AIMA is finally fixing one of its most frustrating problems.

AIMA is about to stop sending you to Social Security. Your NISS will arrive during the appointment itself, in real time. Last year 250,000 people queued twice to get one.It's Friday, 17 July. Twenty-seven degrees. Exam results are due today, if they arrive. Here's what you need to know.

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AIMA IS ABOUT TO STOP SENDING YOU TO SOCIAL SECURITY.

From late this month, anyone starting a regularisation at the Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo (AIMA) will be handed their Social Security number, the Número de Identificação da Segurança Social (NISS), automatically and in real time, during the appointment itself. No separate trip. No going back a fortnight later to collect it. The two systems will work together so that AIMA types in your details and Social Security issues the number while you sit there.

The head of Social Security's IT institute, Luís Farrajota, described the old arrangement about as bluntly as a civil servant is ever going to. Someone turns up at AIMA to regularise, he said, and AIMA tells them it needs their NISS and their tax number, and sends them off knocking on the doors of various institutions. What they built, he explained, was simply a link between the two services.

In 2025 alone, roughly 250,000 people queued at a Social Security counter purely to ask for a NISS, then queued a second time to collect it. Half a million visits, for one eleven-digit number, that a database could have issued in a second.

For anyone who has not been through it, that number sounds like an inconvenience rather than a problem. It is a problem, because of what the NISS gates. AIMA now requires one on new residence applications and on renewals; without it your file is incomplete and can be rejected outright. But getting a NISS has generally meant demonstrating your situation first, often with proof of employment, and if you are on a D7 living off passive income, or waiting on residency that would establish you in the first place, you can find yourself in a genuine loop: AIMA wants the number before it will proceed, and the counter wants evidence AIMA has proceeded before it will issue the number. People have spent months going round that circle.

It is not the only thing being unpicked. Since the start of July there has been a WhatsApp channel for Social Security, currently for booking appointments in person, by phone or by video, with document exchange and declarations promised in a second phase. There is also a tool called Declarações a Pedido, which lets you authorise a bank or a council to pull a Social Security declaration directly rather than making you fetch a paper copy and carry it across the city.

This is all good news for people starting out. However, if you are already in the system and trying to correct or attach a NISS to an existing card, none of this touches that, and that is precisely where the complaints have been loudest, with the renewal portal refusing updates from anyone whose card is not close to expiry. The fix arrives for the people at the front of the queue, not the people stuck in the middle of it.

Bottom line: a rare piece of good news out of AIMA, and a real one. If you are starting a regularisation from late July, one errand has been deleted from your life. If you are mid-process with a NISS problem, you are still on your own unfortunately.

⚡ QUICK HITS

"We are not an economic miracle," says the man who runs the central bank. Álvaro Santos Pereira, Governor of the Banco de Portugal, was asked in an interview published on Thursday whether Portugal's recent run amounts to a miracle, and declined to say yes. Growth is around 2%, which per capita is nearer 1%, and at that rate he calculates the average income here takes about seventy years to double. None of us, he said, will see a significant improvement in per capita income in the coming years. His point is not that Portugal is failing, since it is plainly in better shape than the near-stagnant two decades prior when it adopted the euro. It is that moderate is not miraculous, productivity is low and barely moving, and the reforms that would change it have not been attempted in years. One practical note sits inside the same interview: the European Central Bank (ECB) decides in just over a week whether to lift its key rate from 2.25%, and most mortgages here track Euribor, which follows the ECB.

Half the country's demand for a room to rent is in Lisbon. New figures from the property portal Imovirtual show the number of people searching for rooms up 45.4% on last year, with Lisbon alone accounting for 51.6% of national demand and Porto 18.9%. The behaviour has changed as much as the volume: 47.8% of visits now end in someone contacting the advertiser directly, up from 34.3% a year ago, and eight in ten go straight for the phone rather than a message. Their marketing manager, Sylvia Bozzo, said room-hunters arrive with urgency, compare fewer options and move fast, which she reads as a very immediate housing need. Renting a room seems to have stopped being a student arrangement some time ago.

Hospital staff arrested over forged prescriptions for diabetes and obesity drugs. The Judicial Police detained four people aged between 28 and 52 in Greater Porto, two of them employees of a private hospital in the north. They are suspected of abusing their own system access, or other people's, to forge prescriptions, buying the drugs at the subsidised price covered by health systems and insurers, then reselling them on the parallel market at a considerable mark-up. Police say it has been running since at least 2024, and that the health risk sits with the buyers, who were medicating themselves with no clinical supervision at all.

Getting your Portuguese tax return right, with Fresh Legal

Missing a deadline or filing an incorrect tax return in Portugal is more common than expats think, and the consequences add up fast. Here is a clear, expert guide from the team at Fresh Legal.

For many internationally mobile professionals living in Portugal, one of the most stressful questions each year is what happens if a tax return is filed late, filed incorrectly, or disputed by the tax authority.

The good news is these situations are usually fixable.

Late filing of Modelo 3, the annual personal income tax return, triggers automatic penalties from the tax authority, the Autoridade Tributária, but the amount and severity depend heavily on how the delay is handled. Voluntary regularisation before any notice from the tax authority typically results in significantly reduced fines compared to filing after an official request.

For those who discover an error after filing, the path forward depends on timing. A replacement return (declaração de substituição) can generally correct mistakes voluntarily, often without penalty, provided it is submitted before the tax authority opens an inspection. Errors identified by the tax authority may lead to a formal correction notice, additional tax assessed, and interest calculated from the original due date.

The resulting tax consequences generally fall into three distinct categories:

Late submissions are addressed first through a fixed penalty scale that increases the longer the delay continues, though voluntary filing before any notification substantially reduces the fine. Corrections follow a similar logic, rewarding taxpayers who amend their statements still within the original deadline and before the authority intervenes.

One of the most common misunderstandings is that a tax assessment must simply be accepted. In reality, taxpayers have several avenues to challenge it, including an administrative claim, a hierarchical appeal, or judicial proceedings before the tax courts. Strict deadlines apply, and missing one can permanently close the door. Two expats with identical assessments may reach different outcomes depending on which path they choose.

Tax compliance in Portugal should not be treated as an afterthought. A proper review of your filing history, deadlines, and any pending correspondence from the tax authority is essential. For expats already living in Portugal, acting early can make a significant difference.

→ Learn more about Portuguese tax return support

We only partner with businesses we think genuinely help our community. If this is relevant to you, or if you know someone navigating the Portuguese tax system, every click and every share goes a long way to keeping this newsletter free every morning.

🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

TASCA ABALADIÇA (BAIRRO DO REGO)

There is a small ritual at the end of a meal here that explains the name. With the coffees comes the abaladiça, a digestivo that arrives last and carries a message: you have been fed, you have been looked after, and now it is time to go.

It opened at the end of 2025 on Rua Dr. Álvaro de Castro, in the Bairro do Rego, on a street already holding four or five traditional places that are permanently full. Filipe Ramalho and Vítor Charneca, who between them have Copo Largo and time served in the kitchen at Taberna Sal Grosso, opened it as a deliberate argument. Lisbon has plenty of neo-tascas now, vintage decor and modern twists and everything for sharing. This is not that. Paper on the tables, food in aluminium platters, the menu chalked on a slate at the door, and a lean towards Alentejo cooking.

The food is the point and there is nothing clever about it, which is a compliment. Arroz de tamboril, barriga de porco, the kind of cooking people mean when they say it tastes like someone's grandmother made it. Their own line is that the food is plentiful, the wine is good and the conversation never ends, which is a promise a lot of places make and this one appears to keep.

Plates sit at or around €10. Reckon on about €18 a head with house wine.

Do note, it is lunch only for most of the week, with dinner on Friday and Saturday, and it closes two days, so check before you go rather than turning up hopeful. It is small, with few seats. And the walls are still bare in places, because the decorating has not caught up with the cooking.

→ A real tasca, not a tribute to one. Find them here ←

Insider tip: if you’re going for dinner book. Otherwise go at lunch, order whatever is chalked up rather than hunting the menu for something familiar, and stay for the abaladiça.

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