“T“We have a debt portfolio of about 22 billion euros, of which 6 billion are active and 8 billion are under litigation,” said the Minister of State for Public Finance, in a joint interview with Negócios and Antena 1. Dimension,” the governor acknowledges, “but it’s not a much larger debt portfolio than it has been in recent years.”

The last known numbers are for 2019The year in which the debt was collected under duress It amounted to 21.1 billion euros, according to figures from the Court of Auditors’ opinion to Conta Geral do Estado that year, which was issued in December 2020. In 2019, AT’s bad debts increased by 27.1%, according to the same source. .

At the end of 2019, the total tax debt declared uncollectible by the Finance Department amounted to 6,423 million euros, 1.371 million euros more than the previous year and equivalent to 30.4% of the total debt portfolio. This figure has not yet been detailed by Antonio MendOnça Mendes, but the Minister of State for Finance stressed the fact that even with the crisis caused by the pandemic, taxpayers are sticking to their plans to repay their debts to the tax authorities on time.

It is reported that in the past year, precisely in the context of the pandemic, finances have advanced with the creation of automatic installment plans, allowing taxpayers who have committed themselves to repay their debts without having to provide guarantees – for debts of up to five thousand euros for citizens and ten thousand euros for companies.

This measure is now being repeated in the proposed state budget for 2022 and its assessment by Antonio Mendonca Mendes is very positive: “These installment plans allowed the tax authority to make 10 million euros in monthly payments. It concludes that payments that might not have been made otherwise.”