Taxpayers should avoid concentrating IRS delivery at the beginning and end of the deadline.

The President of the Tax Workers Union, Gonçalo Rodrigues, does not foresee any difficulties in the work of the tax machine with the submission of the IRS return, but advises taxpayers not to get hung up on the beginning and end of the process.

Hearing from Lusa, as the annual IRS return filing approaches, STI’s president believes the ideal is for taxpayers to “not rush into starting or leave this filing obligation until the end.”

Taxpayers have three months (from April 1 to June 30) to file a return on income received in 2023 and, according to Gonçalo Rodrigues, if people take advantage of this “long term” that is at their disposal, they will have “ of course the possibility of delivering your IRS in a dematerialized way, without much difficulty.”

Moreover, the new president of the State Tax Inspectorate does not foresee any difficulties with the start of the next IRS campaign, despite the already noted lack of human resources in the Tax and Customs Administration (TA).

“The shortage of personnel is undeniable. This is a reality that is not new, it will get worse and worse. And in the next five years it will become even worse because so many people will retire,” says the union leader, noting, however, that this is a well-known a reality that unions have been highlighting for several years.

Regarding the IRS, since this is one of those areas in which “people are already used to dealing with AT” and in which there are already many taxpayers covered by the automatic IRS, he states that it should be expected that there will be “spikes” and that questions and doubts will arise, but without much influence.

“We’re going to have some serious problems at AT in the near future, not because of the IRS, but because of staffing shortages,” he says, emphasizing that with human resources dwindling, AT expects to lose up to 2,000 people. workers by 2025 – is aggravated by an increase in the “volume of services”.

“In the past, people had to go to financial services to get in touch with AT. Not now,” he says, recalling that through e-balcao or Telephone Customer Service Center and other means at their disposal, people can easily “interact” with AT anytime and from anywhere.

This situation, he said, helps explain AT’s responses being circulated via social media to taxpayers, saying they may “take longer than expected and desired” due to “high volume of incoming services and lack of human resources.”

Continuing the IRS campaign, Gonçalo Rodrigues notes that the new withholding tax regime (which came into effect last July and aims to bring the amount withheld closer to the tax due), while a positive measure, may contain “risk.” which leads to a reduction in the amount of compensation or implies the need to pay tax after settlement.

Speaking personally on the issue, he points out that the new withholding regime “frees up money for the economy.” However, people are “used to having savings” to cover holiday expenses, for example, “and now, at the end of the day, there may be surprises in this regard and the person is waiting for a refund and has a smaller refund or may have to pay the same tax.”