After commuting back and forth to the UK for the past eight years, for the first time, my wife and I have stretched our latest stay beyond the six month limit, and have been warned that we may be faced with a financial penalty when we next present our passports at the airport. We are both retired and own our property here in Portugal and have often considered applying for residancy. Both our incomes are a combination of state and private pensions, and I understand there are tax benefits in applying for residancy, but until now we haven't overstayed, so it hasn't been a priority. Just wondering if this threat of financial penalties is likely or should we get our application in ASAP.

Unlikely they'll know when you came in because they don't stamp the passport & will only ask what date you came in. but getting residency is a doddle anyway.

All you need is your fiscal number which you must have had to buy your house, passport & a few Euros....... And you get it from your local Camara/Town Hall.

As a citizen of another EU member state, you are not supposed to stay as a visitor in Portugal for more than 90 days without registering your presence, which you should do within the following 30 days.

There is a fine applicable for failure to comply - last time I checked it out it was stated as being between 400€ and 1500€. However, I've never heard or read anywhere of anybody actually being fined.

It could be that that was being referred to.

The other possibility is that if you spent more than 183 days, consecutive or otherwise, in any tax year in Portugal, the authorities would deem you tax resident. The tax year here is Jan 1st - Dec 31st. If that were the case the penalty you refer to might be a fine for not filing a tax return - the PT authorities would want to know about your worldwide income for the year and would levy tax on it accordingly if you were deemed to be resident.

In either case, the matter of whether you are resident is not a matter of your choosing other than the choices you have to restrict your presence here to within those limits. Once you exceed them, you have obligations.

With regard to tax benefits, yes, there is a regime known as NHR (non-habitual resident), which can be applied for if you commit to spending 183 or more days a year here and you haven't been tax resident in Portugal in any of the previous 5 years. That latter one might be a sticking point for you unless the SEF were just issuing an empty threat, or were referring to non registration of presence rather than tax obligations. However, if eligible it could mean not paying tax on any of the pensions either in the UK or here for a period of 10 years.


If that were the case, how would they have been able to mention this to the OP on his latest departure? They must have a record of date of entry even if there's no stamp in the passport. I thought passports are scanned these days and assume that means entry and exit data can be easily stored - but I may be wrong.

The O/P just says he's been warned but doesn't say by whom so I assume not by the authorities.

I can only speak from personal experience & not for anyone else but in the 5 years I've been here I've passed through Lisbon airport to/from LHR on 5 or 6 occasions & not once has my passport been scanned...... I've just held it open at the photo page & been waved through...... and also the same at LHR.

Also, if he's overstayed this time, I'm assuming he hasn't left the country yet in which case logic suggests it wasn't an airport official that warned him? - But that assumption could of course be wrong.

Ah yes, you're right - I wasn't referring to what had been written as I responded but on re-reading I see he hasn't left yet. Perhaps he can let us know who it was that advised him.

Interesting about the passport thing - I've never simply held up the passport for inspection. They always make me stand on the marks, take the passport from me and (certainly of late) place it open and face down on a device which I assume to be a scanner. That's on arrival at either end between UK and PT.

Maybe you have a more honest face than I.

Gotta say I was surprised when the same thing happened when we entered LHR from RSA.

I assumed it was SOP for UK passports entering or leaving an EU country but guess we might have just been lucky.

Actually, between EU countries in the Schengen Area no matter what passport you have, it'll be highly unusual to have it inspected on arrival. Certainly the case when I've flown to Italy and to Spain over the past couple of years - you don't pass through passport control at all.

surprised the hell out of me when I first drove across into Spain a few years ago........ the only reason I knew I'd crossed into Spain was the road signs were in a different language.

I was expecting to have to show my passport at the very least!

The warning of a financial penalty came from my Portuguese neighbour who works for the civil service in Lisbon. She had on previous occasions encouraged me to take out residency here, and had stressed the benefit of the Portuguse tax law for expats. So I think this latest warning is her way of saying " I did tell you"
Regarding the date of entry, passports are now scanned electronically on entry, so I would assume the data is stored and easily retrieved if needed, but it has also been my experience when leaving Portugal that the passports are simply examined at the security gate and check in, then we have been waved through.
The logical conclusion to this procedure would seem to be that there is no record being kept of the length of time any visitor stays in Portugal, so why the six month regulation? We have used our home here as a starting point for many excursions throughout Europe, both flying to other city's or driving to Spain and France. There has never been a passport check, other than on leaving Lisbon airport, when we arrive in any of those other countries. I assume the latest influx off refugees is making the various authorities tighten up on passport
control, so perhaps my neighbours warning is related to this.

The six month regulation opens up the whole issue of where you may be taxed as it influences your residency status. As other have mentioned it is a very simple process to get a fiscal number and residence status in Portugal after you have been here for 90 days. Border controls are undoubtedly getting tighter, although you may not notice it just driving around mainland Europe once you board a plane somewhere/anywhere all your information, passport data etc is freely available to the authorities if they want to check it.

I guess the only way you can be sure if you either get your residency or fly out but if queried I'd suggest you say you've been to Spain for a period, plead ignorance, apologise & pay a fine if necessary........ but I don't think it's something you should lose too much sleep over.

Agree - I'm not sure that it necessarily is the case but it may be that the passport number is stored along with other details on the boarding pass, for example and that that is scanned as you go through security. If so, that data can easily be hived off for other purposes.

Not something to lose too much sleep over if it were simply a matter of failure to register as an EU citizen after 3 months, perhaps.

A bit more serious if the tax authorities have a gripe, though. And as it's 6 months that seems to be the issue here, I'd say it's more likely to be this latter that's at issue as far as the OP's neighbour is concerned. However, as far as I know the SEF and the tax authorities don't share data between each other (so, for example, the SEF won't be able to check everybody on the way in to see if they owe money to the Finanças or if they did or didn't file a return last year), so the chances of being pulled up at the airport would seem to be remote unless the tax authorities put out a special request.

Although the chances of coming to their attention in the first place might not be all that great (unless the neighbour dobs him in, of course ) the tax authorities have been given extra powers of late in an effort to crack down on various forms of tax evasion, so they do now have the authority to eg check with utility companies and get access to data about consumption on any property (in fact, I think the utility companies are now obliged to supply that automatically rather than only on request). So once you're in their cross-hairs it may not be all that easy to argue that you were somewhere else - and from what I've read the onus would be on the accused to prove that, which sounds perfectly feasible to me.

My gut instinct is that the neighbour is nudging the OP to become resident in PT and that if he doesn't want to he would be well advised to stay on the right side of the various regs in future. And that the neighbour isn't the type to make a denunciation to Finanças.

As a matter of interest what happens with regard to passport control etc when you use one of the ferries to the UK?

We usually fly from East Midlands to Faro and we have always had our passports taken from us by the man behind the counter and put into the little machine he has behind his desk.
I'm sure it is all stored on a computer somewhere.

I know of a man who used to do "baccy runs" across to Bruges by ferry in a selection of cars. He was finally pulled by Customs and Excise returning to the UK and they listed every time he'd done the trip and the registration of each of the cars and took the cigarettes from him. This was over 6 years ago. The information is being logged somewhere.

Which just goes to prove how out of touch I am because I thought the tobacco & booze restriction had been lifted donkey's years ago!