According to ECO, this Sunday (30 June) is the last day to submit the annual IRS declaration for income for 2023. Taxpayers who miss this deadline risk paying a fine of up to 3,750 euros.

So far, 5,885,125 forms have been submitted, according to statistics from the Finance Portal. And the tax authorities have already paid more than two billion euros in refunds. The Government will make a final assessment of the campaign, which ran between 1 April and 30 June, at the beginning of next week.

Three months later, the legal deadline for fulfilling the tax obligation comes to an end for those who earned, in 2023, income from dependent or independent work, pensions, or gains from other categories such as property and capital income. If taxpayers miss this deadline, they risk paying fines that can range from a minimum of 25 euros to a maximum of 3,750 euros.

However, anyone who is eligible for automatic IRS escapes this penalty, because, in this case, the declaration is automatically considered delivered on 30 June, even if it is not submitted on the Finance Portal.

There are also taxpayers who are exempted from this obligation by the Tax Authorities. This is the case for those who have income from employment or pensions of less than 8,500 euros, which are not subject to withholding tax at source.

Those who have to submit their IRS declaration, under penalty of incurring a tax infraction, must pay attention to the deadlines. Anyone who submits the form after the deadline, June 30th, but during the subsequent 30 days, that is, until 30 July, the minimum penalty cannot exceed 25 euros.

If you let this additional time window pass, and submit the declaration within 30 days after receiving notification of the delay, the minimum charge becomes 37.50 euros , which corresponds to 12.5% ​​of the minimum value set for negligence cases. This value may, however, rise to 112.50 euros, if Finance has initiated some type of inspection. If the delay is longer and harms the State, the fine starts at 150 euros and can reach 3,750 euros, plus other charges.

It should be noted that if the submission of the declaration is very late and the Tax Authorities find inaccuracies or omissions in the declaration, the fine may be higher, between 375 euros and 22,500 euros.

“Although the delay in submitting the IRS, in itself, does not compromise the right to a possible refund, the payment of the fine ends up reducing – or even canceling – the amount that could be received from the State ”, warns the consumer association, Deco Proteste. This is because the amount that the taxpayer would receive from the tax authorities is automatically deducted from the fine to be paid.

Refunds

The latest data from the Ministry of Finance regarding this year's IRS campaign indicate that, by the end of the first week of June, 2,074 refunds had been paid, for a total amount of 2,002.7 million euros.

The law determines that refunds can be paid until 31 August 2024. This is also the deadline for paying the missing tax, for taxpayers who received collection notes. Remember that the Tax Authorities do not charge IRS amounts below 25 euros nor pay refunds below 10 euros.