Long-term Assets (Imobilizado) for Freelancers on the Simplified Regime

I bought a laptop for my freelance business and put it through my business expenses. When I came to file the IVA Periódica, I was not sure whether it went in field #20 or one of the other acquisition fields. I also had no idea what a Ficha de Imobilizado was, or whether I needed one.

Most guides for freelancers either skip this topic entirely or dive straight into the accounting theory. What I actually wanted to know was simpler: does any of this change anything about my taxes, what evidence do I keep, and what is the minimum I need to do to stay clean?

This is that post. It covers the decisions you make before and after the purchase, not the definition (that is at /glossary/imobilizado) and not the IVA Periódica mechanics (those are at /guides/imobilizado-iva-periodica).

Two systems running in parallel

When you buy a business asset on the simplified regime, two separate tax systems are involved, and they work independently of each other.

IRS side: the asset counts toward the expense proof, not the coefficient. Under the simplified regime, your taxable income is a coefficient applied to gross revenue, specifically 0.75 for most service providers covered by Article 151 CIRS. The coefficient fixes taxable income, but the regime also asks you to show documented expenses worth 15% of services revenue (Art. 31.º n.º 13 CIRS). An asset bought for the activity counts toward it when its invoice carries your NIF and appears in e-Fatura (n.º 13 e)), at 25% if it is only partly used for the business (n.º 14). A purchase from a supplier in another EU country counts through n.º 13 f) instead, declared in Anexo B Quadro 17A campo 17002. In 2026, up to roughly €30,580 of services revenue, the specific deduction of €4,587.09 (2026) already covers it on its own, so for many freelancers the laptop changes nothing on the IRS side.

VAT side: you can still recover input VAT. Even under the simplified regime, if you are on the normal VAT regime, you recover the VAT paid on business assets through the IVA Periódica. For a €1,200 laptop (pre-VAT), that is €276 in mainland VAT (23%) you claim back in the declaration for the period you receive the invoice, or a later one (Art. 22.º n.º 2 CIVA). That goes in field #20 of the declaration.

The two systems do not talk to each other. A lot of freelancers assume that if the asset does not change their IRS it does not affect anything else either, and skip the IVA Periódica step. That is the mistake.

One caveat: if you are under the Art. 53 VAT exemption (under €15,000.00 revenue), you cannot recover input VAT at all. The exemption cuts both ways: no VAT on invoices, and no VAT recovery on purchases either.

What to think about before buying

Which quarter? You deduct the VAT in the declaration for the period you receive the invoice, or a later one (Art. 22.º n.º 2 CIVA). If you are at the end of Q2 and you have an outstanding VAT credit already sitting in #94 from Q1 and Q2, adding a large asset in Q2 increases the credit. You can ask for a refund once the credit has stood for 12 months and exceeds €250, or straight away once it exceeds €3,000 (Art. 22.º n.ºs 5 and 6 CIVA), in any quarter. If the Portal does not offer field #95 in your quarter, carry the credit forward in #96 and ask later. If you prefer to spread the accounting load, or if a Q3 purchase fits a planned project better, there is no IRS disadvantage to waiting within the same year.

Mixed use. A laptop you use 90% for work and 10% for personal use is a mixed-use asset. You deduct only the business proportion of VAT (90% in this example; Art. 20.º n.º 1 CIVA). In practice, most freelancers with a single work machine that sits on their desk do not segment this. But the rule exists, and a clearly personal device registered as a business asset creates a risk in an inspection.

What evidence to keep

The document chain for a business asset is the same as for any other deductible expense, with one difference: you keep it longer.

• The original invoice (or a digital copy kept in an archive that meets DL 28/2019), with your NIF as the buyer
• The payment proof (bank transfer confirmation)
• The invoice's classification on the Portal das Finanças (see below)

Portugal's document retention obligation is 10 years from the end of the civil year of the transaction, not 4 years. The 4-year figure widely cited is the AT's assessment window (caducidade), the period during which AT can challenge a filing. The documents themselves have to exist for 10 years. A laptop bought in March 2026 needs its invoice kept until 31 December 2036.

Recording the asset: what the law asks, and the Ficha de Imobilizado

What the law asks depends on your accounting. With organized accounting, you keep a register of investment goods: for each one, the date of purchase and first use, the VAT paid and the deduction percentages (Art. 51.º CIVA). Without organized accounting, which is the usual case on the simplified regime, since 1 July 2025 you meet the obligation by classifying the invoice on the Portal das Finanças as an operation linked to investment goods (Art. 50.º n.º 1 c) CIVA, applied to self-employed income by Art. 116.º n.º 1 a) CIRS).

On top of that, a Ficha de Imobilizado, a simple table of your assets, is a sensible habit. For a freelancer with three items in it, it can look like this:

Asset	Acquisition date	Supplier	Base tributável (pre-VAT)	Expected useful life
Laptop (MacBook Air M3)	2026-03-15	Apple Distribution International	€1,500	5 years
External monitor	2025-11-20	Backmarket	€180	5 years
Desk (IKEA Bekant)	2025-06-01	IKEA Portugal	€319	10 years

Add a row when you buy something, and keep the table alongside the corresponding invoices.

A few notes on the columns:

Base tributável: the pre-VAT cost.

Expected useful life: for your own table, a reasonable estimate is fine. The useful life affects depreciation calculations, which matter for organized accounting (contabilidade organizada) but not for simplified-regime IRS. It also decides whether the VAT adjustment below can apply.

The regularization risk in plain terms

When you deduct VAT on an asset, you may have to adjust that deduction yourself in later years (Art. 24.º CIVA), in the return for the last period of each year. The window is 5 years for movable assets (the year of first use plus four) and 20 years for real estate (plus nineteen).

The mechanism is called regularization (regularização). Assets worth less than €2,500 each, or with a useful life under five years, are outside the annual adjustment (Art. 24.º n.º 7 CIVA), so none of the items in the table above is affected. Above those limits, it applies when the share of VAT you may deduct changes, in practice because part of your activity becomes VAT-exempt: for example, if you start giving private lessons on school subjects (exempt under Art. 9.º n.º 11 CIVA) alongside your consultancy work. Selling an asset inside the window has its own one-off adjustment (n.º 5).

For a freelancer with fully taxable services and no change in activity, the annual adjustment does not come into play.

If you are planning to pivot your activity or add exempt services before buying an expensive asset, talk to your contabilista certificado first. That is genuinely a question for an accountant.

Common mistakes

Putting the invoice total or the pre-VAT cost in field #20. The field takes the VAT only: on a €1,476 invoice (€1,200 + €276 VAT), enter €276.

Classifying inventory as imobilizado. If you sell goods (a reseller, a craft seller), the stock you hold for sale is inventário, not imobilizado. It goes in different fields and is treated differently. The test: are you keeping this thing to use in the business, or are you keeping it to sell?

No invoice in the business name. An asset purchased personally (invoice to your private name, without NIF) cannot be claimed as a business expense. If you bought the laptop on a personal card, at minimum make sure your NIF is on the invoice. If the seller did not include it, ask the seller to cancel the invoice and issue a corrected one. A missing or wrong NIF is a formal error, and AT does not admit a credit note for it (Ofício-Circulado 25120/2026 § I.5 and 6).

Skipping the Portal classification. Without organized accounting, classifying your investment-goods invoices on the Portal das Finanças is the obligation (Art. 50.º n.º 1 c) CIVA). Filing field #20 for years without it is an exposure.

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For the definition of imobilizado and what counts and what does not, see /glossary/imobilizado. For the step-by-step on filling field #20 in the IVA Periódica, see /guides/imobilizado-iva-periodica.

The eFatura guide covers how to verify that your asset invoices are correctly associated with your NIF in the AT system. Worth checking before you file. A foreign supplier with no Portuguese VAT registration does not report to AT, so its invoice will not appear in e-Fatura; keep the original yourself.

Every invoice issued by certified invoicing software in Portugal carries a QR code that encodes your NIF and the document type. Understanding how that system works helps clarify why the AT can cross-reference your purchases against your supplier's issued invoices. The QR code explainer has the detail if you want it.