In Parliament, where she was interviewed about the report on combating tax and customs fraud and evasion in 2024, submitted to Parliament in June, Cláudia Reis Duarte was questioned by CDS-PP MP Paulo Núncio about the development of the Portuguese e-invoice.

The minister assured that work to adapt the Finance system to the new rules for taxing the digital economy in the European Union (EU) has already begun.

"The e-invoice system will undergo a significant reconfiguration, especially due to the initiative being discussed in the European Union, VIDA – 'VAT in the Digital Age', which has a set of proposals, the first of which is real-time invoicing, communicated in real time," said the Secretary of State.

"This will mean that our e-invoice system will have to adapt to this new reality. It's not tomorrow, it's 2030. But 2030 isn't that far away either, so work is already underway to adapt it," Reis Duarte added.

The European rules that require companies to send real-time data to EU tax authorities only apply to transactions that span more than one geographic region.

The Secretary of State did not specify specifically what is being adapted to the members of the Budget, Finance and Public Administration Committee.

According to official information from the Council of the European Union (EU), the new European rules will create a real-time digital communication system for VAT purposes through electronic invoices for companies operating in the international market.

"Companies will issue electronic invoices for cross-border transactions, automatically communicating the data to tax administrations, which will then share it through a new IT system to detect any suspicious activity," according to information published on the Council of the EU website, which predicts that the rules will come into force in 2030 and that "there will be full interoperability between national systems by 2035."