Buy a coffee, a tank of fuel or a bag of groceries in Portugal and the cashier will ask “contribuinte?” or “quer número de contribuinte na fatura?” before printing the receipt. They’re asking whether you want your NIF, your Portuguese tax number, printed on the invoice.
The invoice goes straight to the tax authority under your name, and at the end of the year a share of what you spent comes off your income tax. For residents it’s one of the better deals in the Portuguese tax system. Saying yes costs you nothing. If you’re resident here and you’ve been saying no, you’ve been leaving money on the table.
The NIF is the first thing to sort when you move here, as I explain in my guide to moving to Portugal as an EU citizen.
What the Cashier Is Actually Asking
Your NIF (número de identificação fiscal, still called número de contribuinte in everyday speech) is the nine-digit tax number every resident and most foreigners dealing with Portugal end up with. Shops issue a fatura (invoice) for every sale, and the question is whether that invoice should carry your number.
Giving it is optional. Under article 36 of the VAT code, the buyer’s tax number goes on an invoice for a final consumer only when the consumer asks for it. There’s no spending threshold either: until 2019 an invoice of €1,000 or more to a consumer had to show their name and address, but Decreto-Lei 28/2019 removed that requirement. If you say no, the shop still issues the invoice and still reports it. It just isn’t linked to you.
You’ll hear the question everywhere, from supermarkets and pharmacies to restaurants, petrol stations, hairdressers, mechanics and online shops. Many places let you save it on a loyalty card so you don’t have to recite it every time.
Why Portugal Wants Your Number on Every Receipt
The point is to make shops declare their sales. Before 2013, a café or a small shop could leave cash sales off the books and pocket the VAT, and nobody had much reason to stop them. Portugal fixed that by recruiting customers as auditors.
Decreto-Lei 198/2012 created e-Fatura, which has run since 2013. Every business that issues invoices has to report them to the Autoridade Tributária (AT) electronically, by the 5th of the following month. Since 2023 every invoice also carries an ATCUD (a unique document code) and a QR code, so the AT can match a paper receipt to what the shop reported.
Your NIF closes the loop. When an invoice carries your number, you can see it in your own e-Fatura account. If a shop charged you but never reported the sale, the invoice doesn’t appear there, and you can flag it. The AT also cross-checks what businesses declare for VAT against what consumers’ invoices say they sold. Its 2024 activity report counts 52,630 e-Fatura discrepancies detected that year.
The e-Fatura homepage counted 4.36 billion invoices issued and reported between January and August 2026. Portugal’s VAT gap, the share of VAT that should be collected but isn’t, was 3.6% in 2023 against an EU average of 9.5%, according to the European Commission. e-Fatura can’t claim all the credit for that, but hiding sales is much harder than it used to be.
To make people bother, the state pays them for it, through deductions on their income tax.
What You Get Back: IRS Deductions
Portuguese income tax (IRS) gives residents deductions from the tax they owe, calculated from the invoices reported against their NIF. You don’t collect receipts or fill in amounts: the AT adds up the invoices in e-Fatura, sorts them by the seller’s business activity, and pre-fills the totals in your return.
These are the main deductions for 2026 income, the return you’ll file in spring 2027:
| Deduction | Rate | Cap |
|---|---|---|
| General family expenses Almost any everyday invoice: supermarkets, clothes, utilities, fuel |
35% | €250 per taxpayer |
| Health Doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, health insurance |
15% | €1,000 |
| Education School fees, books, tutoring |
30% | €800 |
| Rent Rent on your permanent home |
15% | €900 for 2026, €1,000 from 2027 |
| Care homes Lares and similar care |
25% | €403.75 |
| VAT on certain services Restaurants, mechanics, hairdressers and more (next section) |
15-100% of the VAT | €250 per household |
A single parent gets 45% on general family expenses, capped at €335. The health, education, rent, care home and VAT deductions also share an overall household ceiling that shrinks as income rises, so high earners won’t get every cap in full. The rates and caps come from articles 78-B to 78-F and 84 of the IRS code, which the AT publishes in its consolidated version.
The general expenses line is the easiest to fill. €250 is 35% of about €715 of spending per adult, which a family hits in a couple of months of groceries. Rent works differently: it’s backed by the electronic rent receipts your landlord issues on a registered lease, not by till invoices, so that one doesn’t depend on the cashier’s question.
Pharmacy items at the normal 23% VAT rate only count as health if you have a prescription, and you have to link the prescription in e-Fatura. Otherwise they fall into general expenses.
The VAT Deduction for Asking for an Invoice
On top of the deductions above, the “dedução pela exigência de fatura” gives you back part of the VAT you paid in sectors where cash sales used to go unrecorded. For 2026 it covers:
- 15% of the VAT at car and motorbike repair shops, restaurants and hotels, hairdressers and beauty salons, and vets
- 35% of the VAT on veterinary medicines
- 30% of the VAT at gyms and sports clubs
- 100% of the VAT on public transport passes and on newspaper and magazine subscriptions
- bookshops, performing arts and show venues, libraries, museums and monuments, added by the 2026 State Budget
All of it shares a €250 cap per household, set out in article 78-F. These are the sectors the deduction was designed to police, so volunteer the number at the restaurant and the garage before the cashier rings up the bill.
Checking Your Invoices in e-Fatura
The AT sorts most invoices automatically using the seller’s registered business activity code (CAE). A supermarket invoice lands in general expenses and a clinic’s in health without you doing anything.
Some invoices can’t be sorted that way, usually because the seller is registered under more than one activity, and they show as pendente (pending). You have to log in to e-Fatura, open the pending list and tell the AT which category each belongs to. A pharmacy that sells both medicines and cosmetics is the classic case.
The deadline is the end of February of the following year. Anything still pending after that is excluded or counted only as a general expense. For 2025 spending the deadline fell on 2 March 2026 because 28 February was a Saturday, so check the exact date in late February 2027 for 2026 invoices.
The free e-Fatura app shows the same list on your phone and flags pending invoices and ones waiting for a prescription. It takes a few minutes a quarter, and it’s also where you’ll spot a shop that never reported your purchase.
What Happened to Fatura da Sorte
For a decade the state added a lottery to the deal. Fatura da Sorte gave every invoice with your NIF one coupon per €10 spent, and the weekly draw paid €35,000 in Treasury certificates, with €50,000 draws in June and December.
It has been suspended since January 2024. In December 2025 the government said it would bring it back in 2026 in a new format, with smaller, more immediate prizes in sectors where people rarely ask for an invoice (ECO reported it here). As I write this in October 2026, no new rules have been published. Some older pages on the AT site still describe the weekly draw as if it were running, so don’t rely on them.
Who Should Say Yes and Who Can Skip It
If you’re tax resident in Portugal and file IRS here, say yes every time. The deductions are capped, but the cost of collecting them is a nine-digit number you’ll know by heart within a week.
Tourists and non-residents can say no. Article 78 of the IRS code limits these deductions to residents, so the number does nothing for you, and most visitors don’t have a NIF anyway. A foreign tax number is no use either: the system only matches Portuguese NIFs.
If you’re on NHR or the newer IFICI regime, it’s less clear-cut. The deductions reduce tax calculated at the normal progressive rates. In a 2019 binding ruling, the AT said an NHR resident whose only income was taxed at the flat 20% rate couldn’t use the health or education deductions. If you have other income taxed at the normal rates, they can help. I couldn’t find an equivalent ruling for IFICI, so confirm with your accountant. My post on life after NHR covers the regimes in more detail.
Practical Tips
- Give every family member their own NIF, children included, and use each child’s number for their doctor, pharmacy and school invoices. Their expenses count on the household return.
- Each adult has their own €250 general expenses cap, so if one of you pays for everything, put some of the everyday spending on the other NIF.
- If a shop prints the wrong number, ask them to cancel the invoice and issue a new one on the spot. It’s much harder to fix later.
- Put your utilities, phone and internet in your own name. Those invoices count toward general expenses automatically, as I mention in the utilities guide.
- Give your NIF at every clinic, dentist and pharmacy, private or public. If you’re setting up healthcare, my post on registering with the SNS covers the public side.
- If you run a business, give the company’s NIPC for business purchases instead of your personal NIF. Those invoices then show up as business expenses in the company’s own e-Fatura area.
What About Privacy?
Giving your NIF means the AT sees where you shop and roughly what you spend, sorted by category. If that bothers you, you can decline at any till and lose that deduction. Your bank already sees the same purchases, and here the tax office pays you for the information.
Common Questions
- Do I have to give my NIF when I buy something in Portugal?
- No. It’s printed on the invoice only if you ask for it, whatever the amount. The shop has to issue an invoice either way.
- Can I add my NIF to an invoice afterwards?
- Usually not. The shop would have to cancel the original invoice and issue a new one, which most will only do on the spot.
- Is there still a lottery for asking for invoices?
- Fatura da Sorte has been suspended since January 2024. The government announced a new version for 2026, but no rules had been published as of October 2026.
- When do I need to check my invoices in e-Fatura?
- By the end of February of the following year. After that, pending invoices drop out of the specific deductions.
- Does this help non-residents?
- No. The deductions only apply to people who are tax resident in Portugal and file IRS there.
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