My accountant sent me a PDF in Portuguese. I had no idea what it said.

For 2022 and 2023, my accountant sent me the comprovativo de entrega along with a simulation before filing. I could see the numbers, ask questions, and approve before anything was submitted. It worked.

2024 was different. There were some technical issues on their end, and the declaration went in without a simulation. I never saw the numbers before it was filed. The first time I looked at my own IRS was when the comprovativo arrived: a PDF, in Portuguese, from the Autoridade Tributária.

I tried running it through Google Translate. The PDF format broke the translation completely. Columns merged, numbers shifted, field labels lost their meaning. I gave up.

When the nota de liquidação arrived (the actual tax bill) I did what I suspect many expats do: I took my total freelancer revenue, calculated what percentage the tax bill represented, and asked myself "does 25% sound about right?" It did, roughly, so I paid it.

That is not how you should handle your own tax declaration.

What the comprovativo actually is

The comprovativo de entrega is the official confirmation that your IRS declaration was submitted to AT. It's not a summary. It reproduces the declaration itself: every annex that was filed and the number your accountant (or you) entered in each field of the Modelo 3 form.

In Sweden, the equivalent document is the "inkomstdeklaration", and it arrives pre-filled, in a language I can read, with a clear summary on page one. In Portugal, the comprovativo is the form itself, field by field, in Portuguese, with every value keyed to a field number (campo).

If you can decode it, though, it tells you everything:

• Which annexes were filed and what income category they represent
• Your declared income for the year
• Which tax benefits or deductions were declared
• Your Anexo SS, which reports your self-employment income to Segurança Social
• Whether you filed jointly or separately
• How many dependents were claimed

The annexes: what was actually filed

Most solo entrepreneurs on the simplified regime will see Anexo B (self-employment income), Anexo SS (your self-employment income, reported to Segurança Social) and possibly Anexo H (deductions and tax benefits). If you had foreign income, Anexo J appears. Employment income goes in Anexo A.

Each annex has numbered fields: campo 403, campo 602, etc. These numbers correspond to specific lines on the Modelo 3 form. Without knowing what each campo means, you're looking at a grid of numbers with no context.

Anexo B is where your freelancer income lives. The key fields:

• Campo 403 (Quadro 4): income from the professions listed in the Art. 151.º CIRS table, if your activity code is on that list
• Campo 404 (Quadro 4): income from other services, not in that table
• Campo 401 (Quadro 4): sales of goods and products, if applicable
• Campos 601 and 602 (Quadro 6): the income on which your clients withheld tax, and the withholding tax (retenção na fonte) itself
• Campo 17001 (Quadro 17): the Social Security contributions you paid

Under the simplified regime, AT applies a coefficient to your gross income. As a rule (the coefficient can be reduced in your first two years of activity), for the Art. 151.º professions in campo 403, 75% of your revenue is considered taxable income. For other services in campo 404, it's 35%. For goods, 15%. These coefficients are applied automatically (you don't enter them yourself). The comprovativo shows the gross figures that were declared; the tax calculated from them comes later, in the nota de liquidação.

Anexo H covers deductions and tax benefits: health expenses, education, housing. AT calculates those deductions from your e-fatura data, the purchases in deductible sectors where you gave your NIF. If you accepted AT's figures, they may not appear in the comprovativo at all; they show up there when you chose to declare your own amounts.

Anexo J appears if you declared foreign income. It lists the country, income category, amount, and any tax already paid abroad for double taxation relief.

The numbers that actually matter

When you get your comprovativo, here's what to check first:

Is the income correct? Add up your invoices for the year, without the VAT. Does campo 403 or 404 match (campo 401 if you sold goods)? Service income in campo 401 is a red flag: that field is for goods. If your accountant entered a different number than what you actually invoiced, that's a problem. Either they had incomplete records or something was miscategorized.

Were the right annexes filed? If you had foreign income and there's no Anexo J, that's missing. If you're a freelancer on the simplified regime and there's no Anexo B, something is wrong, and you would usually expect an Anexo SS next to it. The set of annexes should match your actual situation.

Dependents and marital status. Check the cover page (Rosto). Filing jointly or separately changes how your income is taxed (Art. 69.º CIRS), and each dependent reduces the tax due (Art. 78.º-A CIRS). A missing dependent can cost hundreds of euros.

Withholding tax. If your clients withheld tax (retenção na fonte) on your invoices, that amount should appear in Anexo B, Quadro 6. This is tax already withheld on your behalf. Check that it's there; if it's missing, ask for the declaration to be corrected.

Why this matters even if you have an accountant

My 2024 situation (filing blind, receiving an untranslatable PDF, guessing whether the tax bill was reasonable) shouldn't happen. But it's common. The accountant does their job, sends you a document you can't read, and you trust the number because what else can you do?

The comprovativo is your receipt for the most important financial transaction of the year. You should be able to read it.

This is why we built the IRS reader. Upload the PDF and see every campo explained in English: what the field means, what number was entered, and why it matters. Upload multiple years and see what changed. It takes two minutes, and it turns that untranslatable document into something you can actually understand.

I wish I'd had this for my 2024 filing. I would have caught the missing simulation before it became a tax bill I couldn't verify.