An accountant who tells you before the deadline, not after it
Certified accounting, every statutory filing submitted on time, payments on account forecast a year ahead so they are budgeted rather than discovered, and a written split of exactly which filings are ours and which are yours. Fixed monthly fee, agreed before we start.
The whole calendar, not the easy half of it
A Portuguese company has fewer filings than its reputation suggests, but they are unforgiving about dates and several land on days nobody remembers. We take the lot and we tell you in writing which ones remain yours — because the filings that get missed are almost never the complicated ones, they are the ones each side assumed the other was handling.
Certified accounting and the signature
A contabilista certificado engaged and professionally responsible for your accounts. Bookkeeping, the annual accounts, and the signature that Portuguese law requires a company with organised accounts to have.
- Monthly bookkeeping against documents you upload or forward
- Annual accounts prepared and approved
- Professional responsibility that sits with a named person
Monthly and quarterly filings
The SAF-T billing file by the fifth, VAT on your frequency, the recapitulative statement where you sell into the EU, and withholding returns where you pay salaries or non-residents.
- SAF-T submitted by the 5th, every month, without you asking
- VAT return by the 20th, payment scheduled by the 25th
- Recapitulative statement for intra-EU supplies
- Modelo 30 where you pay anything abroad
Annual returns and the tax position
Modelo 22, the IES with its beneficial ownership confirmation, and the payments on account calculated, scheduled and explained before the money is due.
- Modelo 22 prepared against the statutory date, not an assumed extension
- IES filed on 15 July, keeping the RCBE current
- Payments on account forecast and in your cash plan
- Municipal and state surtax applied correctly
Payroll, where you have it
Priced per employee and not bundled into the base fee, because a company with no staff should not pay for payroll it does not have.
- Monthly remuneration declaration by the 10th
- Contributions at 23.75% employer and 11% employee
- Modelo 10 at the end of February
- Contracts, terminations and the paperwork around both
Where the load actually falls, month by month
Most of the calendar is routine. Three months are not, and knowing which they are is the difference between a bookkeeping arrangement that holds and one that is tested and found wanting.
July is the month that tests an arrangement: the IES on the fifteenth, the first payment on account, and the ordinary monthly set on top. It is also the month when people are away. We schedule it in May.
The dates whose consequences go beyond a fine
It arrives before the month’s bookkeeping is finished, which is exactly why it is missed. It is also the file the authority uses to pre-fill and cross-check everything else, so a gap surfaces later as a discrepancy in returns you believed were clean. VAT collection is running hundreds of millions ahead of budget precisely because this infrastructure closes the gap between what is invoiced and what is declared.
One filing carrying the accounts, the annual statistical return and the confirmation of beneficial ownership. Miss it and the RCBE goes stale — which is the point at which banks stop processing things and nobody can tell you why. This is also the filing least likely to be extended.
Not a return, so easy to overlook, and calculated from last year rather than this one. A company that had a strong first profitable year owes instalments through the following year regardless of how that year is going. Budget them in the year you make the profit, not in the year they arrive.
- A company’s situação tributária regularizada — the certificate confirming nothing is outstanding — is requested constantly: by banks, by public buyers, when applying for incentives, often by private counterparties. It is refused while anything at all is open, including small things, and reinstating it takes longer than the original filing would have. That is the real cost of drift, and it arrives detached from its cause.
On the horizon, and whether it is actually law
Three reforms are in motion and all three have been postponed at least once. We mark each one by status, because treating a budget proposal as a rule is how companies buy software they do not need for a year.
The 2027 State Budget proposal moves the accounting SAF-T file to periods from 2028, for delivery in 2029 or later. The previous plan had it starting with the 2027 period and delivered in 2028. This is the second postponement of the same obligation.
Reported 8 October 2026. The budget is before parliament and the final text may change.The same proposal would keep PDF invoices fiscally valid until 31 December 2027. PDFs issued through certified software, carrying the ATCUD and the QR code, continue to be accepted in the meantime.
Part of the 2027 budget proposal, not yet enacted.Under the 2026 State Budget, a qualified electronic signature or digital certificate becomes mandatory for electronic invoices from 1 January 2027. Whether the 2027 budget moves this date as well has not been confirmed, so we are planning for it to stand.
Approved November 2025. We will tell you if it moves.If you are a client, none of this requires anything from you this quarter. We track it, we tell you when a date becomes real, and we tell you what to buy only once it is worth buying. If you are not a client and somebody is selling you urgent compliance software for an obligation that has just been pushed to 2029, that is worth knowing.
Who files what, agreed in writing on day one
In a typical arrangement the accountant files Modelo 22, the IES, the VAT returns and the payroll filings, and is professionally responsible for them. The SAF-T billing file comes out of your invoicing software and is submitted by whoever operates it — which in a small company is often the founder, who did not realise it was theirs.
- Bookkeeping, annual accounts and the certified signature
- VAT returns, the recapitulative statement and withholding returns
- Modelo 22, the IES and Modelo 10
- Payments on account calculated, scheduled and explained
- The SAF-T billing file, where we operate your invoicing
- A reminder before every date, not an explanation after it
- Issuing invoices, and doing it in certified software
- Sending us documents within the agreed window each month
- The SAF-T file, if you keep your own invoicing and prefer to submit
- Telling us before you hire, pay a non-resident or open abroad
- Decisions: we advise, you decide, and we write down which is which
Ask any provider for these two lists before you engage them. Anyone who will not separate them is telling you something about how the first missed deadline will go.
Monthly, fixed, and quoted before we start
Priced on what your company actually does rather than on turnover, because turnover is a poor proxy for how much work a set of books is.
- Certified accountant and signature
- SAF-T, where there is anything to file
- Quarterly VAT
- Modelo 22 and the IES
- Payments on account handled
- Payroll
- Everything in the dormant package
- Monthly or quarterly VAT on your frequency
- Recapitulative statement for EU sales
- Withholding returns and Modelo 30
- Payments on account forecast twelve months ahead
- Written division of duties, reviewed annually
- Reminders before every statutory date
- Review of what is actually outstanding
- Late filings prepared and submitted
- Clean tax standing restored
- Then the monthly fee above
- Fixed price for the catching up, agreed first
- We will tell you if it is cheaper to close the company
Indicative monthly fees for a company with straightforward operations and under a few hundred documents a month. High transaction volumes, multiple VAT jurisdictions through OSS, foreign-currency accounting and consolidations are quoted individually, and we will tell you which of those applies to you before quoting.
The obligations, and where they come from
- Código do IRC — corporate income tax: the 19% standard rate for 2026, the 15% band on the first €50,000 for SMEs, the municipal surtax of up to 1.5% and the state surtax on profit above €1.5M. Also the rules on payments on account.
- Código do IVA — value added tax: registration, the monthly threshold at €650,000 of turnover, filing by the 20th of the second month following and payment by the 25th.
- Código dos Regimes Contributivos — social security: employer contributions at 23.75% and employee at 11%, with the monthly remuneration declaration.
- Estatuto da Ordem dos Contabilistas Certificados — the regime requiring a company with organised accounts to have a certified accountant and defining that accountant’s responsibility.
- Lei n.º 89/2017 — the beneficial ownership register, confirmed annually through the IES.
Position at October 2026, for a company with organised accounts and a calendar financial year. Statutory dates are given rather than administrative extensions, which are announced annually and should never be assumed. Companies with a non-calendar year work to the same intervals measured from their own year end.
Questions we answer every week
Is a certified accountant really mandatory in Portugal?
Yes. A company with organised accounts must have a contabilista certificado signing for it from incorporation, whether or not it trades. This is not a service you can decline and add later. A dormant company still files Modelo 22 and the IES, still needs the signature, and still pays for it. It is the single largest recurring cost for most small companies and the item most often missing from a cheap formation quote.
What is the SAF-T file and why does the 5th matter so much?
It is a structured export of every invoice you issued in the previous month, uploaded to the Portal das Finanças by the fifth of the following month. It matters because the tax authority reconciles everything else against it, and because the fifth arrives before most companies have finished that month’s bookkeeping. A gap here does not stay quiet: it surfaces later as a discrepancy in a return you thought was fine.
When is Modelo 22 due?
The statutory date is 31 May for the previous financial year. An extension has been granted by administrative order in several recent years, but it is announced rather than guaranteed, and we do not plan around it. The IES follows on 15 July and is not usually extended at all.
What are payments on account and why do they surprise people?
They are instalments against the current year’s corporate tax, calculated from the previous year’s liability: 80% of it where turnover is below €500,000 and 95% at or above, split across July, September and 15 December. Because they look back rather than forward, a strong first profitable year creates a cash obligation the following year that has nothing to do with how that year is going. We forecast them twelve months ahead so they are budgeted rather than discovered.
Do I need to be VAT registered, and monthly or quarterly?
Registration follows from your activity, not from choice. The frequency does follow a threshold: monthly from €650,000 of turnover, quarterly below it, with the option to elect monthly. Returns are filed by the 20th of the second month after the period and paid by the 25th. If you sell to VAT-registered businesses elsewhere in the EU you also file the recapitulative statement, which is the VIES listing.
Can you take over an existing company whose books are behind?
Frequently, and it is some of the most useful work we do. The sequence is regularise first, then run normally: nothing can be fixed, closed or financed while a return is outstanding, because the clean tax standing certificate is blocked. We will tell you the catching-up cost before we start it, and it is almost always lower than the cost of another year of drift.
What exactly is included in the monthly fee?
Certified accounting and the signature, the monthly SAF-T, VAT returns on your frequency, the recapitulative statement where it applies, withholding returns, Modelo 22, the IES, the payments on account calculated and scheduled, and a written note of which filings are ours and which are yours. Payroll is quoted per employee on top, because a company with no staff should not pay for payroll it does not have.
Tell us what the company does. You get a fixed monthly fee
Whether it trades, roughly how many documents a month, whether there is payroll, and whether anything is currently outstanding. Within one working day you get the monthly fee, the written division of duties, and — if you are coming to us with a backlog — a fixed price to clear it before the normal service starts.