Those who submit their income tax through the normal method will receive it in three to three and a half weeks, the Government predicts.

Similar deadlines

In statements to Lusa regarding the submission of 2025 income tax returns, which begins on Wednesday, 1 April, the Secretary of State for Tax Affairs, Cláudia Reis Duarte, stated that "the expectation is that the average refund times will be close to or similar to those of last year."

"In the Automatic Income Tax system, which tends to be simpler, [a period of] less than two weeks is expected," she said.

In 2025, the average processing time for Automatic Income Tax "did not reach two weeks," and in the case of "more complex declarations" (those submitted according to the general rule), the average was "slightly" longer, "three weeks/three and a half weeks," she specified.

In total, Automatic Income Tax should cover about two million declarations this year, compared to about 1.7 million last year. The increase is largely due to the inclusion of workers aged 35 or younger from the Youth Income Tax in this functionality, she explained.

Extended deadline for storm victims

The Secretary of State recalled that, this year, because of the storms, entities located in the areas where the storms occurred have more time to fulfil their tax obligations (until the end of April), but "it is not expected" that the extension "will be materially relevant" to the Income Tax campaign, although "in some specific cases" there may be "validations that take a little longer."

Differences in tax withholding

Throughout 2025, three different withholding tax tables were in effect due to changes in Income Tax in the middle of the year. After an initial table covering January to July, the Government approved a second one for August and September to reflect the retroactive tax relief, and finally, a third one for October, November, and December.

When questioned about the impact of these changes on refund amounts, the Secretary of State said that the Government has been "trying to bring the tax due closer to the tax actually owed," emphasising that this will not necessarily result in lower refund amounts.

"The tables reflect the decrease and the approximation to the tax due. In an ideal world, people would have neither taxes to pay nor to receive. It is clear that this is not possible because there are many variables," she says, stressing that withholdings at source are only "one of them."

“The income for each year is another very important factor – people don't necessarily only have income from work, they have capital gains, they have capital income, they have other realities” that influence the final calculation, she replied.

Data from the Tax and Customs Authority (AT) relating to 2025, “in which this approximation has already been made, shows that a very significant portion of the declarations submitted continue to generate refunds,” she stressed, detailing that this happens with about two-thirds of the declarations where there is an adjustment of accounts.

This year “doesn't have to be very different from last year,” she reinforced.

Deadlines for submission

The deadline for submitting Income Tax returns begins on Wednesday, 1 April, and lasts three months, until 30 June.

As a rule, the Finance Portal experiences two peaks in access on the first and last days.

When questioned about the matter, Reis Duarte said that “ideally, as a taxpayer, it is best to use the middle of the deadline,” without the overload of those days.

“If there are three million households trying to file on the same day or at the same time, it overloads the system, and therefore, there may be some glitches. My advice would be – if you have a refund to receive and are in a great hurry to receive it – to do so in the first few days, not necessarily on 1 April, but wait for the intermediate days within this long period,” she suggested when questioned about the matter.