Why Is My Portugal IRS Refund Late? (And the Mistakes That Cause It)

You filed in June, the money hasn’t arrived, and August is running out. The good news is that Portuguese IRS refunds have a legal deadline — this isn’t an open-ended wait — and if the tax office misses it through its own fault, it owes you interest automatically.

The less good news is that the most common causes of delay are things on your declaration, not theirs. Those are fixable, and worth knowing before next filing season.

When will I get my IRS refund in Portugal?

By law, 31 August — for a 2025-income declaration filed inside the legal window (1 April to 30 June 2026) and accepted without divergences. The assessment itself (the liquidação, where the AT calculates what you owe or are owed) is issued by 31 July, and payment follows by the end of August.

In practice the spread is wide. People who submitted the pre-filled IRS Automático often see the money within about two weeks. Standard Modelo 3 filers routinely wait until close to the deadline. A refund that hasn’t arrived in mid-August is not yet late.

Worth knowing if you’re on recibos verdes: Anexo B does not automatically rule out the pre-filled route. Cat B is inside IRS Automático when you’re in the simplified regime, registered exclusively for activities on the art. 151.º CIRS table (code 1519 excluded), and issuing receipts only through the electronic fatura-recibo system. Most freelancers fall out of it for some other reason — foreign income, a deduction to claim manually — rather than because of Anexo B itself.

Why is my IRS refund taking so long?

Four reasons account for almost all delays: a missing or unconfirmed IBAN, divergences the AT flagged for manual review, an outstanding tax debt being offset against the refund, or — for freelancers — an error on Anexo B that pulled your return out of the automatic pipeline.

Only the first is purely administrative. The other three mean a human at the AT is looking at your file, and human review has no published timetable.

How do I check my IRS refund status?

Log in to Portal das Finanças and go to Cidadãos → Serviços → Situação fiscal-Pagamentos → Reembolsos. The screen tells you whether the refund is pending, processed, or already paid, and it’s the only authoritative answer — your bank showing nothing tells you where the money isn’t, not where it is.

If the status says paid and your account is empty, that combination almost always means the next section.

What happens if my IBAN is wrong or not registered?

The AT sends your refund as a paper cheque to your registered address instead of a bank transfer. That is slower, it depends on the address on file being current, and cheques do get lost — a genuinely bad outcome for anyone who has moved, which describes most expats at some point.

Update it under Cidadãos → Serviços → Dados Cadastrais → IBAN → Alterar IBAN. (If you have no Portuguese bank account at all, the route is Cidadãos → Serviços → Cedência de Créditos → Pedido de Cedência, naming the NIF of the person who should be paid instead.) Two details that catch people out: the IBAN must belong to an account where you are the holder or co-holder, and a newly entered IBAN needs to be confirmed before it counts — an unconfirmed IBAN behaves exactly like no IBAN at all.

Do I get interest if the AT pays my refund late?

Yes — if the delay is attributable to the tax service. Payment landing after 31 August entitles you to juros indemnizatórios at 4% per year, accruing daily from 1 September until the credit is issued. The basis is article 102.º-B of the Código do IRS, which makes the interest run “dia a dia desde o termo do prazo previsto para o reembolso” at the statutory interest rate of article 559.º nº 1 of the Civil Code — 4%, fixed by Portaria nº 291/2003 and unchanged since.

The exception matters as much as the rule: if your return was held because of a divergence you caused — mismatched income, an e-Fatura problem, a bad Anexo B — the delay isn’t the AT’s fault and no interest is due. The interest right exists for their slowness, not yours.

You don’t have to claim it. Where it applies, it’s added automatically to the amount paid.

I’m on recibos verdes — what Anexo B mistakes delay refunds?

The recurring ones, in rough order of how often they surface:

• Revenue declared as €0 while green receipts were issued during the year. The AT already has your receipts; a declaration that disagrees with them is the clearest possible flag for review.
• An outdated or inconsistent CAE (activity code) — one that no longer matches what you actually do, or that conflicts with the activity registered when you opened activity.
• Social Security contributions that don’t line up with declared income. The AT and Segurança Social exchange data; a mismatch invites a look. (The quarterly declaration that sets this is covered in the quarterly Social Security guide.)
• Receipts from the wrong calendar year. Quadro 4 of Anexo B is the total you invoiced in 2025 — receipts issued in late 2024 or early 2026 belong to different declarations. First-year filers get caught by this most often, because their activity started mid-year and the boundaries feel arbitrary.

I have both a salary and recibos verdes income — what’s different?

You file both Anexo A (salary) and Anexo B (freelance) inside the same Modelo 3, and the most common error is double-counting: entering withholding tax that your employer already reported in Anexo A a second time in Anexo B. The result is a declaration claiming more withholding than was actually withheld — which the AT’s cross-check catches immediately, and which converts a routine refund into a manual review.

Mixed income has its own mechanics beyond this; they’re covered in the employee and freelancer guide.

What to do right now if yours hasn’t arrived

1. Check the status on Portal das Finanças (Reembolsos) rather than guessing from your bank balance.
2. Check your IBAN is registered and confirmed.
3. Look for a divergence notice. If one is open, the ball is with you — respond through e-balcão with the documentation requested; nothing moves until you do.
4. If it’s past 31 August, the status shows no divergence, and you have no tax debts — the delay is the AT’s, interest is accruing at 4% from 1 September, and you’re entitled to it without asking.

Once the assessment is out, the IRS check reads the Demonstração de Liquidação and explains the refund line by line, including any interest the AT added to it. What each line means is in the line-by-line guide.

For the wider filing calendar — the deadlines, what late filing costs, and how the assessment works — see the IRS filing deadlines guide. If the delay traces back to receipts the AT couldn’t match, the e-Fatura guide covers how that data gets to them in the first place.

Sources

• Portal das Finanças — Reembolso do IRS (FAQ)
• Portal das Finanças — IBAN confirmation
• Código do IRS, arts. 96.º e 102.º-B (restituição oficiosa e juros indemnizatórios); Lei Geral Tributária, art. 43; Código Civil art. 559(1) e Portaria n.º 291/2003 (statutory rate)
• Código do IRS, art. 31 (simplified-regime coefficients and first/second-year reductions)