A small, quiet tool for a specific problem.

What TAXCLARA does

TAXCLARA is free, independent information about Portuguese tax for English-speaking residents of Portugal: 62 in-depth guides, simple calculators and tools, and plain-English deadline alerts for IRS, IVA, Segurança Social and retenção na fonte. No ads, no sponsored content, no paid placements, and no signup needed to use any of it.

TAXCLARA does not file your IRS. Only an OCC-certified contabilista can do that legally in Portugal. What we do is remove the surprise - so when a contabilista does file, you already know the number.

Who built it

TAXCLARA is built by Andrew Kovalenko, a software engineer living in Lisbon. It’s operated by CYBER MIND Unipessoal LDA, a Portuguese company registered in Lisbon. Every line of code, every email, every decision is personally made here - there is no outsourced support desk in a different time zone.

The story

I moved to Portugal from Ukraine in 2022, when the war started. When you arrive that way, you rebuild the practical side of life fast — and Portuguese tax confused me from the very beginning: a government portal entirely in Portuguese, rules that assume you already know how they work, and no clear answer to the one question that actually matters — what do I owe?

I’m a software engineer, not a tax professional. So I’d do the work, earn the money, and still have no real idea of the number until a contabilista told me months later. For something that takes a real slice of your income, that felt backwards.

So I built the thing I wanted: a way to see the number, in English, any day of the year, and trust it. First for myself — I file my own IRS every year, and TAXCLARA is what I check. Then I started writing down everything I’d learned, guide by guide, so the next person wouldn’t have to piece it together from forum threads and Google Translate.

It’s still small, and I’m building it in the open. If it saves you one of those “wait, how much do I actually owe?” evenings, it’s done its job.

Why we’re doing this

Portugal has roughly 1.5 million foreign residents and is one of the fastest-growing expat destinations in Europe. The existing options for handling Portuguese tax as an English-speaker are: a local contabilista who may or may not answer your emails, a premium service costing €500-€1,300/year, or Portal das Finanças - which is entirely in Portuguese and changes whimsically.

TAXCLARA fills the gap between those: plain answers and simple tools, in your language, free for everyone.

How TAXCLARA is paid for

It isn’t. I build it in my own time and pay the costs myself. There is no paid tier and nothing on the site asks for a card. If a guide ever links to a firm that pays a referral fee, the page will say so right there, and it will never change what you pay.

What we don’t do: file tax returns. Only an OCC-certified contabilista can legally file on your behalf in Portugal, and we aren’t one — by law and by design. That’s why the calculator and all guides are free and stay free: they’re how you find out what you need, not something we sell. No ads, no selling your data, no “free trial” traps.

Human-written, double-checked

Every guide on TAXCLARA is written and verified by a human. We use AI for the editorial scaffolding — outlines, copy edits, formatting — but never for the specifics that matter: rates, rules, deadlines, eligibility, or anything you’d act on. Numbers come from Portal das Finanças, the OE 2026 text, and AT informações vinculativas.

If you spot something that looks AI-generated or factually off, email hello@taxclara.pt — we’ll fix it.

Company details

• Legal name: CYBER MIND Unipessoal LDA
• Registered in: Lisbon, Portugal
• Founder: Andrew Kovalenko
• Contact: hello@taxclara.pt