LISBON: The Finance Ministry this week issued a decree stating that tax workers would receive a five percent commission for their success last year in forcibly collecting unpaid taxes. In 2014, tax officials managed to extract €1.148 billion, beating the target of €1.1 billion set out at the beginning of the year by the Government.
In a publication in Monday’s edition of the Government Gazette (Diário da República) the decision to hand over five percent of the commission, calculated at €57 million, was justified by the “professionalism of workers from the Tax and Customs Authority” coupled with the “increase in productivity recorded during the course of 2014”, which effectively resulted in tax officials exceeding predefined targets.
According to union leader Paulo Ralha, inspectors will not be sharing the entire €57 million amongst themselves. He explained that money will be channelled to a so-called Tax Stabilisation Fund.It is now estimated that tax workers, of which there are some 9,000 in Portugal, would only be receiving bonuses of no more than €400 each after taxes. Paulo Ralha explained that high-ranking tax officials would receive a bonus equating to 42 percent of their salaries, while junior workers would receive a commission of around 32 percent.
