TAX AUTHORITY AUTOMATICALLY APPLIES TOLL FINE REDUCTIONS
As explained by Meredith Price in her article in the July magazine Te’ed off by Tolls, the toll system on the Algarve´s A22 motorway was non-transparent and confusing, sparking outrage after motorists accrued thousands in fines they were blissfully unaware of.
Following the article, it was announced that road tolls would be abolished in January 2025, but we are still left wondering what happens to the unpaid fines, which we were often unaware of in the first place!
Referencing the article published earlier this month in the newspaper O PÚBLICO (by journalist Pedro Crisóstomo) I will try to unpick the new rules for our followers.
The law that reduces the cost of fines for toll debts came into effect on July 1st. As a result, taxpayers do not need to submit requests to the tax services to benefit from the reduction.
The Tax and Customs Authority (AT) will automatically apply the reduction of fines to taxpayers with toll debts on Portuguese highways. Those who passed a toll without paying and face administrative charges or debt enforcement processes by the tax authority will benefit from the automatic reduction of old debts, provided the processes were pending as of July 1st.
The Ministry of Finance confirmed to PÚBLICO, as reported by Jornal de Notícias (JN), that the calculation of the new fine amounts will be made on all unpaid administrative offence processes, as well as those that were open and paid after July 1st.
The date of July 1st is significant because the law that altered the fine amounts was approved by Parliament in April 2023 but only came into force this year. It includes a transitional regime that ensures drivers with pending administrative offences or enforcement processes at the date of their entry into force benefit from the “more favourable regime” according to general law.
Although the decree came into force on January 1st, the legislation only took effect six months later. Since then, as reported by JN, tax offices have received requests from taxpayers to reduce the amount of old fines, despite the reduction being automatic.
The Ministry of Finance clarified to JN and PÚBLICO that the tax authority will apply the legal regime “automatically and without the need for intervention by local services,” making it unnecessary for taxpayers to submit requests.
With the new law, administrative offenses are punished with a fine equivalent to five times the toll fee, with a minimum amount of 25 euros and a maximum “corresponding to double the minimum fine amount,” within the limits of the General Regime of Tax Infractions. In practice, the maximum fine drops from one hundred euros to fifty euros, with the minimum remaining at twenty-five euros.
PAYMENT TO CONCESSIONAIRES
Drivers who have unpaid tolls to concessionaires can settle the debt before the collection is transferred to the tax authority. The tax authority, in turn, initiates a single enforcement process for toll fees and associated administrative costs for each vehicle, each month, offender, and concession or sub-concession, as informed by the road concessionaire Ascendi on its website.
According to the new law, when the driver does not pay or claim within 30 working days that they were not the vehicle driver at the time of the offence, a “notice of infraction” is issued, and a “debt certificate” composed of the toll fees and associated administrative costs for each month is extracted for the collection process to be transferred to the AT.
TOLL REDUCTION AND ABOLITION
At the beginning of the year, toll price reductions came into effect on former SCUT highways with electronic toll gates, in some cases in the interior and the Algarve (A25, A24, IP5, A13, A13-1, A4, A23, A22).
According to Ascendi, the reduction on the Interior and Algarve highways “covers all vehicles (65% less than the 2011 toll fee).” The reduction is 30% for light vehicles and 22.6% for freight and passenger transport, with the reduction remaining in effect for nighttime, weekends, and holidays.
From January 1st, 2025, some former SCUT highways will no longer have tolls, a measure approved by the PS in Parliament with support from BE, PCP, Livre, PAN, and Chega, abstention from IL, and opposition from PSD and CDS-PP.
In the first five months of the year, the state’s revenue from fees, fines, and penalties totaled 404.1 million euros, 32.8 million less than in the same period last year (a decrease of 7.5%). Among these revenues, 28.7 million resulted from traffic fines, 252.8 million from fees owed to the state, 46.7 million from late payment and compensatory interest, and 76.1 million from other fines and penalties (a 15% increase).
The budget execution data does not specify how much the state collected specifically from toll debt collections.
