The Government's dispatch gives companies an extra month and a half to fulfill declarative and payment obligations.
Companies will be able to submit the corporate income tax return for the fiscal year 2023, known as model 22, by July 15th this year. The extension is set forth in a dispatch dated March 14th, signed by the Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs (SEAF), Nuno Santos Félix, and now disclosed on the Tax Authority's Portal.
The deadline for submitting the model 22 is usually May 31st, but this year the Government decided to give companies an extra month and a half.
According to the dispatch from SEAF, the explanation for this is that the digital forms for filling out the corporate income tax return were only made available on March 14th, which prevents compliance with the rule set forth in the General Tax Law, according to which the forms must be made available by the Tax Authority on the Portal with a minimum of 120 days in advance of the deadline for fulfilling the declarative obligation.
Therefore, "the obligations to submit the periodic declaration of corporate income tax for the 2023 taxation period and its respective payment" may "be fulfilled until July 15th, without any surcharges or penalties," determines Nuno Santo Félix's dispatch.
It has become customary in recent years to extend the deadline for submitting the model 22, but it is not common for companies to have so much extra time - last year and the year before, for example, the extension was until June 6th. Only in 2021 was there a similar extension, at that time until July 16th, a decision made in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic - the income for 2022 was at stake - with certified accountants pressuring the Government and warning that with the absences they had, they would not be able to cope.
Furthermore, the Order of Certified Accountants (OCC) has been advocating for a change in the law, in order to extend the deadline.
Accountants argue that it is a complicated period in terms of workload, with many tax obligations concentrating at the same time, for example, the submission of Simplified Business Information, which is very demanding.
According to IRC statistics from 2021 - the last year for which official data provided by the Tax Authority is available - almost 541 thousand companies submitted model 22, and the IRC collected amounted to 5,307 million euros.
An overwhelming majority of 87.0% of the declarations referred to taxpayers whose turnover was less than 500 thousand euros.