judicial system's high obstacles to business activity as perceived by Portuguese companies.
Context
Portugal was among the Member States with the lengthiest administrative proceedings. Based on by the data published by the Portuguese Ministry of Justice, by the end of 2019 more than 45,000 tax cases were pending and the average duration for the proceedings with judicial claims brought against tax assessments was almost 6 years. In 2020, 49% of companies considered the duration of judicial proceedings as a high or very high obstacle.
In the past 10 years, only small amendments were made to the tax procedural law, that did not have the expected impact on helping to decrease the number of pending cases.
Support delivered
A private consultant provided support to the AT during 20 months in the form of analysis of the existing procedural tax legislation, analysis of main trends as regards legal norms/regimes being challenged the most, comparison with other EU countries, and technical specifications to improve the existing IT system in the AT. A workshop with internal stakeholders was organised to present and discuss the results of the analysis and areas of necessary improvements.
Results achieved
After the end of the project, the Portuguese authorities were able to identify specific areas for effective legal reform on both substantive and procedural tax legislation and capitalise on the projects’ recommendations. The following results are envisaged on the medium to long term: decrease of the number of cases pending before the Tax Courts, as well as their average duration, and reduction of administrative burden.
More about the project
You can read the documents related to the project here: