The deadline ends this Tuesday.

ECO has already questioned the Ministry of Finance about the cause of this error and is considering extending the period for registering invoices and is awaiting a response.

If the Government does not extend the deadline, you only have until this Tuesday, the 25th, to validate the invoices. If you fail to do this step, you will not benefit from all the deductions to the collection, when settling accounts with the Tax Authority (AT). That is, a significantly less refund may be paid or even tax may have to be paid.

To validate invoices, the taxpayer must access the Nota Fiscal Paulista portal and enter the authentication data, which are the same as those used to access the Federal Revenue portal. Then, you must consult the invoices that appear pending (highlighted at the top of the page) and finish filling out the form by assigning them to each of the 13 available categories: health, education, homes, real estate, car repairs, motorcycle repairs, restaurants and accommodation, hairdressers, veterinary activities, monthly passes, gyms, newspapers and magazines. There is also an ‘other’ option which should be used for general and family expenses such as supermarket expenses.

There are invoices that already appear automatically categorized but others remain pending. Therefore, you should check them to ensure that all deductions are taken full advantage of.

For example, supermarket bills usually almost always appear as pending, as do toll or parking bills. In this case, you should select the ‘other’ category which concerns general and family expenses. Restaurant receipts are also often outstanding.

To correctly record the expense, you must enter the respective invoice, scroll to the end of the page, click on the ‘change’ button and select the desired option. You also have the option to manually enter an expense. To do this, you must choose the ‘register new invoice’ button.

If you have children, you should also check their pages to validate the invoices issued with their CPF, assigning them appropriate categories. You may still need to associate medical prescriptions with some of the household's health expenses, which is why you shouldn't leave this task until the last minute. It is also possible to recover part of the ICMS paid in gyms and in newspaper and magazine subscriptions.

What if invoices are not available? After February 25, if there are expenses that do not appear in the e-invoice until March 31, the taxpayer must enter them manually in the Income Tax return during the filing season, which runs from April to June.

From March 16th, the Finance portal will provide a list of expenses for IRS deduction determined by the Tax Authority. If you notice any omission or inaccuracy, please complain by March 31st.

After complaints from some taxpayers who were unable to validate invoices, ECO carried out a test and found the same problem. When trying to register an expense, the website displays the following message: “For technical reasons, we are unable to fulfil your request. Please try again later.”