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 or a receipt. It's the full content of what was filed: every field, every annex, every number your accountant (or you) entered into 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 a raw data dump of the form fields, in Portuguese, with campo numbers instead of human-readable labels.

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 applied
• Your Social Security contribution base
• 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) 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 401, campo 403, 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 401: your gross income from services (Category B)
• Campo 403: income from sales of goods, if applicable
• Campo 421: withholding tax (retenção na fonte) already paid by your clients
• Campo 501+: Social Security contribution details

Under the simplified regime, AT applies a coefficient to your gross income. For services, 75% of your revenue is considered taxable income. For goods, it's 15%. These coefficients are applied automatically (you don't enter them yourself), but the comprovativo shows the result.

Anexo H contains your deductions: health expenses, education, housing, the general family deduction. These come from your e-fatura data: every purchase where you used your NIF.

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. Does campo 401 (or 403) match? 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 and there's no Anexo B, something is wrong. The set of annexes should match your actual situation.

Dependents and marital status. Check the cover page (Rosto). The number of dependents and whether you filed jointly or separately affects your tax brackets directly. 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. This is tax already paid: it reduces your final bill. If it's missing, you're paying that tax twice.

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.