November 14, 2023

Portugal: How to send proof of your short-term rental business activity – Mais Habitação

Sending proof of your short-term rental business activity – Mais Habitação

The “Mais Habitação” laws brought new measures for short-term rentals in Portugal, including some specific rules regarding the expiration of existing licenses, and how to prevent it from happening.

After the publication of the new law on October 6, 2023, AL (short-term rental) licence holders now have 2 months to prove the maintenance of their activity to keep their license. This means that they must do so by ~~December 7, 2023~~.

Update: the deadline has been moved to the 13th, December, 2023, at 23:59. If you’re experiencing technical problems when sending your proof, you can try to clear your browser cache (Google Chrome instructions, Safari instructions for Apple devices, Firefox instructions) and try again.

If you are only looking for the address to send the proof, you can click here to open the dedicated ePortugal page for sending proof of your continued short-term rental activity.

If you have doubts or need more information about this procedure, you will find in this article a review of the law, a description of the documents you can send, and a step-by-step guide with images on the proof submission process, including information for those who have more than one short-term rental record and wonder how to prove the activity of each one.

How to Prove Your Short-Term Rental Activity?

Click here to open our step-by-step guide

Mais Habitação and proof of short-term rental activity

The Mais Habitação package introduces a new article (article 21 of Law No. 56/2023, of October 6) that addresses all new scenarios that will lead to the expiration of existing short-term rental licences.

Simply put, this new article states that all short-term rental license holders must prove the maintenance of this business activity to prevent automatic cancellation of their licence by the municipal council.

The sole exception to this condition is for holders of short-term rentals operating in their own permanent residence and who do not rent the unit for more than 120 days per year. However, this procedure can still be carried out by those who rent their own place of residence, so if your situation causes uncertainty, consult with a lawyer/accountant, or a short-term rental specialist.

For the submission of this proof, property owners or licence holders were given two months from the effective date of the law, making December 13, 2023 the last possible day for the document submission.

To communicate the active business, short-term rental license holders should use the electronic single desk (e-balcão), in particular the short-term rental service pages. You can find an illustrated step-by-step guide in this article or click directly on this address to be taken to that e-balcão page directly. You will need your short-term rental registration number and one of the three documents we detail below. The rest of the information will be already filled out. However, most pages will be in Portuguese only. So if you’re unsure or if you prefer to have some guidance, click here to jump to our guide.

Which document serves as proof of your short-term rental activity?

One of the main questions raised by property owners is which proof should be submitted by December 13, 2023.

GuestReady received clarification directly from Tourism of Portugal, which was subsequently also published on the e-balcão website, explaining the various options.

Short-term rental record holders can submit through the electronic single desk (e-balcão):

The last income statement for IRS or IRC purposes or
The last periodic VAT statement referring to the short-term rental business activity.

Thus, it will be up to each holder to choose which statement to submit.

In case of an activity started this year with the Portuguese Tax Authority, the holder should submit a VAT statement or, if they haven’t need to submit a VAT statement yet, they should submit the activity start statement (“beginning of activity” statement) also before December 13, 2023.

If you have more than one short-term rental licence, you will need to repeat the process for each one, but you can submit the same tax document for all licences.

How to submit the proof of short-term rental activity through the e-balcao

We provide an illustrated step-by-step guide on the procedure below. Please bare in mind that some pages are not available in English. For this reason, we’ve kept the prints as they exist on the website, and we’ll explain all the specifics.

In summary:

You should access the e-balcão and select the short-term rental option on the home page.
On the next page, you should select the last service option, Send proof of local accommodation activity.
You should then select your short-term rental location and, to continue, you will need to access your account (called “reserved area”), using, for example, your Chave Móvel Digital / Digital Mobile Key.
This is where the process begins and the pages are entirely in Portuguese. First, you will be asked for your short-term rental registration number. If you have multiple registrations, you should repeat the process for each after completing the first.
When indicating a short-term rental licence number, you will be asked what is your role in relations to the licence. You can chose “proprietário” (owner) or “sócio-gerente / gerente (…)” (business partner, business owner, manager or director).
The following page will display most of the information related to the licence and the next one about its holder, so you should only verify if all the data is correct by clicing to continue.
You should then submit the proof, attaching it to the process.
On the next page, you will be required to confirm the accuracy of the information you provided before continuing.
The process will show a fee (0.00€) in the payment section and will be successfully completed.

Illustrated step-by-step guide for submitting proof of short-term rental activity

GuestReady cannot perform these steps for its owners due to the sensitivity of the required information used as proof. However, GuestReady offers remote assistance to all its clients and is available to assist them with the mandatory bureaucratic processes for short-term rental activity, including this verification of business activity. Click here and contact our team if you’d like to know more about our services or if you need help with any of the steps.

If you want to skip the steps to access the proof submission page, click here to be redirected directly to the service page. After you sign in, resume this guide from step 6 (or click here). We translate all the content that is in Portuguese on the website, which starts on step 9.

If you prefer to follow the step-by-step entirely, you can continue to the next section below.

The step-by-step

01. In order to submit your proof, you should access the e-balcão / electronic single desk at https://eportugal.gov.pt/

Homepage of the ePortugal website, the electronic single desk

02. The electronic single desk page sometimes experiences technical issues when users try to access their reserved areas (personal accounts) on pages other than the homepage. This problem is recurrent and public, with occasional warnings on the platform (as seen on our prints below). Therefore, we always recommend that you access your reserved area before proceeding by clicking on the top right corner and using your digital mobile key or citizen card (if you have a physical card reader).

Access the reserved area to submit proof of short-term rental activity maintenance through the electronic single desk

Note: If you encounter access problems using your digital mobile key, you will need to consult the help articles for this service, which you can find by clicking here. Our team is also available to help our clients remotely with these steps.

03. Returning to the homepage, scroll down and select Economic Activity Licensing – Local lodging

04. Ensuring that you are already signed in to your account (reserved area), you will reach the dedicated short-term rental page.

05. You should scroll down on this page until you find the various services you can perform regarding your short-term rental license. You should select the last option: Send proof of local accommodation activity.

06. On this page, you will likely find ePortugal site warnings recommending that you access your account before proceeding with the process due to frequent electronic service errors. GuestReady reinforces the same recommendation.

07. Still on this page, you may find a brief summary of the procedure before continuing.

08. Scroll down on the page and select your location before continuing. After selecting the district/island, you will be asked for the municipality so that the proof is already associated with the municipal council. As an example, we selected the Porto District and Municipality. Then, click on “See”.

09. The next steps are entirely in Portuguese. On the next page, you should indicate the registration number of the short-term rental whose activity you are seeking to send proof for. Note that, as we have already explained, if you have more than one registration for which you need to perform this service, you should repeat these steps again for each registration after completing the first process.

The format of your licence number will resemble something like this “123456/AL”.

The buttons will be “Continuar” (continue) or “Cancelar” (cancel). Select Continuar to move to the next step.

10. On the next page, identify yourself as the author of this process. You should provide your details and contact information

All marked fields are mandatory and in Portuguese they mean the following:

“Nome”: your name

“Na qualidade de:” your role in the process. If you’re the owner, select “Próprio”. If you’re a business licence holder, select “Sócio-gerente / gerente / administrador / diretor” (lit: business partner, business owner, manager, director)

Please confirm the email address is correct. The documentation and proof of submission for these processes is always sent by email.

The phone number is to be written on the first (and optionally second) fields. You can skip these if you want.

To move forward, select Continuar again, the blue button.

11. In the following pages, you will find all the information about the holders of the short-term rental registration and the property itself already filled in. You should check if the information is correct.

The images below have sensitive information censored, but the fields in dark gray should already be filled in your process. It will hold all the licence and property details.

12. On the next page, you should select whether the property is also your permanent residence or not. After indicating that it is not (Não – second square) you will be asked for the proof, which you should upload by clicking “Choose file”. Remember: you should submit a fiscal statement (VAT or IRS/IRC) or the declaration of the start of activity (if you opened the activity this year and do not have any other document yet).

Only then can you click “Carregar documento” (lit: “Upload document”) to submit it through the e-balcão. Then, select “Continuar” in the bottom right corner.

13. In the next step, you just have to confirm that the documents and data are true by checking the boxes, and you can continue again.

14. In the end, you only have a summary of the process. You will be shown a “payment” field (amount: €0.00) upon completing the process. You will also receive an email confirming the submission of the documentation.

The support of GuestReady

Although GuestReady cannot submit these documents on behalf of its clients due to the confidential information of the proofs, it is available to assist them remotely with all steps of the process.

Trust the experts. Find out today how we can help you maximize your property’s profitability and simplify all bureaucracy and management, giving you back time, peace of mind, and increasing your income.

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