The Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs said today that the suspension of parts of the Finanças website is to help people file their tax returns online and on time before the April 30th deadline.
The Ministry of Finance has blocked a number of features of the Finanças web portal in order to speed up the rest of the creaking architecture and to ensure that the system remains operational, i.e. does not crash, according to Paulo Nuncio.
"According to information from the Tax and Customs Authority, the Finanças Portal still is working, allowing the completion and submission of 2013 tax returns. We are approaching the end of the legal deadline for submitting tax returns …and it was decided to suspend access to some non-essential services on the portal in order to expedite the submission of these tax returns by taxpayers," claims Nuncio.
This decision may help dependent workers (category A) and pensioners (category H) to file on time by the end of Wednesday but does nothing to sort out the underlying problem of a website that yet again has been found to be inadequate for the job in hand.
Many areas of the Finanças portal now display the message ‘for technical reasons some services may not be available,’ accountants have complained that they are unable easily to access customer records which in many cases are useful when completing their client's 2013 tax returns.
The Secretary of State says that the system is operational, which it is, sort of. One thing is for sure, late submissions will still attract a fine unless the system crashes in which case an extension to the deadline can be expected.
For a government so keen to tax its citizens in full and on time the Finanças website is not fit for purpose if it gets chocked up on entirely predictable dates in the year.
