Re: NHR status portugal
 

I find €18.218 an interesting number - at first it seems pretty high, but I expect it is skewed by very high income NHR types. I would be interested to know the median number. Pareto's law and all that.

I am wondering if the NHR citizen discretionary / non-discretionary spending in the local economy - in addition to taxes collected - is a big part of the favourable equation?

Re: NHR status portugal
 

There's an NHR blogger out there at tax-free.today who in his overall excellent low-down on nhr-residency-in-portugal has indicated that in order to 'maintain' NHR once in 'possession' one need only keep a place (rented) and occupy it on occasion. His supposition is that there is no need to actually BE resident, though keeping a place with an intent to occupy would likely signify tax residence to the PT authorities.

Unfortunately, this blogger is the only one I have seen indicating that one can be in Portugal for less than 183 days in a year and still keep NHR - even this last weekend the Sunday Times did a blurb on the excellence of NHR and indicated 183 days.

If the blogger were correct, then even if one lost one's PT residency due to not complying with 183 days to keep residency one could still keep NHR by using the expected 90 in any 180 days stay in EU under Schengen VISA rules which offer the timeframe expected when we crash out of the EU as is looking more and more likely now, by the day.

Any views on this, from feedback with the authorities?

Re: NHR status portugal
 

I do not understand Portuguese at all so I cannot do research into tax laws here but what I do know is that you will be regarded as resident for tax purposes from the day a primary home becomes available to you regardless of how many days you have spent here.

Re: NHR status portugal
 

So what's the proposal there then - that you use Portugal as a kind of "flag of convenience", keeping up the appearance of being tax resident by using some obscure rules primarily designed as tie-breakers when determining tax residency simply in order to avoid paying tax in another country or countries where you spend most of your time?

That wasn't the intention of the scheme, whoever is presenting it as a possibility. The aim was to attract people to spend at least a significant portion of the year here, hence the primary criterion being 183 days' residence per year.

Re: NHR status portugal
 

Aren't you being a tad judgemental here?

I fully agree that the purpose of NHR was as you outline in your second paragraph, however, IF the blogger is correct, it takes away some of the pressure of being compliant in terms of length of overall stay. I'm sure there are many of us out there who have family commitments in the UK, family commitments and other ties elsewhere such that six months in PT could on some occasions be onerous. At the same time NHR means I wouldn't have to pay tax on my UK pension but I will have to pay CGT on assets that would be tax-free if tax resident in the UK.

Heh, I could go and live in the Caribbean full-time - where I have a house - and it's exactly the same tax deal as NHR but no CGT so what's the problem? At least I intend, at a minimum, to spend the near the maximum time in Portugal that would be allowed under our crash-out of EU terms.

Anyway, a friend of ours who lives in Portugal has already told us that there are a number of folks of varied nationalities who don't even LIKE PORTUGAL, belly-ache about it each time they are there and still keep their NHR as it suits them for their snowbird activities and obvious tax breaks. We love Portugal and everything that we know about it and want to spend as much time there as is possible in the circumstances.

Re: NHR status portugal
 

Yep - that's pretty much how I see this blogger saying what he is saying - it's the availability that clinches it, I think. One day a year hardly fits into the primary home bracket.

Re: NHR status portugal
 

Very probably - websites of that nature tend to do that to me. Nothing against you personally of course.

I assume it's the article dated May 2018 you were referring to? If so, I'd say it contains some extremely dubious advice. There may well be provision in the law for someone to make Portugal their home without necessarily spending more than half the year here under certain circumstances but that shouldn't be distorted into making it appear totally within the spirit of the arrangement to claim the status without having any intention at all of doing so or to imply that it can be used as a vehicle for purposes other than getting a very generous benefit for a proper relocation. That said, the 183 day rule isn't the be-all and end-all when it comes to deciding where your primary home is.

In my very unprofessional opinion (and judging by the lack of any news reports to the contrary) it's highly unlikely that the Portuguese authorities are (or even could be?) doing any sort of checking on the actual amount of time spent in the country by NHR beneficiaries or that there's any provision for (let alone application of) any sort of sanctions for breaching the general terms. However, there is provision for suspension and resumption of the status within that 10 year period, so obviously the intention there is that if you're actually resident somewhere else in any given year(s), you notify the authorities here as well as where you're residing during that period.

On the other hand, it strikes me as a bit odd that they might grant NHR status to anybody who didn't at the time have permission to reside in the country full time and permanently or how such a person could be deemed to be requiring the benefit of the status if they weren't intending to spend enough time in the country to be liable to PT tax in the first place :unsure:

Re: NHR status portugal
 

Indeed, that's the offending article.

Nope I'm not looking for the authorities to do anything to accommodate what looks strange from the get-go.

In our case, indeed, if the opportunity arises under Brexit, later this year rather than pre-29th March, we would look to do Residency in the normal way and show commitment via a longer-term lease. I would certainly expect others to proceed in the same way.

However, it is possible that down the road the at-least-six-months-in-state requirement for residency might be too much in a year or so. Then, reluctantly, we would give up residency and go according to the non-EU citizen rules for UK citizens, whatever they end up being.

N.B. we were always going to be part-timers in PT due to other commitments so the shift would likely then be 5/7 instead of 7/5 - PT/Other or at least as regards any residence we had in the Algarve.

Heh, this, as per previous, abuse of the intended purpose of NHR and even the Golden Visa (per Uk media - ripe for money laundering, corruption and organised crime) are nothing compared with the remittance basis of taxation for SOME non-doms in the UK.