Some bills [Taxes and fines] don't seem t be payable through my internet banking, but only at a multibanco machine.
The instructions are usually on the back; in Portuguese of course, but easy to follow. Just a tree with the menu route to the payment screen.

State taxes can be paid online through your bank website. I haven't experienced a fine but if they give you a reference number and an amount, it should be possible to pay online.

States taxes payable both online and in the ATM machines. If they are overdue both systems will reject the payment, you have to wait for the new bill with arrears.

Both in the ATM and online if you type a wrong amount, even above the correct value, the system will not accept it, by the time you type the reference the system retrieves, from the state servers, the correct amount and also checks if the amount is overdue.

We pay our taxes on line, again its a doddle.

I'm with BPI; the bills I refer to only have a 15 digit reference number. On my internet banking menus, I don't find any page that works with a 15 digit number.

Other bills [electricity, insurance] come with 2 sets of numbers, 1 for internet payment and another set to use on multibanco ATM machines.

Am I missing something?

Is there not a tab for "State" or "Estado" in the Payments section of your bank website? Is it in English? I have a BES / Novo Banco account and it caters for the full range of bills. I can even top up a PAYG mobile phone.

From the top blue menu click 'Contas à Ordem'
From the left orange menu select 'Pagamentos', then 'Estado' (rather than the usual 'Serviços')
You should then have a form which will accept the longer referência.

If you are using the Meu Menu abbreviated options the option to make payments to the State may be hidden as it's not much used (like indicators on a car).

Ok, thanks to your help I figured it out.

There is no tab for state, estado in the bpi 'my menu' options in the English version. But when I log out, switch to Portuguese, and log in again, there are more options, including "etado" in "meu menu".
I added the tab to my preferences, but it's still only accessible when I log on in Portuguese!
As though non-Portuguese people don't need to make tax payments to the Portuguese state...

Anyway, there we have it; HOW TO DO IT

There we have it, indeed.

I find that quite a few Portuguese websites offering the option of "English" fail to give you everything that is there on the Portuguese version. That's a good incentive to learn a bit of Portuguese, difficult as it is for some of us.

I will add one very important point

Anything you pay for using Multi Banco always get a PAPER Print Out as proff off payment made.
And staple it to the relevant document so it doe's not get lost.

A good idea but the receipt is heat printed and so fades over time. Better to get the receipt and then scan & (ink) print a copy

That's why I pay online from my bank website. My bank statements are then the record of payments. Years ago I paid my annual road tax in cash at the Financas office and did not keep a receipt more than a year or so. Four or five years later, I received a fine for late payment and had no proof that I had paid on time. I paid the fine and then, a year later, I got another late payment fine for the subsequent year. Fortunately, I had a receipt this time showing that I had paid the tax in good time. They were trying it on and it looked like a lot of people in the office were also arguing their cases, some without proof of payment unfortunately.

The moral of this story: keep receipts for at least 6 years and in a form that does not fade to useless, blank paper.

We were told, may years ago, at Finances in Olhao, to keep all receipts for the car for 5 years.

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