If you have not already seen it you may like this article from The Algarve Daily News about the new idea of getting a tax receipt for every thing you buy. Here is the answer. Read it all the way through.
Paula Teixeira da Cruz, Portugal’s Justice Minister
Paula Teixeira da Cruz, Portugal’s Justice Minister, says no one can be forced to show invoices outside a shop, “You need a search warrant.”
The Justice Minister today clarified the legal position that citizens are not required to show anybody an invoice even if they are approached by a tax inspector on leaving a shop or restaurant.
Teixeira da Cruz believes that there has been “a hoax” around the subject, noting that there are limits to tax inspection.
“If I am leaving an establishment, no one can go up to me and search me to find the bill. You need a search warrant.”
On February 13th the Ministry of Finance reported that “the new rules create the necessary conditions for surveillance activities by the Tax Authority which can be carried out outside shops to ensure that consumers actually have got invoices for purchases made.”
Vítor Gaspar’s ministry could not say how many people so far had been fined, nor the value of any such fines.
A week later the Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs, Paulo Nuncio, insisted that the obligatory issuing of invoices is aimed at combating tax evasionassured but admitted to Parliament that no widespread tax snooping initiative was in operation.
This system is in chaos as those responsible for devising and running such iniatives, deeply unpopular with the public, could at least launch them in a coherent way with clear guidelines.
One loophole is already being explioted by thousands of Portuguese shoppers who are demonstrating a finely-tuned sense of humour.
There is no law that states that the name on an invoice must be the purchaser’s, so jokers across the land are obtaining invoices in the names of V. Gaspar and P. Passos Coelho and other ministers who already, according to tax office records, have made purchases far in excess of their ministerial salaries, triggering an automatic alarm bell to ring in their local tax office for living far beyond their stated means.
An upright sort of information source such as algarvedailynews would be foolish to pass on these numbers, so here they are:
Miguel Relvas NIF 158792793
Vitor Gaspar NIF 120528223
Passos Coelho NIF 177142430