A study by AT Kearney showed that with 31 billion euros the Portuguese shadow economy accounted for about one-fifth of its gross national product. And with 19 percent of GDP, that was almost 7 points above western Europe’s average. However the AT Kearney study also demonstrated that Portugal was a forerunner in taking measures to address tax evasion and fraud.
These measures in Portugal include greater use of electronic invoicing, investment in technology and more tax agents, as well as small tax discounts on personal invoices, in force from last year. Electronic invoices rose 25 percent in January from a year earlier to around 365 million.
But now the Portugues government added a state draw lottery to the set of measures. The goal of the lottery is that each invoice or bill contains at least the VAT number of the invoice/bill issuer.
And it seems to be working. The government says that the number of qualified invoices jumped 45 percent in January – the first month the bills qualified for the lottery – from a year earlier to 46 million.
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